Upgrade Help Mobo Bundle or GPU

[Cern]

The problem with Z170 is that there's not much of an upgrade path in the future. If you get an i5-6600k then the i7-6700k is an upgrade option later, but probably not significant enough to warrant the swapout cost (if you think you'll want the 6700k go straight to it now).

Further down the road Z170 options are relatively limited as Skylake-E will use a new chipset and motherboard. Which leaves Kaby Lake, the Skylake refresh. Not much is known about that, but it's probably only incremental upgrades and likely still only quad core. So any significant upgrade from any Z170 system will need a mobo swap.

Btw, SSD is about more than load times. It gets rids of all that system chuntering from the HDD constantly being accessed by Windows for various background tasks, indexing, caching, delayed events etc. All this still goes on of course, but is far less noticeable with a SSD because it happens so much faster so you almost never see the dreaded spinning circle.

As for Lara's hair, she probably dyes it by now anyway (crazy to think it's 20 years since the original Tomb Raider).

 

[Twoflower]

The problem with Z170 is that there's not much of an upgrade path in the future. If you get an i5-6600k then the i7-6700k is an upgrade option later, but probably not significant enough to warrant the swapout cost (if you think you'll want the 6700k go straight to it now).

Further down the road Z170 options are relatively limited as Skylake-E will use a new chipset and motherboard. Which leaves Kaby Lake, the Skylake refresh. Not much is known about that, but it's probably only incremental upgrades and likely still only quad core. So any significant upgrade from any Z170 system will need a mobo swap.

Btw, SSD is about more than load times. It gets rids of all that system chuntering from the HDD constantly being accessed by Windows for various background tasks, indexing, caching, delayed events etc. All this still goes on of course, but is far less noticeable with a SSD because it happens so much faster so you almost never see the dreaded spinning circle.

As for Lara's hair, she probably dyes it by now anyway (crazy to think it's 20 years since the original Tomb Raider).

Crazy, humbling and slightly worrying that it's 20 years since Lara graced my TV (was my TV then with the PS). She has aged better than me.

I realise the only optional upgrade CPU wise would be the i7. I suppose I was thinking of all the extra RAM and updated GPUs. My current board is 2.0 for PCI. But I do hear what you're saying. But X99 bundles are out of my price range unfortunately. Is X99 more future proof? Showing my ignorance again. The £450 I have today may not be there tomorrow and its burning a hole.

I suppose the best way to view it is, I have the 450 now, if you knew you were going to spend 450 today, given my current setup, knowing it would be at least a year before any extra spend, what would you do. I fear that holding on to the 450 is not in my specifications. I'm almost coming back to overclocking my 960, a decent cooling fan and the 980 Ti. Instant gain.

(Oh, and of course, the SSD)

 

[Cern]

X99 is more future proof, but at a cost. There's an interesting thread here about the relative merits and future of Z170 and X99 for gaming.

If I had £450 burning a hole in my pocket and your current system I wouldn't buy a 980 Ti because it's total overkill for 1080p gaming. So unless you plan to buy a 1440p or 4k monitor anytime soon, save your money. Besides where are you finding a 980 Ti for £450, cheapest on here or elsewhere is £499.

I'd likely buy a 500GB SSD (because 250GB fills up quickly), another 8GB of DDR3 (to get up to 16GB), a decent cooler (for OC'ing). Then I'd look at the benchmarks for the GTX 970 compared to dual GTX660 Ti and see if that card made any sense as an upgrade. If the 660 SLI setup is as good as a 970 at 1080p then I'd spend the money on something else I really wanted non computer because I really don't see the 980 Ti giving you anything that a 970 can't at 1080p.

 

[Twoflower]

X99 is more future proof, but at a cost. There's an interesting thread here about the relative merits and future of Z170 and X99 for gaming.

If I had £450 burning a hole in my pocket and your current system I wouldn't buy a 980 Ti because it's total overkill for 1080p gaming. So unless you plan to buy a 1440p or 4k monitor anytime soon, save your money. Besides where are you finding a 980 Ti for £450, cheapest on here or elsewhere is £499.

I'd likely buy a 500GB SSD (because 250GB fills up quickly), another 8GB of DDR3 (to get up to 16GB), a decent cooler (for OC'ing). Then I'd look at the benchmarks for the GTX 970 compared to dual GTX660 Ti and see if that card made any sense as an upgrade. If the 660 SLI setup is as good as a 970 at 1080p then I'd spend the money on something else I really wanted non computer because I really don't see the 980 Ti giving you anything that a 970 can't at 1080p.

