which upgrade route?

DazQ87 · 19 Sep 2013 at 10:38

I was looking for some opinions on which would be the best upgrade route for my system ahead of BF4.

At the minute my spec is as in my signature, which is a fairly well rounded and never given me any grief, but the upgrade bug has bitten and I feel the need to upgrade something.

The two thoughts I have had are either:

Sell my 7950 when the new gen of AMD cards are released and buy the top tir single GPU (or whatever the best I can get for £300 + my 7950)

The alternative is to get another 7950 for Xfire and upgrade my case to a Corsair Carbide 540 which I love the look of and would have considerably better cooling than my CM690 which feels cramped and lacking air flow. This would allow me to clock my i5 higher and run Xfire without temperature worries.

Last time I had an Xfire setup it was with 5850s and after all the issues I had with drivers and lack of Xfire support in some games I made a simi-promise to myself to avoid multi GPU setups, is it a better situation now?

My monitor is a Benq 1080p 144Hz, whilst I accept that my processor is going to hold me back from getting 144fps in BF4 anything over 60 is going to keep me happy.

thanks in advance guys.

DaleTheWhale · 19 Sep 2013 at 10:57

I'd be very surprised if your Rig won't handle BF4 on high/max settings at decent FPS. The recommended GPU was a 7870, so you're already ahead of that. The 2500k is still very capable and won't cause any bottlenecks really.

With how the prices are at the moment, I'd sell the 7950 & buy yourself 2 7970's or a single 6990, that thing will handle everything without issues.

But if it were me, I'd just keep the £300 for a rainy day.

swiftmetal · 19 Sep 2013 at 11:54

If it was me personally I would oc the 2500k to around 4.5GHz and get a gpu with atleast 3GB of vram on it because that is the recommendation for that game at the moment.

Doomedspeed · 19 Sep 2013 at 11:59

swiftmetal said:
If it was me personally I would oc the 2500k to around 4.5GHz and get a gpu with atleast 3GB of vram on it because that is the recommendation for that game at the moment.

He has a 7950 (3gb), hes fine.

, though if you look at the graphs they pulished it shows at 1080p 2GB is enough.

The 2500k @ 4.5 would be ideal.

DazQ87 · 19 Sep 2013 at 12:06

I think you guys are right, I might grab myself the corsair carbide 540 anyway because I love the look of it, and then upgrade my CPU cooler from the coolermaster hyper 212 to one of the Corsair water loops then try and get my CPU higher (it can probably easily reach more than 4.0GHz on the cooler I have now I just like to keep my temps down).

swiftmetal · 19 Sep 2013 at 12:19

that case is epic and a very good choice. As for the cooling I would personally go for one of these instead

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK Tech Labs Fathom All in One Custom Cooler 240mm £112.97
1 x XSPC EX240 120mm Radiator - Black £41.99
1 x Mayhems Ultra Pure H20 Watercooling Fluid 1L £4.99
1 x OcUK Tech Labs Fathom All in One Custom Cooler 120mm £102.97
1 x XSPC EX120 120mm Radiator - Black £31.99
1 x Mayhems Ultra Pure H20 Watercooling Fluid 1L £4.99
Total : £312.50 (includes shipping : £10.50).

The single 120mm one is proven to work better that the cosrair H100 and the 240mm one is epic and they would both fit in the case and they are customizeable features on the ocuk one like different colours of the loop plus it looks far better than any of the aio systems that you can get.