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Upgrade I7 970??

Ticonderoga

Ticonderoga

Ticonderoga

Associate
Joined
6 Aug 2011
Posts
156
Hi Guys

I am currently rocking this system :
I7 970 stock
Asus Rampage III Extreme
12 Gb Corsair Vengeance
Evga G2 750 w psu
2 x SSD + 1 HDD
XFX R9 280X DD Edition

I am planing on upgrading my graphicscard when the Price drops for the R9 Nano take effect. But the question is if my I7 970 will bottleneck an R9 Nano Card??
The mobo is the old x58 chipset so I don't have pci Express 3.0.
I game at 1080p and play all sorts of different games from bf 3 to dota 2

What do you guy think?
Cheers
 
Ticonderoga said:
The mobo is the old x58 chipset so I don't have pci Express 3.0.
Click to expand...


The performance impact of PCI2.0 vs PCI3.0 is on average only 1% - I wouldn't worry about it bottlenecking anything.

The I7 970 @ stock may be more of any issue, although overclocking it to 3.8Ghz or above would help remove that.
 
It can run at 4 ghz. It has done so in the past.
But will that be enough for the r9 Nano?

Otherwise I would upgrade to Skylake, but that would mean new mobo and new memory as well :-(
 
your cpu is getting to the end of its life now. its still ok to use but you would want to be looking for a new set up within the next few months.

at 4+Ghz your 6 core will not be a problem with you R9 nano.
 
P4Clock said:
run a benchmark, then over clock you gpu and re run the bench. if the score is the same its been held back

my old 5650 at 4.5 didnt hold back CF 290x's that was about 6 months ago
Click to expand...

Noticed you have a 6600k now, have you noticed any difference over the 5650? I have on clocked at 3.7 and thinking of the same upgrade!
 
AiiR said:
Noticed you have a 6600k now, have you noticed any difference over the 5650? I have on clocked at 3.7 and thinking of the same upgrade!
Click to expand...

not really, it feels snappy and loads a little faster but i would still be happy with the 5650 if i had it. both run the games i play maxed out. my 5650 was at 4.5Ghz
6600k is a hall of a lot better cpu and on paper kills the 5650 but its down to what you use your cpu for i play game and look at boobs lol i could get away with an i3.
 
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I have a similar-era i7 920 - just buying the last parts (motherboard & PSU) to put together a new build around a new i7 6700 with DDR4 etc.

I feel like I've gotten plenty of value out of the 920 and it's now finally time to upgrade. That said, I also didn't feel my CPU was hobbling anything... it almost seems like everything is now "fast enough" as long as the GPU is up to it (but also conscious DX12 might change this).
 
One last question.. what kind of performance loss is there from pci 2.0 x16 - x8?
I have a fairly compact case and when I first put this system together I had an old corsair H80i that I installed. The problem is that the radiator Blocks the use of my first pci Express x 16 port.
Is it worth buying a high end air cooler instead to unblock the slot so the R9 Nano can run at x16 speed instead?
 
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