upgrading my system

Bacon? said:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-190-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=2294
I guess
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You guess! With over £400 of someone elses money......behave!

longjohn said:
so wot is the best 670 on the market for me and thanks guys for all your help
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YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (02G-P4-2670-KR) £305.99
Total : £316.79 (includes shipping : £9.00).



If you want to go nvidia then that would be the best 670 for you. I don't know how much that MSI GPU was when stulid spec'd it, i'm guessing it was close to the same price as this.

longjohn said:
im not looking for the cheapest i want the best 670
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Stulid wasn't suggesting the cheapest, he was balancing cost to performance. The MSI comes overclocked (50mhz higher than my suggestion) rather than being at stock speed. In truth I think we would agree the EVGA can be easily overclocked to match (and beat) the MSI GPU and as the EVGA is on offer and the MSI isn't......i would go with the EVGA.

longjohn said:
im just playing with the idea off upgrading my system to an i5 3570k now the question are

will i see much difference in game play compared to my 1100t?
and also if i do upgrade would i be better off with a 680?
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Now we are going around in circles. You made two BIG mistakes. One was buying the 550Ti, the second was buying another 550ti.

Yes the ivybridge i5K is better for gaming than your current CPU. However your current CPU is still more than capable for gaming. As I said before you are looking at £300 to get the i5K and replace the mobo for a decent SLI capable one.....all very well and good but those GPUs of yours will still be dragging the system down.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £199.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £189.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £105.98
Total : £507.32 (includes shipping : £9.50).



If you want to do a more serious system upgrade consider that. The Z77 mobo is xfire/sli capable, it has lucid MVP which uses the IGP of the CPU to boost the GPUs performance (its on offer too which is nice). Once you have it up and running you can look to flog off your two 550s and the AMD CPU and mobo to claw back some cash.

I understand you are planning on spending some serious cash, so of course you want to discuss the options and make sure you make the right call. I must admit if it was me (and i completely agree with Stulid here), I would just upgrade your GPU for now to the 7850 or 670 depending on your budget and look to get the best speed poss from your CPU by overclocking. Seeing as you could sell your 550s this would help make up the difference in price between the 7850 and the 670

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598?vs=549
 
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Idleman said:
I assume you have connected the sli bridge and enabled sli in the Nvidia control panel.
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yes mate when i try and enable the sli the drivers cash and it comes up with an error message

and thanks to honosuseri for your insite it gives me things to consider and my old system i would give to my son so no claim back there

i just want the best system i can get that will last me a few more years, i got some bad info last year when i built this rig and want to make sure i get it right this time
 
and i dont want to be throwing more money at if its not going to improve the game play so im thinking about starting from scratch
 
You are welcome bud, call me Hono (save your keys lol). What setup does your son have currently?

The thing is although we wouldn't suggest to anyone to buy an AMD setup now, as you have the system and it's still more than gaming capable you might as well stick with it.

I think it would be wise to try and shift those 550s and get some money back. They are complete garbage, you should have been pointed towards the nvidia 460.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/542?vs=541

Note the 460 is only clocked at stock (675mhz) in this benchmark. I have a 1GB EVGA 460 in my HTPC it came clocked at 763mhz and I have overclocked it to 900mhz (currently @850mhz as its summer time). The 460 was already ahead at stock, running at 850mhz or higher the 460 is on par with the 6870. Being nvidia I also got cuda support (useless for gaming) and HDAO occlusion lighting (AMD only does SSAO). Who ever suggested the 550ti to you should be shot.

It's interesting that you mentioned Max payne 3. If you own the game, if you head into the graphics settings and start upping the settings (especially the multisampling) it won't be long before the game warns you that you have exceeded the 1GB of VRAM on the GPU......remember how I said 2GB is quickly becoming the standard for VRAM in gaming?

Now i have started to waffle on again and you might be asking yourself why im going on about the 460 and 6870s. I'm trying to show if you use a lil bit of savvy you can get some serious bang for buck.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £199.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £83.99
Total : £295.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).



The 7850 isn't as good as the 670 but it is cheaper, still has 2GB of VRAM and they overclock very well. If you are willing to spend a lil time upping it's clock speed it will help close the lead the 670 has over it.

