Toying with an upgrade

RIZZEE

RIZZEE

RIZZEE

Soldato
Joined
31 Jan 2009
Posts
4,248
Location
London
I'm looking to upgrade but i'm not entire sure what to upgrade, so any advice would be helpful. i'd say max budget is around £700 and it'll be used for gaming at 1080P for now but i'd like to upgrade to 1440p/144hz later, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator and After Effects.

Current specs:

i7 920 @ 3.8ghz
Asus P6T
12GB DDR3 ram at 1600mhz
Asus 6950

So I have two ideas,

upgrade my 6950 to something a little more powerful. But i'm not sure if my cpu would be a bottleneck or not?

or

Upgrade to X99, keep my 6950 until I save up for something better. i know AMD and Nvidia are planning on releasing Pascal/Polaris stuff later this year. All i'll need for X99 is a CPU/Motherboard/Ram/Cooler, OCUK do a bundle that seems pretty solid Linky

Or I guess I could just keep saving until I can get everything all at once?

Also, stupid question, what's the difference between a Z170 board and a LGA 2011-V3 board?
 
The bundle you've linked to isn't X99 - it's a Skylake i7 bundle.

In my opinion you'd be better going with a true 6 core setup such as this, which is X99

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £502.48
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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Z170 and X99 refer to the chipset of the board and support different processors. Z170 is the enthusiast range supporting the Skylake CPU range (1151 socket type) which typically have the high-end features and overclocking support. The H110/B150/H170 support the same Skylake chips but often don't have the high end features.

X99 is the Haswell-E range which take the high end true multi-core chips (2011 socket type), pretty much enthusiast level again with high end features and more PCI-E lanes than Skylake which helps multi-GPU setups, among other things.

If I were you I'd go the X99 route, get as much 2400mhz DDR4 as you can afford and obviously a decent SSD if you don't already have one.

What case and PSU do you have now?
 
Ah! My bad, been out the loop for a while and only got back into looking at things recently.

Will I notice much of a difference between going for 2400mhz and not something faster?

I have a Corsair TX850, which is more than enough but i'm tempted to replace it because it makes cable management a pain since it isn't modular. As for the case I have a Phanteks Enthoo Evolv.
 
Outside of benchmarks you won't notice any difference in RAM speeds.

If you're looking at a new PSU then have a look at Superflower or EVGA's modular range. Top tier build quality and performance. You won't need anything more than a 550w unit for now unless you plan on a 980ti and hefty overclocks, in which case a good 650w would be fine.
 
Right now a new psu isn't a super important upgrade but i'll look at those.

In terms of motherboards anyone know what's popular? i'll be doing light overclocking, most probably be sticking to a single gpu.

Would upgrading to X99 be a better option that a gpu upgrade?
 
With X99 you'll have a very good CPU for editing and a good CPU for gaming. Skylake gives you better clock speed at stock which for single threaded games is important - it won't be quite as good as the Haswell-E CPU for editing though.

You have to decide what's more important now - games performance or editing performance. A new GPU would give you an instant improvement in games and then you can save for the rest. Your current CPU is still fairly good so shouldn't bottleneck things too badly.
 
Appreciate the help, pretty sure i'm gonna go for the X99 upgrade and see what Nvidia and AMD do later this year.

Right now editing and work comes first.
 
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