The Xeon E3 1220 is an I5 2400 with I7 cache. It beat my old I7 950 at stock speeds quite easily. If you're running the I7 950 at 4ghz it's a whole different story. But OP has said no overclocking so I assume he's not overclocking now. 2.66ghz is not even close to what a modern hard hitting game needs. I agree an SSD would be a lovely upgrade. It certainly won't help you in gaming though as it won't add anything in the way of FPS. For that you need a good CPU and a good GPU/s.
For the benefit of the OP, it's fair to say that a stock i7 920 will likely bottleneck a fast GPU in some CPU intensive games. However, blowing the majority of your budget on a CPU/mobo upgrade will not leave a lot of money for a decent gpu and will still likely perform worse than that new (bottlenecked) graphics card. In your position, Denvar, I would look at overclocking. Even a relatively mild overclock to 3.6GHz can be achieved with a cheap HSF and would release that extra performance. I ran a 920 at 4.2GHz everyday without a sniff of a problem, it would bench at 4.67GHz, so shooting for 3.6 is nothing to fear; and incredibly easy. It's actually worthwhile trying it before you start spending money on an upgrade.
What are these modern hard hitting games that you claim an i7 920 wouldn't be enough to run ? Because some benchmarks prove otherwise.
my i7950 is at stock speed for the record has been since the summer. 3ghz or 3.2ghz depending on multi you choose.
A stock 920 is not powerful enough to run some games without bottlenecking the GPU, but to suggest they won't run is nonsense.
I didn't say anything about them not running at all. We all know Edison's research on frames per second and what's considered acceptable. 20 FPS min is not acceptable.
Maybe its been taken to literally, by not running i meant what AlienwareAndy has suggested previously and as quoted bellow. Using the word bottlenecking is pretty meaningless as no matter what GPU or CPU you use one will bottleneck the other, but the difference between three generations of Intel CPU's running at stock and overclocked is minimal at best. Like i said what are these modern hard hitting game ? Maybe you are talking about something like Bioshock Infinite running @ 1920x1080, with max details, max AA, max AF ? No it cant be that as using a ASUS Radeon HD 7970 Matrix with a i920 you get 162FPS, OC the i920 to 4.5GHZ and you get 163FPS. How about upgrading the SB to a newer haswell, lets even OC that to 4.5Ghz, ohhh wait that only gains us 3FPS. Or how about something like Sleeping Dogs with the same settings as above ? hmmm cant be that as an i920 gets 53FPS, maybe if we OC as you suggest. Nope cant be that game as OC'ing sees no increase at all in FPS neither does upgrading from SB to Haswell. Instead of just making claims that an i920 running at stock is not even close to what a modern hard hitting game needs, maybe you should provide the evidence that you are basing your assumptions on. After all i have provided evidence that shows three generations of Intel CPU's running at stock speed and when overclocked to 4.5Ghz makes very little difference in FPS when using maximum quality settings running at 1920x1080 as the OP is intending.
Depends on the game. Skyrim is what, 2 years old now? Still massively CPU (single threaded) limited due to its scripting engine. Civ5 too. BF4 loves threads and CPU as well. All those are extremely popular, but not UE3-derived like BS-I. Realistically a GPU upgrade should your core focus as this will be translatable to your next build, with an SSD the next add-in until you can afford a big core upgrade. But, I would definitely look into second hand 6-core LGA1366 CPUs also if you don't want to drop the whole lot just yet.
You beat me to it - I can't see a 920 dragging down a 280x or 760 to unplayable frame rates at 1080p. It's definitely worth clocking up the 920 a bit to mitigate any GPU throttling though. There's nothing wrong with the 920 - I'd have kept mine if I wasn't downsizing to mATX and if I didn't get a bargain priced 2500k. The price of performance mATX x58 boards was higher than the cost of moving to 1155.
As a couple of other people have said, a new gpu will give you the biggest boost to gaming, an ssd will make the whole computer feel faster. Looking into overclocking would be a good idea, since those chips can normally get to 4-4.2 without too much hassle (based on my own experience at least), but you'll still get a big performance boost without overclocking if you get the ssd and gpu.
Hitman Absolution and Crysis 3 to name but two. Bioshock Infinite uses an old engine and is piss easy to run. It's also not CPU bound. Cherry picking titles that don't go near the CPU is an easy way to declare a CPU capable of current and next gen gaming. Sadly you're not taking into account the games that are CPU bound and rely heavily on the CPU (like the two I showed you). In those cases a stock speed I7 920 is not enough for current games, and, with the way things are headed now (read Bindy's post) it will become more and more apparent unless Mantle saves the day. Sleeping Dogs is GPU bound. Xeon. Note - perfectly acceptable FPS mins. That would be why I didn't mention Sleeping Dogs, as it's easy to run with any decent GPU set up. Take that to Crysis 3 on the other hand? And you have a big problem. Note - 21 FPS min. I have data from around 20 games benched running a Xeon E3 (which is miles ahead of the 920) so I know exactly what I'm talking about. My hard data is worth far more to me than what any website says. Why do you think I don't own said Xeon any more? because it was locked, and, not good enough to run the current line up of big CPU hitting titles adequately with the GPU subsystem I run. I'd already provided you with the evidence. Go back to my first post. Now I've provided you with some more. Bit-tech wrote an article on the 2500k vs the 980x in gaming. The 2500k won every single time. That was ages ago. Every one knows what a massive advancement Sandybridge was over Nehalem and Gulftown in terms of IPC. So given those facts I can safely say that a 3.4ghz Sandy is far better for gaming than a 2.66ghz I7 first gen. I mean FFS I shouldn't even have to be explaining this to you. I'm not basing anything on assumption. I'm basing it on cold hard facts. The same cold hard facts that made me realise that my derpy derp locked Intel Sandybridge CPU wasn't enough to run the latest games with reasonable settings. Which would be why I upgraded it to an FX 8. And it's paid dividends in the modern titles. My FPS counts have literally doubled at the minimum level.