Why did I include a 6850? Because that GPU is on par with the 460 (no cuda or HDAO though), it also overclocks well and again would perform much like the 6870 (£120 GPU currently). As great as the 670 is I've shown you can get a significant upgrade to your machine and even get a decent budget gaming GPU that your son could use (that's why i asked what he has)......all for less than the 670.
 
my son has an old machine wont play much on it and plus i have a i7 920 chip ,motherboard and ram that i was going to give my other son

coming on to overclocking im a noob at it, was trying to read up on how to overclock my cpu i know you can use asus ai but i read best not to, but i know were in the wrong part of the forum but would know were to start as in overclocking a gpu
 
longjohn said:
my son has an old machine wont play much on it and plus i have a i7 920 chip ,motherboard and ram that i was going to give my other son

coming on to overclocking im a noob at it, was trying to read up on how to overclock my cpu i know you can use asus ai but i read best not to, but i know were in the wrong part of the forum but would know were to start as in overclocking a gpu
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You have a good mobo which has USB3 and sata3 and will certainly have plenty of options to tune your overclocks. If you have £300 going spare, I would consider a 7850 and a 120GB sataIII SSD.

Overclocking has become much more "mainstream". Your CPU is branded as a Black edition to show that it is multiplier unlocked. This is basically a sticker saying overclock me!

You have a pretty good heatsink (is the radiator between two fans? push/pull?) so you can certainly run higher than stock speeds safely. There is some software that you will need (prime95, intel burntest, Hardware monitor etc) so you can test and make sure the overclock is stable and not "cooking" the CPU.

The easiest method is to head into the BIOS. I would bet the mobo will have an auto OC option. It won't be your max overclock but will be an improvement none the less for the mere press of a button.

Second easiest method is to adjust the multiplier up in the BIOS gradually till you find the cpus limit. You will hear talk of upping voltages but remember you don't have to over complicate things to get a decent bump in performance.

If you start a new thread in the overclocking sub-section it will attract people with AMD OC'ing experience to help you through. As you grow more confident you can ask about the safe voltages for the CPU and start to take things more seriously if you wish :)
 
honosuseri said:
You have a good mobo which has USB3 and sata3 and will certainly have plenty of options to tune your overclocks. If you have £300 going spare, I would consider a 7850 and a 120GB sataIII SSD
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i have more than that spare so could i go better the the 7850 and wot ssd to u recommend



[/QUOTE]You have a pretty good heatsink (is the radiator between two fans? push/pull?) so you can certainly run higher than stock speeds safely.[/QUOTE]

yes i have but i only have stock fans, but am looking to get better ones but not sure wot to get yet, i have a cougar vortex that i was going to use elsewhere and i was told they where good is that true and if i get another will that do


[/QUOTE]There is some software that you will need (prime95, intel burntest, Hardware monitor etc) so you can test and make sure the overclock is stable and not "cooking" the CPU.[/QUOTE]

do i need all those programs

and thanks again
 
longjohn said:
i have more than that spare so could i go better the the 7850 and wot ssd to u recommend

do i need all those programs
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YOUR BASKET
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £89.99
1 x Sandisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £84.98
Total : £174.97 (includes shipping : FREE).



Couple of good ones on offer this week. 120GB is a good minimum size for the OS and a few games alongside any other software you generally use.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lR0XoHFU6Y

An old video but you get the picture ;)

If you like the 670 (i deliberately give those links so you can compare performance to price) then by all means go for it bud. The CUDA support can help with video encoding as you don't have intel quick sync. Nvidia gives HDAO lighting as an option, I use it and i prefer it's look to SSAO.

In regards to the software, yes prime95 and intel burntest are pretty much mandatory to test the CPU is stable. You need to keep an eye on your temps (60 deg C is max for your CPU i think), you might well have a software suite that came with the mobo that does this already.

I'd advise you download intel burntest, prime95, Hardware (HW)monitor, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, MSI afterburner. That's the kit you need to OC the CPU and GPU.
 
longjohn said:
and sorry but what is the equivalent gpu from amd
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http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598?vs=550

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whinmsVj2zM

7950 is the 670s rival i suppose or the 7970 which is a lil dearer than the 7950. They do use more power than the nvidia card although the AMD cards have more VRAM. This will largely be because AMD was pushing eyefinity. Which is gaming over 3 screens or essentially running a massive resolution so the extra VRAM is handy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZmaMt0WwtQ

That's the 7970 over 3 screens in BF3, the 670 can do this too.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=56&subid=938&sortby=priceAsc

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-007-VX&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938
 
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