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Time to upgrade?

gitbags

gitbags

gitbags

Associate
Joined
17 Nov 2011
Posts
800
Location
By the Sea
I'm currently running:

pII 720be @3.6
4gig ddr2
m4 128gb
hd7850 1200/5800

And I was thinking is it about time I moved on to a new cpu/mobo combo. Currently use my rig for gaming ( 1680 x 1050 arma 2, skyrim mainly) I must admit I can't really complain at the overall performance I get considering the age of my system but lately its been starting to struggle a little. My old hd 4870 512mb has been replaced as I was fed up with it running out of vram in arma. And been replaced with a hd7850, but I can't help but feel I could be getting better out of it.

So the deal is this would it be worth me hanging on till the end of the year and see whats on offer (and just accept that I'm going to have to knock the settings back :() or would I see a massive difference if I upgraded now (next month or so i5) Ideally I'd like to fork out for something that will last me at least 3 years.

Budget is around the £400 mark (ideally less to keep swmbo happy)
 
Well your gcard and SSD are very good, extremely impressive clocks on the gcard in particular :)

I believe you would see a huge difference, yes, because a 7850 running at those speeds is surely about equivalent to a gtx 580, or an overclocked 6970, so you should be able to run arma 2 and skyrim at full hd and full settings (possibly not arma 2 as full settings as I believe it is very power hogging as it's so pretty lookin :p)

Correct choice in wanting to go intel, as AMD are far behind in game performance atm, and also most games don't use hyperthreading so an i5 is perfectly sufficient yes. You'll also need new ram though.

I would recommend the new ivy bridge i5 3570k, as it's just come out and is very fast and has access to new features like pci express 3.

As for specific items:

CPU: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-404-IN

Mobo: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-511-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2261

RAM: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-339-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Other choice RAM: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-307-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Two choices of RAM, depending on if you want low-profile or not, and that motherboard should do you very nicely, unless there are some specific features you want. And all that comes to under £350. So hope that all helped :)
 
AllBodies said:
Well your gcard and SSD are very good, extremely impressive clocks on the gcard in particular :)
Click to expand...

I must admit it's a very nice upgrade from my hd4870. :D

Thanks for the input so far guys. Of the two mobo's linked (Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H, Asus P8Z77-V) which would be better for a crossfire setup? It's an option I'd like to have should the his 7850 come down to the £150 mark in the near future.

Whats the opinions on the current crop of msi boards? The gd55 in particular.

Cheers
 
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As I am in the cpu section I suppose I should ask some appropriate questions :p Would running a new i5 ivy 3570k for stock for now and overclocking it as needs must make much sense or is it that easy to do that I may as well do it? also is the real world difference between the 3570k and 2500k worth the extra £'s?
 
The gigabyte one would be better for crossfire because it can support 8x speed for both slots while in crossfire, but the asus only does 4x for the second slot, but it is more money of course.

Msi boards I believe are good, regarded as on par with asus and gigabyte, but obviously things vary from board to board. I actually did much research on z77 motherboards myself and bought this one about a month ago:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-513-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2261

I chose it due to 'extra' stuff it had that I wanted, like the onboard wifi for convenience, but may be out of your budget. But the point is that while looking up motherboards I came to the conclusion that the MSI gd55 wasn't worth it in comparison to the gd65, as the 65 is quite a bit better for like £10, and I was going to get the gd65 myself but then ended up getting the asus as it's then a tiny bit better than the gd65 and it went on special offer haha.

As for the cpu, the ivy bridge will be 5-15% faster at the same speeds, but also it will allow you to use pci express 3.0. The 7850's don't use pci 3 though, so it would be a personal decision of future proofing on your part, as it's not necessary for your card.

Also if you do video encoding, ivy bridge has a new protocol that allows it to do that STUPID FAST, like INSANELY FAST, so that's a plus if that is something you'd find useful. But ultimately if you don't want/need the features I mentioned and you want to save money then you won't miss out on lots of performance don't worry :)

Also overclocking is very easy with these chips if you're conservative, so if you just put it up to 4 GHz you'd see a nice little performance increase and it should take essentially 0 effort, it's only if you want to go to 4.4+ that you'd have to do things like fiddle with voltage or worry about temps.
 
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