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"I Need a New PC!" 2014 Part 1. 1080p and 60FPS is so last-gen and your 2500K is fine

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T

Tablo

Member
Na I considered those gains and I'm still mulling over if I want to over clock on my next build. Unless I can set it up to dynamically scale while gaming it seems like it wouldn't be worth the extra heat/fan activity. This being important since it might be in a dorm, and in a small mini itx enclosure. Definitely still pros and cons to weigh depending on your needs that extend beyond sheer performance.
 
N

neurosisxeno

Member
tehbible said:
I guess I'm the minority in that in my 15 years of overclocking CPUs, I never took advantage of the extra performance gains. I always just lamented the extra heat dissipation + noise + behemoth custom coolers and additional wattage required for OC.
Click to expand...

<------ Has an i5-2500K and H60, hasn't overclocked once.
 
J

justsomeguy

Member
Anyone else still rocking an i7 920? I only play at 1680x1050 onna r9 270 but dayum that's a beast of a cpu, has served me well all these years.
 
D

Darkone

Member
Hey all,

I am thinking of upgrading my 3 year old PC but i don`t know if i really need to, this is my current spec:

Mobo: Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3Ghz
Memory: Corsair GDDR3 8GB
GPU: Gigiabyte - GTX670 2GB memory - GV-N670OC-2GD

I am mostly gaming at 1080p max settings.

Thanks
 
N

neurosisxeno

Member
Darkone said:
Hey all,

I am thinking of upgrading my 3 year old PC but i don`t know if i really need to, this is my current spec:

Mobo: Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3Ghz
Memory: Corsair GDDR3 8GB
GPU: Gigiabyte - GTX670 2GB memory - GV-N670OC-2GD

I am mostly gaming at 1080p max settings.

Thanks
Click to expand...

That should still run everything fine, if not either consider a new CPU (Ivy Bridge Xeon if you don't feel like gong for Haswell) or maybe a new GPU (GTX 770's are a good value at $330). You won't see a single purchase yield a massive increase in performance without spending a lot of money.
 
M

McBryBry

Member
As stupid as it sounds....it makes me sad that the ASUS motherboard I'm getting is black/red. I really wanted to have a white case with blue everywhere. Oh well, I'll survive for the best.
 
G

Ganzor

Member
justsomeguy said:
Anyone else still rocking an i7 920? I only play at 1680x1050 onna r9 270 but dayum that's a beast of a cpu, has served me well all these years.
Click to expand...

Still Got a Core i7 920 D0 clocked at 4ghz :) paired with a R9 290, that CPU is still serving me well! will wait for Skylake untill i upgrade.
 
X

x3sphere

Member
tehbible said:
I guess I'm the minority in that in my 15 years of overclocking CPUs, I never took advantage of the extra performance gains. I always just lamented the extra heat dissipation + noise + behemoth custom coolers and additional wattage required for OC.
Click to expand...


Just to make a case for overclocking here, the i7 920 is going on what... five years old now? It will bottleneck newer graphics cards at stock speeds, but clocked to 4 GHz and it's more than enough.

Now I don't know if the i7 4770k will see the same kind of longevity through overclocking, but if it does, it will have been money well spent to me.

Power usage, personally don't see it as a a huge issue for a gaming rig. If you are leaving your computer on 24/7 then I can see that as a factor. Noise, for me, has never been a factor with overclocking CPUs either - usually the graphics card is always louder anyway so you don't really hear it.
 
D

Darkone

Member
neurosisxeno said:
That should still run everything fine, if not either consider a new CPU (Ivy Bridge Xeon if you don't feel like gong for Haswell) or maybe a new GPU (GTX 770's are a good value at $330). You won't see a single purchase yield a massive increase in performance without spending a lot of money.
Click to expand...

Will i need to change the Mobo for the CPU upgrade?
Regarding GPU, i prefer waiting for next gen series.
 
J

justsomeguy

Member
x3sphere said:
Just to make a case for overclocking here, the i7 920 is going on what... five years old now? It will bottleneck newer graphics cards at stock speeds, but clocked to 4 GHz and it's more than enough.

Now I don't know if the i7 4770k will see the same kind of longevity through overclocking, but if it does, it will have been money well spent to me.