Ok, well found a 980 Ti from Play-Asia website. With delivery is £443. However, this is something called the GALAX GTX 980 TI. I have never come across GALAX before but a GS revealed it to be the same chips etc. I will admit a small amount of trepidation here. With regard to 1080 gaming, and I admit Im using Rise of the TR for this, I have to play on medium settings with my SLI setup. Couldn't help feeling this would be improved by the 980 Ti.

The 970 as it happens is on a par with the SLI 660 Ti's. As I read the forums anyway. 970 is about as powerful as a 780 (curious) which is the same as the 660 Ti SLI. Although the 970 has some benefits technologically. But bench-marking them with FutureMark gives similar results. The 980 standard (only 4GB) still gives much better results against the SLI 660's (and the 970) so assumed (I know, I know) that the all hallowed 'TI' would be even better. Its 6GB and DX12 as opposed to 4GB and DX11 for the 980.

Basically, visually and FPS wise at more ultra settings, the single 980 Ti would really be an improvement (anything over medium on my SLI setup and its unplayable, even after tweaking the Geforce profiles to make the game use SLI better). Not to mention lower wattage and noise (considerably). Or rather I could have the same 60 fps as I have now on medium settings, but on high settings graphically.

As for memory, the board I have has 6 slots, max 4gb per slot. So I tried finding 1 more 4GB to go to 12GB to get triple channel. Difficult and the very slim possibility they wont work together. Other option is buying a new 12GB/24GB kit.

The idea of spending on non-IT related items has crossed my mind. But the child in me (who rules the roost much of the time) keeps niggling.

I seem to be going in circles here, although its been educational and fun to do so. I'll just keep mulling it over. Genuinely do thank you for all the advice though. I've never read through so many forums and opinions before. Love it.

Whatever I end up with I will certainly be posting before and after benchmarks for any would be reader.

 

[Cern]

I suspected the 970 was about the same as dual 660s. However, as you say, there's other technological benefits in the 900x range which may help you play on higher settings. Also, some games handle SLI better than others whereas a single GPU gives you a reliable setup.

Sourcing matching RAM is always a problem at a later date (why I usually try and over-spec in that department when I do a build). Likely to be easier to just buy a new 12 GB kit. Is the extra 4GB worth it? Probably not. 24GB would be overkill for gaming but nice for Photoshop, Illustrator etc if you like to work with lots of layers or very high resolution.

I hear what you're saying about the 980 Ti and DX12, it will give you a lot of future proofing and the chance to upgrade to 4k gaming perhaps. But you're stumping up a lot of money on a grey import. You're braver than me

Personally I'm never convinced that throwing one monster component into an otherwise everyday setup brings the sort of performance gains you'd expect. It just tends to expose weaknesses and bottlenecks elsewhere.

 

[Twoflower]

Just wanted to follow up this discussion on the off chance its helpful to someone...

Scraped a little more together and finally went for the GTX 980 Ti option. Managed to find a new 980 Ti for 480. It's the Gainwood Phoenix GS version. Also went for a Hyper TX3 air cooler and a 128GB SSD (which has not arrived yet).

Couldn't be happier with the results. I benched my system using 3DMark and Firestrike test monitoring temps with RealTemp. Results are:

As system was:
Low 42 41 42 40
Hi 92 91 88 88
3DMark score: 5441

After new TX3:
Low 37 37 37 35
Hi 70 70 67 68
3DMark score: 5450

After adding GTX 980 Ti:
Low 40 38 40 38
Hi 71 70 68 69
3DMark score: 11,500

After OC'd CPU from 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz
Low 49 48 48 47
Hi 77 77 73 75
3DMark score: 12,279

I can report that Lara's hair now flows luxuriously and even better, Dirt Rally is now smooth as silk on ultra settings at 1080p. Was on High before.

As for the overclock, I only bought the TX3 so didn't want to push it too far. But I haven't played with voltages yet so I should be able to push this safely up to 3.8 - 4.0 GHz. Time will tell. I'll have a play once the SSD is here.

Big thanks to all who proffered advice. Very helpful. I do think this way round was the better way. I now have a DX12 ready system. And the 980 Ti will follow me on to whatever and whenever I change up.

Cheers.