Its better in cases you list yes andy, But its not better to spend his entire budget on a cpu upgrade that he will not see the benifit from. His current GPU can not run any of the games you picked at max either way. So saying the CPU is the hold back at max in crysis 3 and hitman is irelivent. He wont be even close to maxing crysis 3 at least with any gpu he could afford to buy. ( need 2 gpus to max crysis 3 even 1 r290x would struggle (Sub 60fps anyway)) Another Andy post that goes off the wall and has nothing to do with the ops request. Cant we just delete all the spam and get back to what the OP wanted to know. For gaming the GPU is the key part of the thing, I7 920 with a 770 / r280x for example would be alot faster than the fx8350 I guess andy would suggest and his current gpu (5870). Probably 2-3 times faster in fact. r280x + SSD is best upgrade for his budget. Ignore what Andy says he is very wrong in this case. If you have a similar budget in 1 years time you can do the cpu and mobo upgrade.
I'd go a GPU upgrade (and SSD if budget allows now) and then save for a more whole-scale upgrade at a later date - while old-ish the 920 is a perfectly serviceable CPU and with a mild overclock, will do you proud for a bit longer
Another Rollo post that's completely dismissive and rather obtuse. Emphasis added. Yet Rollo and others automatically assume that this problem the OP mentions is easily fixed by going out and buying a 280x when clearly in some of the new titles it isn't. The only reason I'm being rudely dismissed is because I haven't given in to peer pressure and started bah-ing and lining up behind every one else. That doesn't make me wrong, nor do the facts and figures I have posted. It's very clear that in modern gaming a I7 920 clocked to 2.66ghz is going to be a problem. So whatever. OP - if you want to put a plaster over that crack and then stick your fingers and thumbs into every other hole you have? fine. Baaahhhh - get a 280x and an SSD.
Doesn't seem like that to me. http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1164&page=6 I'm hardly cherry picking, if you bothered to actually read the details on the benchmark done on different CPU's at different speeds you would see 8 games and 2 benchmark programs have been used. The link to OCaholic is providing details on the differences and is contrary to your claim that Crysis 3 would be affected by a faster CPU, as can bee seen above. If you had bothered to actually read the article that i posted you would see Crysis 3 only sees a 5.71% increase in frame rate from using a faster CPU, if you want to call that CPU bound then your definition is very different than mine. So you need to argue that your own tests invalidate what a web site that has published details on test setup and has experience of benchmarking different platforms? Its good that your hard data is worth more to you than what any website claims, but that is your data and meaningless to anyone else unless you decide to publish your work for peer review. No you haven't, you have provided details of some test on your system. They are meaningless to anyone but you unless your peers can replicate those test and verify your results. And everyone knows how little advancement there has been from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge and Haswell, Intels focus isn't on processing power anymore its on low power usage. No really at last something we can agree on. Sadly the part we disagree on is by how much, you claim from test run on your rig with a difference chip than the one we are talking about that is a massive difference. I claim and have provided a link to 10 tests run on the actual chip being discussed that show the difference is very little. As i have said many time now, you are comparing totally different chips Xeon vs FX8 vs i920 and while your test may show you get a doubling in FPS when moving from a Xeon to an FX8 that means very little to anyone else.
Wow guys, first of all thank you all for taking the time to put so much into the advice, I've been following the thread closely (and as has been observed) stayed quiet and taken everything in. Following the feedback I think I will spend my money on the new GPU, will overclock the CPU a bit and then perhaps an SSD early next year (general PC performance is good enough for me right now, really need to bump up the FPS/texture sizes). Seems to be a general consensus (on the types of GPU at least) I should look at so will pick one up the next few days. Will post back with how it goes, and seriously thank you all for the advice again. If this route doesn't follow your advice, i still appreciate and took on board what you said and appreciate it.
keeping your motherboard - sadly the Marvell 9128 sata 3 controller isn't very good (by isn't good , its crap) just use an SSD on the intel sata 2 ports and it`ll be great. the marvell controller is bad for 2 reasons - the first is speed - whilst technically sata 3 , its limited by the fact that internally its pcie 1x , so even my crucial M4 ssd hits the speed limit. The second reason is features - the controller does not pass along TRIM commands , so yo have to rely on the SSD`s own garbage collection routine - some are good , so not so. So in time the SSD will slow down. but in the real world sata 2 is more than enough for daily SSD use get an R280X or a GTX 760 - and an SSD and you`ll love it!