Power usage, personally don't see it as a a huge issue for a gaming rig. If you are leaving your computer on 24/7 then I can see that as a factor. Noise, for me, has never been a factor with overclocking CPUs either - usually the graphics card is always louder anyway so you don't really hear it.
Click to expand...
Indeed. According to my basic testing (leaving process monitor and catalyst gpu monitor open on my second screen) I wasn't bottlenecking on cpu on the Witcher 2 even at stock on the 920, i was fully gpu bound. Higher res / better gpu may obviously change that. Think I've had my 920 up above 4 before, but lost the settings and cant be bothered to loook them up since it's a non issue at the moment

edit: replied to wrong post but comment is still valid!
 
K

kharma45

Member
tehbible said:
I wouldn't even spend the extra on K series CPU since you get what, like an extra 10% in terms of performance, which could/could not translate to increase in most GPU-dependent games.

Plus, not to mention the extra wattage required when overclocked, thereby consuming more power, thereby paying more in energy costs. Most overclockers disable EIST as well..
Click to expand...

Closer to 25% boost in CPU bound tasks. Plus if you play any sort of multiplayer you'll be relying on the CPU a lot. Games like Titanfall and others built on Source, BF4 etc. all benefit from a good overclock.

The extra wattage with Intel isn't exactly huge in the grand scheme of things. If you weren't gaming then sure the Xeon is a good CPU that gives you plenty of threads for not too much money but in most gaming scenarios the 4670K will be the better option. As for your point about noise, there isn't an extra when you overclock. My PC is as quiet as stock as it is now OC'd, nor do you need a bulky air cooler. An H60 will suffice.

Last point about the savings on a Gold rated PSU. Again, they're not significant. You do get much better internals though and a quieter unit.
 
D

Durante

Member
justsomeguy said:
Anyone else still rocking an i7 920? I only play at 1680x1050 onna r9 270 but dayum that's a beast of a cpu, has served me well all these years.
Click to expand...
Here! Has served me well for a much longer time than any previous CPU. I do plan on upgrading to Haswell-E later this year. If the trend holds I'll probably never buy another CPU again so I'm willing to spend on that :p
 
H

H4r4kiri

Member
SO i finally ordered my Moms Home / Work desktop. I got her this in it:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus B85M-G Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (&#8364;69.49 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (&#8364;36.57 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (&#8364;102.65 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (&#8364;49.55 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (&#8364;47.02 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (&#8364;13.49 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (&#8364;20.00)
Total: &#8364;338.77
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-09 14:07 CET+0100)

How do you like it ?

In several weeks i am also going to buy mine, which contains this hardware:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (&#8364;189.89 @ Amazon Deutschland)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (&#8364;33.40 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87-D3HP ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (&#8364;106.90 @ Pixmania DE)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (&#8364;67.98 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (&#8364;71.99 @ Pixmania DE)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (&#8364;47.55 @ Pixmania DE)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card (&#8364;226.15 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: NZXT Source 210 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (&#8364;49.90 @ Caseking)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (&#8364;56.93 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (&#8364;20.00)
Total: &#8364;870.69
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-09 14:08 CET+0100)

How do you like this ?

Thanks to LordAlu for helping me out with this :)
 
crazepharmacist

crazepharmacist

Member
How much extra electricity are we talking about here when overclocking CPU's? I've got my I7920@4ghz at 1.3 volts. That's about .05 or so extra volts over stock. Should I enable any power saving settings in bios? Things like Intel Speedstep?
 
K

kennah

Member
neurosisxeno said:
That should still run everything fine, if not either consider a new CPU (Ivy Bridge Xeon if you don't feel like gong for Haswell) or maybe a new GPU (GTX 770's are a good value at $330). You won't see a single purchase yield a massive increase in performance without spending a lot of money.
Click to expand...

Darkone said:
Will i need to change the Mobo for the CPU upgrade?
Regarding GPU, i prefer waiting for next gen series.
Click to expand...
Don't buy a new cpu. Overclock your existing one. And a 770 would not be a huge improvement over your 670 for the money (the 770 is basically a 680) the only significant upgrade you could do is another 670 or a 780. Everything else would be a small increase.
 
