Build Advice Scans Bundle Upgrade path. Cheap Or Nasty?

Hello guys

Just looking to upgrade my Q6600 rig which is the following:

Q6600 @ 3.2ghz
P5Q Asus
4x1gb DDR2 667 (700)
GTX 285 ( 705 core clocked )
650w Etasis


Do you think i'll get better returns if i purchase this. Now dont get me wrong the CPU doesnt sound outstanding as is dual core but unlocks potential in the future I think?
But also do you think i will see any improvement in gaming? I do read basic comparisons which state the CPU of this new chip has much better single threaded performance etc.


To Be Or Not To Be?

 

What do you mainly use your PC for?

 

Gaming will improve a smidge,. Its a dual core, most games are now looking into multi core.

I personally would look at an AMD 8320 or similar, some ram and an 970A-DS3P (from ocuk of course)

Itll give you far more for a similar price.

You can then bin off the GTX285 at a later date, couple it with something like a 7870 (as they are very good value at the moment) and your on to a winner

 

As it stands, you'll get a decent performance gain with this bundle, due to the change of architecture more than anything else. The big bonus, as you already pointed out, it that with the Z87 board, you can get yourself a better CPU at a later date and reap the rewards.

Your GPU is ageing though so it might be beneficial to upgrade that before you change the G3430 to something beefier.

 

Iam an avid gamer and like watching movies HD , youtube, some audio work (but only minimal).

Im looking into upgrade paths first as current setup is beginning to be a pain. My GFX card can be upgraded at a later date. Im happy with its performance as it stands, but I know my CPU is simply not upto the task anymore.
But 8gb of DDR3 should make it much better than the 4gb ddr2 i would imagine. Its just a quick upgrade path.

The AMD route, is not what im after, I much prefer the bigger and better haswell range, this is just a minor step towards that, but thanks non the less for the price comparison

 

If you're looking to up the spec later, Z87 is a great way to go. I just wouldn't expect a crazy performance jump from the Pentium - although you'll be safe in the knowledge that you can drop in an i5/i7 later on and turn up the volume!

Plus - some more RAM? Game on!

 

When it comes to gaming there is actually very little in it for Haswell and AMDs piledriver at the moment. If you get a decent chip, take it to around 4.4 on the spec listed then your talking perofrmance within 5-10% of the Haswell for a good £250 less when you factor in the 4770k price.

£250 as you may have seen buys you an GTX680 or 7970. Both of which on the AMD platform will absolutely smoke the GTX285 on Haswell and keep your pocket gleaming for SSDs and games too!

 

Im tempted to fork out the credit card here and get the motherboard ram but also the i5 4670k instead. Does anyone know if this mobo is any good? cant really find anything around the wonderful world of google

 

Exactly - you should post this on the ocuk forums as well

 

but is a 4670k + a graphics card later on better than the AMD route you suggested + better card later on?

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-future-proofing-your-pc-for-next-gen

Just sayin'

 

It will certainly be more power efficient and run cooler. The best investment would be an ssd if you don't have one already.

USB 3 is nice too

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

In future titles, maybe not. For some older games, the 4670K can perform better. It's often exaggerated though, people not mentioning the fact that you're talking 150fps vs 170fps, and just saying '20 fps faster', etc. For most current and recent games the two CPUs both perform fine, while next gen ones may need 8 cores/8 threads for the best performance.

 

That Pentium will barely be any faster than what you have now, if it even is at all. A while back I reviewed a Celeron G530 (Sandy) and it wasn't enough to run games smoothly with a GTX 480.

Anything that used multiple threads and the I7 950 I put it up against left it in the dust.

Any Intel set up on your budget is going to be more of a side step than an upgrade. Intel don't tend to give anything away so yeah, you are certainly going to be worse off..

Now for some hard data. Make of this what you will, at the end of the day as an old buddy of mine (a very wise one) once said -

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Now hopefully you're a man with an open mind, as what I am about to say is very sound...

I used to have a Intel Xeon E3 1220. It's basically the exact same CPU as the I5 2400 only it has the same cache as the I7 (so performs slightly better than the I5 2400). With this Xeon I paired it up with the excellent MSI Z77A G45 (the Bit tech gold winner) and 8GB ram.

Now just keep in mind that this Xeon would pretty much commit an atrocity exhibition on that Q6600 of yours....



There it is there. Any way, note I run a pair of GTX 670s in SLI.... Now at first I was wondering if there was something wrong with the system, but eventually I came to realise that two things were putting a choke on my machine in the very latest games. First up was the crap clock speed that Intel give out on their cheap locked CPUs. They make quite a trade doing so, and, make sure to keep the clock speeds tame enough so that you soon return to them wanting more. Note - that is something you will be doing often with a locked down derped Intel CPU. They're not stupid, if you want to overclock you will pay for the privilege.

Not only that but before you know it Intel would have changed the socket again so if you didn't upgrade pretty quickly you'll then be desperately hunting on Ebay for a CPU to upgrade to.

Now. Let's talk AMD. Very quickly (and I do have the data to back this up and I can, and will, post it all again....)

I decided enough was enough with Intel. They had my money on an I7 950 (which me being S.O.L I got it about a month before they launched Sandy) and then they had my money again on a Xeon that I couldn't overclock (well I could, but nowhere near enough). I then find out that to get an Intel CPU that I could overclock with that I would also need a board. So I bought the board (though quite why is a mystery) then I lost my rag and decided to switch to AMD. I went for the 8320 and a cheap Asrock board that was capable of driving said CPU to 4.2ghz.

