Upgrade Time?

cainey · 21 Jan 2019 at 12:37

Hi folks, yep it's another "should I upgrade?" post. I've had the same motherboard, RAM and CPU for about 7 years now and I'm beginning to see some performance issues. Nothing major but enough for me to feel like throwing some cash at it.

Current spec is
i7 3770K@ 4.00GHz
Asus Maximus V Extreme Z77
Corsair H100
16GB Corsair Vengence Black DDR3
Gigabyte GTX 1080
Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU

I'd appreciate any advice and opinions, cheers.

orbitalwalsh · 21 Jan 2019 at 13:14

cainey said:
Hi folks, yep it's another "should I upgrade?" post. I've had the same motherboard, RAM and CPU for about 7 years now and I'm beginning to see some performance issues. Nothing major but enough for me to feel like throwing some cash at it.

Current spec is
i7 3770K@ 4.00GHz
Asus Maximus V Extreme Z77
Corsair H100
16GB Corsair Vengence Black DDR3
Gigabyte GTX 1080
Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU

I'd appreciate any advice and opinions, cheers.

seen your rocking ultra wide 1440p - in theory your i7 can clock higher , and shouldn't hinter most games out their bar the most recent AAA titles which do like extra core counts .

gtx 1080 may struggle to push high frames , personally feel its a great GPU for standard 1440p 60/144hz screens but ultra wide 1440p normally quote 1080ti were I could .

able to wait till computex ? June time. ryzen 3*** will be out/shown. As your either going to go 8 core ryzen ( see little point in 6 core if you've got i7 4 core that can clock higher with better IPC) or 8 core intel

cainey · 21 Jan 2019 at 16:50

orbitalwalsh said:
seen your rocking ultra wide 1440p - in theory your i7 can clock higher , and shouldn't hinter most games out their bar the most recent AAA titles which do like extra core counts .

gtx 1080 may struggle to push high frames , personally feel its a great GPU for standard 1440p 60/144hz screens but ultra wide 1440p normally quote 1080ti were I could .

able to wait till computex ? June time. ryzen 3*** will be out/shown. As your either going to go 8 core ryzen ( see little point in 6 core if you've got i7 4 core that can clock higher with better IPC) or 8 core intel

Thanks for the reply, Orbital. I'll see what extra I can squeeze out of my i7 and you're right about the 1080 as it does struggle a little at that resolution. I may look towards a 2080 at some point what with the 1080ti prices being what they are now. I can wait another 6 months I guess but I'll probably go for an 8 core intel cpu. Choices choices.

orbitalwalsh · 21 Jan 2019 at 17:17

Catch 22

Vexr · 22 Jan 2019 at 04:11

Looks like an extremely respectable spec PC. Have you tried overclocking the GTX 1080? You have Gysnc on your monitor, so can't imagine frame rates being that intolerable (hell I just upgraded to a 1070 Ti for 3440x1440, a monitor without gsync but a max refresh of 60 hz, which the GPU achieves)

It's a rough time to upgrade, what with Ryzen 3 due to smash the CPU market and the RTX series setting up this generation of graphics cards as relatively low performance gains for maximum cost. Their main selling point (ray tracing) is irrelevant at 3440x1440, as may well be DLSS.

I'd try to figure out if your issues are due to a CPU or GPU bottleneck (I'm not at all familiar with Intel, but the mention of DDR3 is always a cause for concern). A CPU bottleneck can really undermine a decent graphics card in some games/moments in games.

cainey · 22 Jan 2019 at 14:53

Vexr said:
Looks like an extremely respectable spec PC. Have you tried overclocking the GTX 1080? You have Gysnc on your monitor, so can't imagine frame rates being that intolerable (hell I just upgraded to a 1070 Ti for 3440x1440, a monitor without gsync but a max refresh of 60 hz, which the GPU achieves)

It's a rough time to upgrade, what with Ryzen 3 due to smash the CPU market and the RTX series setting up this generation of graphics cards as relatively low performance gains for maximum cost. Their main selling point (ray tracing) is irrelevant at 3440x1440, as may well be DLSS.

I'd try to figure out if your issues are due to a CPU or GPU bottleneck (I'm not at all familiar with Intel, but the mention of DDR3 is always a cause for concern). A CPU bottleneck can really undermine a decent graphics card in some games/moments in games.

Frame rates are rarely intolerable unless I push the settings on AAA games way too high. To be honest I'm looking to upgrade as something to do rather than something that needs doing really. You might be right about the bottlenecking a friend who also likes to build his own PCs suspected the same when he saw my spec.
What's the buzz about Ryzen 3? Is it rumoured to be a decent leap forward?
Out of interest why is ray tracing irrelevant at 3440x1440?

tamzzy · 22 Jan 2019 at 16:19

just wait tbh. your rig is decent enough.
you have a MVE mobo - barring an absolute bull excrement of a chip, your 3770k should do 4.5ghz easy without resorting to a full custom loop or exotic cooling.

ryzen 2 (aka ryzen 3xxx series) appear to be a decent leap in performance - from the ryzen 2xxx series
apparently the 8 core parts should go toe-to-toe with the intel 8 core equivalent, whilst being much cheaper. we shall see. coming out in Q2 of this year.

personally i'm running a 3770k @ 4.5ghz with a 1080ti. i've not seen the need to upgrade yet. though ryzen 3xxx appears tempting and i may go for that if the rumours turn out to be (mostly) correct.

Vexr · 26 Jan 2019 at 02:27

cainey said:
Frame rates are rarely intolerable unless I push the settings on AAA games way too high. To be honest I'm looking to upgrade as something to do rather than something that needs doing really. You might be right about the bottlenecking a friend who also likes to build his own PCs suspected the same when he saw my spec.
What's the buzz about Ryzen 3? Is it rumoured to be a decent leap forward?
Out of interest why is ray tracing irrelevant at 3440x1440?

None of the RTX cards are going to be able to do ray tracing at 3440x1440 at decent settings with 60fps+ frame rates. Maybe 2080 Tis in SLI, but otherwise it's redundant for that resolution. There's also a big question mark regarding DLSS, with what few circumstances its appeared in only supporting specific 16:9 resolutions. With 21:9 resolutions like 3440x1440 still being far from mainstream yet, it's very questionable DLSS will ever be compatible with ultrawide in any game..ever...

Ryzen 2 is likely to excel at everything the Intel CPUs do but better, and with superior 'width' - going hugely more multicore-multithreaded, and cheaper, and for less power consumption.