R

Ryoohki360

Neo Member
InsertCredit said:
Hey guys! I'm looking at the upcoming WQHD displays. (either dell or lg) https://www.lge.co.kr/lgekr/product....laf?catid=2400&prdid=EPRD.270582&pcatid=2400

Do you think a 3GB 780TI has enough memory to satisfy that res playing modern games? It'd be nice if I could avoid shelling out for a titan..
Click to expand...

If it's 2560x1440, i own a 780 OC (+ extreme amount of OC) the must memory i've seen it use is 2.1gig so far and it's BF4, with SCALING at 125% (ultra setting maxed out)

You have to remember, next gen console can barely hit 1080p, 1080p generally use 1.2-1.6gigs of ram with 2-4xMSAA so..this is still not a limiting factor of PC.(example Xbox One can only access 6gig, move 1.5gig for framebuffer they have 4-4.5gig available for the actual game. A gaming PC will have 8gig (-2 for the OS) + 2-3gig of video memory. That's why i won't be a problems for many years, unless you run 4K with 4XMSAA than you'll need more than 3gigs..
 
I

InsertCredit

Member
Ryoohki360 said:
If it's 2560x1440, i own a 780 OC (+ extreme amount of OC) the must memory i've seen it use is 2.1gig so far and it's BF4, with SCALING at 125% (ultra setting maxed out)
Click to expand...

Thanks. They're quite a bit higher (3440x1440) so I'm a bit worried. I'm guessing a 770 is out of the question?

Stubo said:
3440x1440

I'd think to run games well on that res you'd be looking at SLI 780/780Ti over a single Titan.
Click to expand...

Hmm. I'd rather skip out on fancy AA than running SLI if that'd help.
 
S

Stubo

Member
InsertCredit said:
Thanks. They're quite a bit higher (3440x1440) so I'm a bit worried. I'm guessing a 770 is out of the question?



Hmm. I'd rather skip out on fancy AA than running SLI if that'd help.
Click to expand...
If you're against SLI then maybe it would be worth waiting for the new cards to come out. I know that there's always a 'new stuff will be better' argument, but maybe in this case it would be the best idea for dealing with that sheer pixel count.

Not that we really have any idea what the 880 will be capable of, but it's safe to assume it will have better performance than a 780Ti and we can hope for 4gb+ of VRAM too!
 
R

Ryoohki360

Neo Member
InsertCredit said:
Thanks. They're quite a bit higher (3440x1440) so I'm a bit worried. I'm guessing a 770 is out of the question?



Hmm. I'd rather skip out on fancy AA than running SLI if that'd help.
Click to expand...

Eitheir get a 780 OC (something like the Gigabyte OC rev2.0) and OC it or, get the TI and OC it, you should have no problem running must game at a high setting with a little AA

i'am pushing 5,76M pixel in BF4 MP (with the overscaling) at 60+FPS. a TI with some overclock would be even faster.. (your resolution is 4.95M pixels). Check for 780 TI or 780OC gameplay at 4K on youtube you should get an idea of the FPS with 8.29M pixel on screen. you'll be pretty much suprised (off course no 60FPS in most game, but very very playable..) If they guy is doing 45FPS in 4K, you're gonna get 60-70FPS with same setting at you're resolution so..
 
I

InsertCredit

Member
Stubo said:
If you're against SLI then maybe it would be worth waiting for the new cards to come out. I know that there's always a 'new stuff will be better' argument, but maybe in this case it would be the best idea for dealing with that sheer pixel count.

Not that we really have any idea what the 880 will be capable of, but it's safe to assume it will have better performance than a 780Ti and we can hope for 4gb+ of VRAM too!
Click to expand...

True true. That might match well with the Haswell-E release date since I'm looking at building a fresh system anyways.

Still.. It's gonna be a rough time waiting ;)

Ryoohki360 said:
Eitheir get a 780 OC (something like the Gigabyte OC rev2.0) and OC it or, get the TI and OC it, you should have no problem running must game at a high setting with a little AA

i'am pushing 5,76M pixel in BF4 MP (with the overscaling) at 60+FPS. a TI with some overclock would be even faster.. (your resolution is 4.95M pixels). Check for 780 TI or 780OC gameplay at 4K on youtube you should get an idea of the FPS with 8.29M pixel on screen. you'll be pretty much suprised (off course no 60FPS in most game, but very very playable..) If they guy is doing 45FPS in 4K, you're gonna get 60-70FPS with same setting at you're resolution so..
Click to expand...

