Upgrade me

Orch · 9 Sep 2013 at 19:20

So, have a few birthday quid coming my way, was going to be spent on tools for the landy but as I've been gaming more lately I'm now pondering an upgrade.

I'm quite a fan of my 7850 and would consider crossfire at some point so need to bare that in mind when choosing mobo.

So what mobo and CPU could I get for £200? FPS are my favourite and BF4 will likely be the most played game.

teppic · 9 Sep 2013 at 19:26

Slightly over, but guaranteed for excellent BF4 performance:

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
Total : £221.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).

Orch · 9 Sep 2013 at 20:10

8320 was exactly what I was thinking. Great bang for buck.

Is that mobo gunna be good for overclocking and crossfire? I have no odes when it comes to northbridge/southbridge/pcie etc.

teppic · 9 Sep 2013 at 20:14

Yes, it's the cheapest one that's good for overclocking (up to 4.7-4.8GHz with good cooling). With Crossfire it will run one of the cards at 4x, to get 16x16x you'd need something like the Asus 990FX Pro R2.0, or the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3.

The Gigabyte UD3 isn't as good for overclocking, unless you get rev. 4 (which is a lottery). For boards over £100, the Sabertooth is great, but it's a hefty £130+.

Orch · 9 Sep 2013 at 20:53

Excellent, thanks mate

teppic · 9 Sep 2013 at 21:03

No problem. If you want 16x16x, the Asus 990FX boards are good - all will run the 9xxx CPUs (up to 5GHz stable), so they overclock very well. Hopefully Steamroller will come next year, which would give a good upgrade option.

Orch · 9 Sep 2013 at 21:57

What effect does the 16x vs 4x thing have? I haven't a clue how pcie works.

Also has steamroller confirmed to be on AM3+ socket?

teppic · 9 Sep 2013 at 22:01

AMD said when Piledriver came out there would definitely be another CPU after Piledriver on AM3+ - since then we've heard absolutely nothing. No confirmation yet of any details of Steamroller 8 core parts for any platform as yet.

Running at 16x4x will reduce the total possible performance of two cards in CF. I don't know precisely how much - but if you run 2x7850s I don't think it'd make a lot of difference (with 2x7970s it would make some).

Orch · 9 Sep 2013 at 22:25

Ok cool. I think I'll gamble on it anyway as I hopefully won't need to upgrade for quite a while, in which case it will probably be steamrollers successor and a different socket anyway.

Thanks again.

teppic · 9 Sep 2013 at 22:31

Which board will you go for?

Orch · 9 Sep 2013 at 22:39

Not sure mate, will see how the pennies stack up. Probably the Asus 970 in the basket, but I am tempted by the M5A99X PRO R2.0 990X

teppic · 9 Sep 2013 at 22:59

Either's good

If you think you'll probably run CF then the 990FX is worth the extra spend to me just to know it'll be at 16x16. ocuk runs frequent offers - the 8320 was £114 last week, and you can shop around of course.