Hi guys, planning to upgrade my sig rig to something a little more modern, here's the basket on scan: LINK Have around £900 to spend, don't need HDDs or case but that's about it. Picked the CPU cooler because of the Parvum S1.0 case I'm using, plan to WC at some point but not yet. Any recommendations? Thanks
The RAM's a bit of a waste of money. You can get 2133/2400MHz 8gb RAM for less elsewhere. You haven't put your res in, but perhaps you'd be fine with a GTX 760/AMD 7950? It'd save quite a lot and give great 1080p performance.
+1 you would be better of getting 7950. its a good card at 1080p, and at this point it better to see what next gen for gaming will bring, could be 3d or higher res but i cant see much point at this time spending the money. seeing as you could put that money to a new car or holiday, also you thought about used parts?
Good point Somer, thanks - Scan do a great deal on refurb Corsair H100s which I may go for. Teppic, at the moment I'm at 1680x1050, so I realize that the GTX770's a bit overkill, but this machine is going to have to last for 4 years most likely. Also I might go SLI and tri-screen if money allows at some point. With the RAM I was gunning for CAS timings more then frequency as Haswell seems to be more sensitive to timings when it comes to overclocking. Also the dominator platinums look pretty awesome! I have thought about used parts but decided that I would go with new parts mainly because of warranty, and well, I haven't bought any new parts for 4 years, so while I have the money I thought I would buy it.
In four years any of these cards will be archaic (they'll be dated in just a year). I'd only get a 770 if you intended to sell it to keep up with the latest cards, you're paying a premium for high end tech that you don't need for now.
Yes, I most likely will end up selling it and getting another mid-to-high range card. Another problem is waterblocks - since I kind of wanted to go with an nvidia GPU because of all the driver hassle I've had with AMD, the GTX 760 doesn't really have any waterblocks. I know that they use a GTX670 PCB and I could use a 670 block but those kind of things irritate me, I'm a bit of a perfectionist xD
As for RAM, Amazon has Patriot Viper (2x4gb) with 9 9 9 24 timings at £45. You may well be able to get tighter timings than the spec. My memory's rated at 10 10 10 30 and does 9 9 9 27 at stock voltage. AMD's sorted out a lot of driver issues over the last few months. I've had my 7970 for a while now so have kept track of it. The 7950 is considered one of the best cards for performance/money, it will OC to 7970 performance fairly easily.
I have a GTX 670 and I can't Max Crysis 3 at 1080p. I wouldn't think a 7970 could either so it is not really overkill for some games.
Thanks Teppic and Somer, yeah if I can't max things out when the rig's brand new then it kind of defeats the object for me... I might think about a 7950, but I'll probably stay with the 770, depending on how much money I have
I don't know about Crysis 3, but my 7970 can do 60fps in Crysis 2 with max settings, DX11 and high res texture pack at 1080p without a problem. I'm not saying the 770 is a stupid idea, just that since you have a lower res monitor for now the 7950 would be more than good enough for everything, and by the time you upgrade you may want to sell the card anyway.
You'd honestly be surprised at how many games need more than a 670. Hitman : Absolution - even with my 670s in SLI I see mins of 38 FPS with 8xmsaa Tomb Raider - again, max it out and it needs some serious power. Crysis 3 - as you said, hard to run. Even my 670s in SLI just about cut it with any sort of MSAA. The way things are headed I would rather get an 8 core AMD system and two 760s. The money you save by going AMD can then be put toward the second GPU. No comparison. If it was about looks Crysis 3 would be the best game released ever. Sadly the game itself is rather crap lol.
I've never tried Crysis 3. None of my games ever stutter at 60fps vsync 1920x1200, but I don't have Hitman Absolution or Tomb Raider either.
My point being that the suggested build is not overkill for games that are out right now. Dishonored, Bioshock...no problem but if you happen to want to play these killer games, only the 690s and Titans of this world are overkill for 1080p.
I'd get the FX-8320 if going AMD and just overclock it Two 760s would certainly do well, and would be easy to sell separately later for a good price.
Lovely looking game, the best I have ever seen. Playing it on High with some smaa and quite enjoying it so far.
The problem with that is my case is mATX, and AMD's selection of mATX boards is frankly crap - there aren't even any 990FX mATX boards. That limits me to z87 really as there are barely any/no LGA2011 mATX boards, even if I could afford them.
Yup, forget AMD unless you have an ATX case. It's very annoying. Plenty of good FM2 boards, but the CPUs don't compare to higher end FX CPUs. I'd probably have gone for an FX-8320 if I could have got a micro-atx board instead of Haswell (my case is ATX, but I'm planning to replace it).
I guess the high TDP of the FX CPUs mean that they need more power circuitry then can be fit on the smaller board. That's another problem with AMD - 130w TDP. Also a TJMax of 60 degrees. Edit: there are a couple of FX-compatible mATX boards that run the older chipset but they don't support SLI/CFX which means no easy upgradability. Another thing, is SLI really worth it? It's a pain in the ass and even slower in some games even, so is it really worth it considering 660ti SLI is only margianally better then a 680 which the 770 beats by 10-15%?