Thanks again! I'll do some research.
 
2

2San

Member
Urgh I think my gpu is dying. Got yellow/greenish grain all over my screen even in the bios screen. I cleaned my PC from dust and it went away, but I am afraid now. :<

Nvidia usually releases there next set of gpu's around May or June right?
 
R

Robert7lee

Neo Member
I finally had the new motherboard gigabyte z87 and intel i7 4770k 3.5 ghz

mkenyon said:
It will. Just make sure to overclock it to around 4.2-4.4. It's easy as pie.

.
Click to expand...

Is it possible to over clock the CPU to those speeds with a stock cooler?

Hopefully I'll be able to test out the stock speed later today.
 
R

Ra1den

Member
I am experiencing the most bizarre PC problem of my life. After doing a fresh install of Windows 7 on my new rig I just built, I notice that maximizing windows and dragging the "highlight box" around the desktop are all sluggish, like molasses. Not extreme, but very noticeable.

Now here is the weird part. If I open up a freaking Google Chrome window, everything starts going butter smooth! Even if Chrome is minimized this is still the case.

To be clear, I am talking about things that have nothing to do with Chrome, running faster just because Chrome is open!

Why on earth would having a Chrome window open SPEED UP my PC?

I am attaching a pic of my task manager with Chrome open and without Chrome open. I don't see anything out o the ordinary in either case.

Also, I tried uninstalling Chrome and seeing what happened, and again everything moved like molasses. Reinstalled Chrome and opened up a Chrome window, and boom, everything going butter smooth. W...T...F...

With Chrome open:

FjRTmgG.png



Without Chrome open:

rMYMLX2.png





I've got an i7 4770 on an MSI Z87-G45 gaming mobo with 16 GB of Corsair vengeance and a Samsung SSD and a VisionTek eye 6 Radeon 7750 video card. Though the specs probably dont matter in this case...the real mystery is why Chrome would make things run better.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
tehbible said:
- I picked the E3 1230 V3 because it's essentially the same as the i7. Just not overclockable. For gaming, overclocking doesn't give much of a performance boost as most games are GPU-dependent. This E3 1230 V3 is great for enterprise level applications like Photoshop, etc.
Click to expand...
tehbible said:
I wouldn't even spend the extra on K series CPU since you get what, like an extra 10% in terms of performance, which could/could not translate to increase in most GPU-dependent games.

Plus, not to mention the extra wattage required when overclocked, thereby consuming more power, thereby paying more in energy costs. Most overclockers disable EIST as well..
Click to expand...
Most overclockers don't disable EIST. Heck, a lot of overclockers even use offset as opposed to a specific voltage. I would say those who disable EIST are probably a minority.

Here's some data from a number of benchmarks I ran a year back:

aMHj6.png


All settings at 1080p/max for these games.

PCaGI.png

Jz7Ey.png
Click to expand...

30% boost in performance in Tribes: Ascend. Generally going to have the same results there as any UE3 game. Number of frames over 11.1ms were cut in half. That's huge.

b3TgS.png

HA9P6.png

(swap the left hand data
Click to expand...
)

Nearly 30% boost in CS:GO. Frames over 11.1ms were nearly eliminated.

AbxKn.png

lh4FY.png

ClGmj.png
Click to expand...

Same in Dota 2. Frames over 11.1ms were nearly cut in half again. Frames over 16.7ms were nearly eliminated.

na0lR.png

(excuse the FPS #'s, I can't seem to find the right chart for my data on FC3)
zouDi.png
Click to expand...

You're generally going to see that kind of boost in performance in MP games, MMOs, UE3, Source, Blizzard games, and a host of others. MP games in specific are going to have huge reduction in huge frame latency, as the higher IPC really benefits to the CPU-heavy nature of MP games.

So, overclocking is indeed very beneficial for games. There certainly are a number, such as Crysis 2, or BF3/BF4 singleplayer, where it doesn't matter as much. But CPU heavy games still exist and will continue to do so, especially because MP games will continue to be CPU heavy for a long while. Translating game state combined with physics is very demanding on processors.
Robert7lee said:
I finally had the new motherboard gigabyte z87 and intel i7 4770k 3.5 ghz

Is it possible to over clock the CPU to those speeds with a stock cooler?

