So i recently sold my dual 6950 and got a gtx 680. I managed to get some more money in my hands and i was wondering if you were me and had the money to get a second gtx 680 or an i7 3770k + asus z77 deluxe board what would you do. I mostly play cpu intensive games like mmorpgs, civilization, or skyrim with over 30+ mods mostly for imrproved graphics. I do still play the latest fps and which are gpu intensive. I like to keep a lot of the eye candy effects except motion blur. So would you in my position get a second gtx 680 for sli or an i7 3770k + asus z77 deluxe board or wait My current rig updated four days ago: I7 920 @ 4 ghz c0 stepping almost 3 1/2 years ago Asus p6t v2 deluxe which has no sata6 for faster ssds Evga Gtx 680 Cooler nmaster silent pro 1000w 12 gb 1600 mhz ram 1920 x 1080p x 2 Minimum preferred frame rates for skyrim 45 fps with hd textures + many mods Prefer not to get a 2011 board i find six cores not worth the almost double in price from an i7 3770k. Thanks for any and all opinions.
No point upgrading CPU Benifit will be small Sli 680s on the other hand offer near enough 100% scaling in certain games at the minute
Go for the 3770K with a decent board and Corsair H100 and overclock the cpu to around 4.5ghz. Sell your current baord, chip, ram and cooler and then add that money toward's a 2nd GTX 680 as you will probably get around £250 to £300 potentially for you current board, chip, ram and cooler. That's what I would do.
What resolution do you play at? Edit- spotted in your list, second 680, dual 1080p monitors is a lot of pixels and you sound like a graphics whore , GPU will ultimately hold you back, a 4Ghz i7 920 isn't slow by any stretch.
Thanks for the great suggestions guys. So i think i will get the graphic card or cpu first then sell my current cpu and board to pay part of the second item. Do you you suggest the graphic card or cpu first ?
I played Skyrim on crossfire and it was plain rubbish, it caused all sorts of problems. It played much better on one of my old 5870's. I've recently upgraded from the 920 to the 3770k and I have noticed quite a substantial difference in games. CPU intensive situations are far better imo.
I was under the impression that skyrim was still DX9 and therefore very cpu bound. A good 2GB of Vram helps for any texture mods etc. If you dont currently use HT on your i7 920 then id opt for a i5 3570k and a high cooler and clock it as far as possible. Probably 4.5-4.8 is possible.
I'd go for for a second 680 tbh. With dual 1080p monitors, you are running a similar overall resolution to myself and I know that I would not be satisfied with a single card. I very much doubt that an i7 920 @ 4Ghz would be holding the system back. Having said that, I didn't realise that Skyrim was particularly graphically intensive. It's certainly not a pretty game.
It depends, I play 3x1080p, even a 2GB 680 is now getting cramped and I get noticeable lag from the huge amounts of texture packs I have, VRAM sits at 2038 constantly. It's annoying me so much I may even buy a 4GB one instead.
SLI. CPU uprgrade will net you at best maybe 10-15%. But it's at high resolutions and you have tons of PCI-E lanes as it is. SLI should do very well.