So, if the Intels are really as good as they say it would have been more of a downgrade, surely? Absolutely not. In modern titles such as Crysis 3, Sleeping Dogs, BF3 (heck, even BFBC2) the 8320 at 4.2ghz destroys my old Xeon. Not just by a little bit, but by a lot. In the above mentioned games my performance was up by around 30%.

Basically the 8320 clock per clock (IE the 8320 and the 3570k at the same identical clock speeds) is faster than the 3570K. This is something that is clearly visible in 3DMark (13) because it is the first one of Futuremark's benchmarks to properly address the AMD architecture. Better still though (as the link I posted for you earlier attests to) this is no longer a fluke. In modern games it's the same - clock per clock the 8320 and 8350 (they're pretty much the same barring clock speeds) sit between the 3570K and 3770K. That means (from a quick comparison off the top of my head) that the 8320 ought to be about level with the 4570K at the same clock speeds, which is easy given that they are lower on Haswell.

The AMD FX 6300 (hex core) is pretty much level with the 2500K in gaming (the modern titles that use all six cores) in fact, you can pretty much see here in this link just how well they perform now.

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/331...vishera-review-finally-good-enough-conclusion

With the six-score FX-6300 the differences are more significant. The processor appears to be an average of 31.6 percent faster than a Core i3 3220. In multi-threaded benchmarks differences in excess of 50 percent are not unusual. You notice the fact that it's six instead of two cores.

Says it all, really. I mean even the 6300 at around £80 will batter that Haswell Pentium.

So the only argument that Intel have left is their single threaded performance, which, if you sat down and thought about it should be something to laugh at, not brag about.

CPUs have offered four, six and eight cores for bloody ages now. So why are we still sitting here ignoring how many there are, yet, saying how important single threaded performance is?

If you want to see how the 8320 fares then please, take a read of the review of it I wrote for Vortez.

http://forums.vortez.net/motherboar...budget-amd-fx-8320-asrock-990fx-extreme3.html

The title really does say it all, high end on a budget. IE - for the same money you are pricing up for a truly budget Intel rig you can get a true high end set of AMD components.

Teppic also raises a bloody good point. If an Intel, say, 4770K can produce 250 FPS in an older title that doesn't like multi threaded CPUs yet the AMD one can 'only' muster 150 how are you ever going to know?

So to sign out here - putting an AMD CPU and board in your rig won't give you aids. It won't burst into flames and it won't smell like poo. You'd never even know it was AMD and you'll be perfectly happy with it.

 

I agree with Andy. Modern games that use over 4 cores require more than an i3 or similar processor can cope with. The reviews all say an AMD 6300 or an i5 or better is needed and the benchmarks back it up. In Crysis 3 for example, the best i3 can only manage around the mid 20s FPS even with an nvidia Titan. It's similar with Far Cry 3, Rome Total War 2, and will definitely be the case with BF4 (which the developers say is optimised for AMD CPUs).

The 8320 clocked at 4.5GHz is fantastic for the money. You do need a reasonably good board for it, but the CPU is about £110-£120 only.

 

Ah yes - Far Cry 3. Which also uses Cryengine 3 which will pretty much eat all you can throw at it. That's another game that sees the 8320 outclass the 3570k.

Oddly it's actually even more pronounced than the Crysis 3 results, but that could be because it's less demanding.

Either way these new game engines are still very much embryos. As time passes you'll see the architecture get better and better.

 

Frostbite 3, the first game using it being BF4, is optimised specifically for the Piledriver CPUs and will use all 8 cores of the 8320 well. There will be several games using this engine. It's no surprise that this is happening for a couple of reasons: cores can only be pushed so far with silicon, meaning taking advantage of more cores is one way forward; the new consoles have 8-core AMD processors, and game developers won't want to redesign engines for 2 core cheap Intel CPUs. Additionally, games are becoming more and more GPU limited, since modern CPUs are extremely powerful when used properly.

 

Oh but of course. Everything released in the near future will see the architecture perfectly because it's pretty much identical to the consoles these games are primarily made for (it's the big pay check !).

So it's not even like the devs have to do anything other than simply code it for the 8 core Jaguar or whatever it's called.

The Eurogamer article says it all tbh. They asked a game developer what would be a good bet for the future... They reply AMD.

Because to make it run better on an Intel would require more work - something that 99% of the buggers can't be arsed to put in. Bit-tech interviewed this guy once (a dev) about technologies such as Quad SLI, Tri SLI etc. He said that they would need to make specific 'units' (IE copies of the game) that supported it properly.. There was no money in these units, due to the few people who decide to run 4 GPUs..

Make an 8 core CPU the star of the show though? yeah, it becomes very different indeed.

 

Game developers will take the easier route. That's why big PC games have suffered from low resolution textures, the limited specs of the consoles - with the odd exception like Crysis 3 that requires massively powerful GPUs even to reach 60fps at max settings.

 

More data ! so basically I have found a set of results from the 4670K Haswell that are comparable to the 8 core AMDs.

One 4670K @ 4.2GHZ

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/550633

One 8320 @ 4.2GHZ.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1182124?

Please note a couple of things.

1. When I disable SLI and run it on one card I get a higher physics score.

2. I use Firestrike because it supports everything you can throw at it, and, from the results it's clear that it fully supports the AMD architecture.

So I will conclude that the small lead the 8320/50 had over the 3570k (it sat between that and the 3770k) has now been closed by the 5-10% Haswell performance increase.

The upshot? the 8320 clock for clock is just as fast as the 4670k when supported properly, and it will be.

Yet it costs a massive chunk less.