Hopefully I'll be able to test out the stock speed later today.
Click to expand...
No, you definitely need an aftermarket cooler. You could probably overclock it to 3.8-4.0 on the stock cooler though. Shouldn't even have to increase voltage.
 
T

Tablo

Member
justsomeguy said:
Anyone else still rocking an i7 920? I only play at 1680x1050 onna r9 270 but dayum that's a beast of a cpu, has served me well all these years.
Click to expand...

i7 980X here, still serving well and I would keep it until Skylake but my build is old and way too noisy/big/power hungry and I'm going to need to massively downscale by year's end.
Mainstream Intel platform here I come!
 
T

Tablo

Member
jiggsaw said:
As far as speed and timing, ram is ram right?
Click to expand...

Not quite, there are gains to be had by having faster RAM. Going for an APU? Faster RAM equals huge gains.
If you're doing a standard Intel build try to get 1866/cas9.
Minimum you want otherwise is 1600/cas9.
 
B

Blak_Status

Member
Tablo said:
Not quite, there are gains to be had by having faster RAM. Going for an APU? Faster RAM equals huge gains.
If you're doing a standard Intel build try to get 1866/cas9.
Minimum you want otherwise is 1600/cas9.
Click to expand...

That's not what I meant. What I mean is if I'm going after 1600/cas9, does the brand matter?
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
-COOLIO- said:
*sigh of relief*. I managed to not break anything
vital
:



I snapped one of the pincer things off in a tool-less drive bay and didnt fully power my gpu on the first boot but everything else was fine.

im glad that the refurbed gtx 780 wasn't dead on arrival. TAKE THAT SYSTEM.

specs for any interested:

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/COOLIO5676/saved/3Vdm

*win 8 was free through dreamspark at my uni
*ssd was bought last year
Click to expand...
Gorgeous, glad you are liking the case!

Please do post some gaming impressions when you have some time.
 
T

The Shadow

Member
Dumb question maybe but are there any new "milestone" GPUs or CPUs or anything else in the near future that'll be worth waiting for?

As old as my old Desktop is, my laptop has a pretty decent (albeit also old) DX 10/11 discrete video card and I've been able to play new-ish games on my TV at 720p which looks surprisingly good. It hit me that I could comfortably wait a little longer before I upgrade.

The one game that seems to obliterate my laptop is Assassin's Creed Black Flag. I have to turn quite a bit off to get it at a playable framerate. However, given my tremendous backlog (I'm currently playing Saint's Row IV), I'm not really in any hurry to play it.
 
J

JLeack

Banned
The Shadow said:
Dumb question maybe but are there any new "milestone" GPUs or CPUs or anything else in the near future that'll be worth waiting for?

As old as my old Desktop is, my laptop has a pretty decent (albeit also old) DX 10/11 discrete video card and I've been able to play new-ish games on my TV at 720p which looks surprisingly good. It hit me that I could comfortably wait a little longer before I upgrade.

The one game that seems to obliterate my laptop is Assassin's Creed Black Flag. I have to turn quite a bit off to get it at a playable framerate. However, given my tremendous backlog (I'm currently playing Saint's Row IV), I'm not really in any hurry to play it.
Click to expand...

The market has shifted a lot of R&D toward mobile. There's nothing HUGE that's come out in a few years. However, all of Intel's quad-core offerings are ridiculously good.
 
T

TC McQueen

Member
The Shadow said:
Dumb question maybe but are there any new "milestone" GPUs or CPUs or anything else in the near future that'll be worth waiting for?

As old as my old Desktop is, my laptop has a pretty decent (albeit also old) DX 10/11 discrete video card and I've been able to play new-ish games on my TV at 720p which looks surprisingly good. It hit me that I could comfortably wait a little longer before I upgrade.

The one game that seems to obliterate my laptop is Assassin's Creed Black Flag. I have to turn quite a bit off to get it at a playable framerate. However, given my tremendous backlog (I'm currently playing Saint's Row IV), I'm not really in any hurry to play it.
Click to expand...
Maybe the GTX8## series of GPUs, assuming they're 20nm chips instead of 28nm ones with the Maxwell architecture.
 
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