To upgrade or not?

Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2013
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12,679
As you may recall if you read my previous thread, I'm about to upgrade to an 1155 Z68 with an i5 2500K that have come my way.

I'm looking to build my rig to breeze through the likes of Star Citizen, play films, do all the usual daily stuff and hopefully last a few years before updating.
I'll overclock it if I have to...

Will the Z68 cope OK or is it too obsolete these days?
Is there a better board/CPU set you'd recommend? H77, Z87 or an X79 perhaps, or an AMD set?
 
Z68 with i5 2500k will last a little while yet. Of course there's better (Haswell), there always is. The question is is it a worthwhile upgrade. I'd suggest not.
 
Z68 is best motherboard coupled with an i5 2500k.
I've had my Z68AP-D3 for a couple of years now with my 2500k at 4.3ghz.

With that setup it then depends on your GPU being good enough. I have a gtx 670 and it plays everthing to my satisfaction.
Dont really need Haswell or whatever as it doesnt improve my gameplay enough to warrant the outlay and its not as cool running as my i5 2500k.
 
Interesting...
Well, I'll be running a 6950 initially, but may go get a 7970 (or two!) if I get enough money together, or switch to NVidia... my options are always open, but I'd reckon those would do the job so I guess it's mainly down to board, RAM and processor.

I'm mainly concerned with enough speed and memory to run games at decent settings. Maybe not über-über-ultra but certainly something impressive, with at least the potential to go further.
 
I'll consider, of course, but that part'll probably wait until they've been out for a bit and I can get some user reviews on them. I dunno... 7970s might drop nicely in price, so would a pair of them Crossfired outperform a single R9 290, bang-for-buck-wise?

It's things like this and other possible upgrades that might suddenly enter my budget range (especially with OCUK's deals) that I'm trying to factor in deciding to upgrade the mobo/CPU or not...
 
Well, the current rig is a 775 Q6600 combo with 4gb RAM, which really stutters just on Assassin's Creed III, which is why I was going to switch out to the 1155 package.

Graphics card will likely be one of the last things I upgrade, I'm thinking...
 
Current GPU is an HD6950. Might have an offer of a 7970 once the R9 290X preorders are delivered.
Currently gaming at 1440x900 on a 21" HP LE1901w but might go get a bigger monitor - 25-27" perhaps... whatever is under 5kg, as I need to use a monitor arm.
 
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