Upgrade all or GPU?

Nymins

Nymins

Nymins

Soldato
Joined
7 Mar 2007
Posts
9,917
Location
Belfast
Ok, please someone stop me going mental and doing this. I keep reading about the awesomeness of the i5-2500K and its crazy overclocking capabilities. At the minute, I'm in the mood for upgrading, but over the last few weeks I've only been looking at the GPU, as I had a 5770 and I want something a bit faster for BF3 etc etc usual stuff.

Anyway, I'm pretty set on the 6950 2Gb, with the mindset that I'll get another for Crossfire later down the line. However, is there any sense in me selling off my current processor and motherboard and going to the Core i5?

I currently use a Gigabyte 790GPT-UDH3 with Athlon II X4 640 OC'd to 3.6Ghz (max it can go). It seems fine, but I keep seeing people going up to 4.5Ghz and what not on the i5. And looking at some Anandtech benchmarks between the i5 and X4 640 (well the 645 is only listed as the closest to mine), the frame rate in games is double on the i5?! I dunno what the testing methods were, but that seems crazy!

Now, I have no idea on Intel motherboards, as I haven't had one for ages (last one was an old C2D one), so I would need advice there. Cheap but good as always!

So basically I'm asking, is it stupid to even think of going i5? Is my setup still good enough? Should I get the i5+motherboard and wait for other GPU's even though I would be GPU...less for awhile?

I think I have gone a bit insane, but I'd love to hear all your thoughts! :p
 
Wait for the game to come out and see what works best.

But I am sure your 5770 isnt going to be up for it at decent settings and resolutions.

Maybe upgrade the graphics card first and see how the game plays?

Three questions,

What PSU do you have?
How much RAm do you have?
Are you drives SATA or IDE?
 
Last edited:
Oh that makes it simple then.

Buy a single 6950 or even Crossfire two of them etc, the PSU and board you have are good for this.

Then either swap a PhenomII X4 into the board selling the Athlon.

Or sell the Athlon and motherboard and buy a i5 and Z68 crossfire/sli capable board.


Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** LOWEST UK PRICE ** £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
Sub Total : £228.31
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £47.56
Total : £285.37
 
Gah the temptations!

Is there much difference between the P67 and Z68 motherboards? Haven't done any research yet, so I'm very new to this architecture.
 
Nymins said:
Gah the temptations!

Is there much difference between the P67 and Z68 motherboards? Haven't done any research yet, so I'm very new to this architecture.
Click to expand...

You benefit from SSD caching, Lucid virtu and Quicksync.

That Gigabyte board above - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68xp-ud3-dz68db,2980.html

Also you can always fall back on the Sandybridge built in GPU if you have a graphics card issue/sell it etc. A bit like you are doing now infact:)
 
Last edited:
RAM is just generic branded, Hynix I think. Not sure what voltages its running at at the minute though
 
Ok, so I got my 6950 and got it unlocked, overclocked and its all good. However, I'm feeling that my Athlon II X4 640 (@ 3.6GHz) is holding it back in CPU intensive games. Playing the Warhammer Space Marines demo, it was solid 60fps most of the time, but in the first demo mission when you get to the control room and look out the large window onto the battlefield (just before opening the door/lower bridge), the frame rate dropped to 40fps.

Checking the GPU usage with Afterburner, it was only 40-50%, so I assume the CPU is to blame. Played Hard Reset demo and again, 60fps most of the time, but dropping to the 40's in high action (although it could just be an intensive game). Assassins Creed Brotherhood is the worst, only started it and it drops to the 30's in the first small town (your "base or whatever after the first battle). Again, GPU usage was around 50%. All these were done at 1920x1080 and max with ~4xMSAA were available. Games like DiRT3 seem fine and the GPU usage is 70-99%, so no issues there. The Witcher 2 has also been greatly improved from my old 5770, with usage at 80-99% and getting 40-55fps on Ultra settings (minus Ubersampling).

I assume all this issues are due to the CPU just not being up to the power of the 6950? Always liked the look of the i5-2500k as I've said, and with Bulldozer being AWOL at the minute, it seems Intel is the way to go.

Would the i5-2500k improve things greatly? I've seen the Anandtech benchmarks and it looks impressive, overclocking as well looks great. I've seen the Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 as well for £100, which seems decent and has the ability for 8x/8x crossfire or SLi.

As I said above, I have 2x2Gb DDR3 ram. However, its speed is 1066mhz. Is this a problem when overclocking the i5? I'm not sure if the clocks on the ram go up with the clocks of the CPU like it does with my current CPU. I know you just raise the multiplier of the i5, but does this also increase the speed of the ram?
 
if upgrading the cpu/mb(will need to include decent cooler if you want to oc unless already have a decent universal cooler) whats the budget?

for the 6950 did you go for toxic then(if so make sure you hae the powertune at +20% or +50% if overclocked as far as it'll go)? :)

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/08/29/sapphire_toxic_hd6950_video_card_review

ram can be overclocked need to play witht the ram multiplier or something(not got my sandy bridge system setup so can't say whats what, if you can stretch get new ram otherwise upgrade it in the future shouldn't be too big an issue in games.
 
I got hold of a reference 6950. I'm using Afterburner to overclock it. I have the voltage at 1.125v I think. Is that ok? I uninstalled CCC as I didn't want any conflicts, should I install it and up the Powertune and reduce my voltages?

I already have a Hyper 212+ which I used to overclock my X4, so that's ok. Budget is as low as possible whilst being decent. The i5-2500k and Z68XP can be had for £267 odd, so no more than that really.
 
Last edited:
if not the toxic then not sure if you need to worry about powertune(will have to leave to someone with more experience to answer that).

if you stretch the budget then this seems to be popular, ment to be pci-e3.0compatible(pop in ivy bridge cpu and pci-e3.0 graphics card) but now there's reports of the uefi going to be needed to be updated for it to work and the end user can't do it themselves needing to send mb in to get the bios chip to be flashed.
 
Yea I've seen the Asrock motherboard, but I dunno if its worth the extra for me. The PCI-E 3.0 isn't much too me as they still haven't utilised all of PCI-E 2.0, and the PCI-E 3.0 cards will be backward compatible with 2.0.

As for Ivy Bridge, I dunno what the situation will be there. Hopefully they won't release another socket type, but looking at the i5-2500k now, it seems pretty hard to beat, so I'm not sure what the performance/price will be like with Ivy Bridge.

I've put my X4 and motherboard up for sale on MM, so I'll see how the interest goes on them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom