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Upgrade or Start from Scratch?
So I'm having some issues running games smoothly after moving to a 1920x1080 monitor. Things like (heavily modded) Skyrim, Starcraft 2, The Witcher 2, Metro 2033, etc are running at 40 FPS max and sometimes drop as low as 15-25 FPS on the very highest settings (medium-highish in the case of The Witcher 2 and Metro). Basically, I was wondering what my options were to increase my performance up to 50+ FPS with these titles (preferably at max settings).
Here's my current system:
Asus M4A78T-E mobo
AMD PHenom II X4 955 BE 3.2GHz
EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 1GB
Corsair TX650 v1 PSU
4GB (2x2) DDR3 Ripjaws
500GB WD Caviar Black HDD
64GB Crucial M4 SSD
My budget is in the area of ~$1000. I wasn't sure if my PSU would support a better GPU and/or CPU, if I'd need a new mobo if I was going to need a more powerful CPU, or if it would be better to start from scratch. Any help, information, feedback, etc is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Z
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Comments
Hmm I have a very similar setup except I have 8gm of ram (that shouldn't matter) and an HD 5870 and I run all those games, except for SC2 which I don't own, at high settings at 50-60 fps if vsync is on. Maybe drop the settings a bit? I never go beyond 2xAA and 8xAF really. And to be honest I don't notice much of a difference in most games between ultra ultra settings and high.
EDIT: Forgot to add that I run at 1680x1050 resolution, so that may be why I have slightly better FPS!
If you were to upgrade I would look at getting a new GPU, although I don't think you will see a dramatic difference. If you want to upgrade the CPU, you will also probably need a new motherboard, as the phenom uses an am3 socket, the AMD fx-series uses the AM3+ and llano uses the FM-1 socket (probably don't want to bother with the llano series).
To be honest you still have a pretty nice setup IMO and unless you feel like spending money, I would maybe just try upgrading the GPU frist. That PSU looks sufficient enough for a single GPU, it's got two 6-pins which is nice. Anyways, someone more informed will post parts and whatnot
...good luck.
The first thing I'd do is check your memory usage. It's probably not the problem, but if you've got a bunch of background stuff filling up memory and making you page to disk, then that can kill performance. You can check directly in Task Manager.
Assuming that memory isn't the problem, the next thing I'd do is to try running games on minimum settings. If that makes everything perfectly smooth, then your processor is fine, and the video card is the problem.
If the problem is the video card, then I'd first try turning settings down some and seeing if you can make the game run smoothly and still look good. Sometimes there are settings that double the load on the video card without making the game look any better, and turning off one of those might fix the problem.
If you do need to upgrade the video card, then I wouldn't recommend going for anything less than a $350 Radeon HD 7870. Anything below that isn't really enough of an upgrade over what you have now to justify doing it. You might also want to wait several hours to see the GeForce GTX 680 reviews, as that card is probably just about to launch. Some people in another thread seem to be recommending deciding whether to buy it before the reviews are out, but I'd recommend waiting until after the reviews are out, then making a decision.
The GeForce GTX 680 may or may not make sense to buy. It also may or may not make the Radeon HD 7950 and/or 7970 make no sense at all to buy. So if you're looking to spend $400+ on a video card, I'd definitely wait for it. Actually, I'd wait for it even if you think you want a 7870. I have no idea how long we'll have to wait for lower bins of GK104, or for other Kepler chips, but that could easily be either weeks or months.
What you may want to do is pull your heatsink off your cpu, clean it and apply some new thermal paste. It may be your processor is overheating. It's about a 20 minute process and may save you some money!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Memory usage is fine.
I just tried Alan Wake, Hard Reset (which I thought I'd have no problems with, but only gets 35 FPS max) and Metro 2033 on their lowest settings and I got double+ the FPS I was before. Playing around with settings I can get a 10-20FPS boost if I turn off/drastically lower AA and Shadows. Some games I don't mind, but in the case of Metro and The Witcher 2, I'm looking to get the best possible experience I can afford.
If I do decide to grab a new GPU, I'd rather not spend more than ~$500 on it if it can be helped. I was browsing NewEgg and came across this 7950 HERE. I just need to know if my PSU and mobo will support something along the lines of this (or the new Nvidia GPU if it's of comparible/better quality and price)
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If that's your budget, then wait for the GeForce GTX 680 reviews. That doesn't necessarily mean to get a GTX 680; just wait and see how it stacks up against the Radeon HD 7950 and 7970 before making a purchase. New Egg briefly posted some for sale and then took them down, so they're surely coming very, very soon.
The power supply and motherboard will be fine. You are looking at increasing your heat output, so I'd like to know what case you've got. It might be fine, but it's good to check.
I agree, it is better to wait and see how the 680 performs before doing any decisions there.
You could also get some more ram, 2 more 2gb sticks wouldn't hurt and is a pretty cheap investment. Just get exactly the same as you already have.
More than willing to wait.
This is the case I am using. I have 2 120mm fans on the side, 1 120mm fan on the front, and 1 120mm fan on the back. Then of course stock Heatsink on the CPU.
@Loke I was considering grabbing 2x4GB ripjaws off of newegg for myself, then putting my current 4GB and the 460 towards another system for a friend.
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Yeah, you've got plenty of airflow. Plenty of physical space, too. So you could stick any single GPU card you like in there and it would be fine.
But I have to ask because some people come in with some cheap junk Dell or HP case that has a single 80 mm case fan and that's it. Put a 200 W card in those and it's just a matter of time before things overheat. If the card even physically fits, which it might not.
Good to hear.
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I've been wanting to do this as of late. Normally with the stock heatsink my CPU sits around 32c-34c idle, but lately it's around 40c-42c idle. Originally I had just shrugged it off as it being the warm weather keeping my room toastier than normal.
I was going to go ahead and grab an aftermarket heatsink (not just for the cooling, but to hopefully get a more quiet fan, my stock one gets crazy loud), but if reapplying the thermal paste would help any I may just do that. I assume THIS will work?
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I was going to go ahead and grab an aftermarket heatsink (not just for the cooling, but to hopefully get a more quiet fan, my stock one gets crazy loud), but if reapplying the thermal paste would help any I may just do that. I assume THIS will work?
Arctic Silver works very well, but there is very little difference in performance of thermal compound overall. Maybe 1-2 C.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-February-2012/1490
There is enough in the tube to justify spending $10 (I have a tube that has done probably 10+ CPUs and still has plenty in it) - but you could just use some generic stuff that usually comes with every heatsink and be as well off.
As far as your original post goes:
$1000 can do a lot, but your computer is not in really bad shape. Turning down AA or some other options just a couple clicks off MAX can really make a huge impact in performance, often for little to no visual change. The difference of something like SSAO and is extremely subtle but very horsepower-intensive, and the benefit of any level of AA over x4 is pretty arguable.
Your power supply is good to go for basically any CPU and single GPU.
I think, I would wait for nVidia to finish pushing it's latest product line out, for Ivy Bridge to get released, then I would re-assess. That would have you going basically 2 generations ahead in both video and CPU, and shouldn't be too far off (weeks, months at the most?)
All you need is a 590 GTX if you can wait the 680 GTX. If these are too expensive for you look at the performance charts and choose the card in your performance range. I am not a rep of or for Nvidia.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
No, no, no. The only point of the GeForce GTX 590 was a publicity stunt. And a failed publicity stunt, at that. It's nearly impossible to cool properly, which makes the card highly unreliable. Don't get one, especially now that 28 nm cards are out.
If you want a faster video card, then I think you could justify upgrading to either a Radeon HD 6870 or a GeForce GTX 680, depending on your budget.
I don't mind dropping a few things down (like you said, sometimes AA over x4 makes little to no visual difference), but it seems for a lot of the games I'm playing now (metro, Alan wake, heavily modded Morrowind/Skyrim, The Witcher 2, BF3, etc) I'm having to drop numerous other things as well to get in the area of ~45 FPS, and I'd like to be a bit higher than that. I'm just simply looking to get the best possible experience I can afford in the area of ~$500 (for the GPU). I admit, I may be a bit impatient, but knowing that I'm now able to afford more powerful hardware makes me a bit giddy. I could always upgrade my CPU a few months down the line when Ivy Bridge (or whatever comes out that's better than my Phenom II X4 955) right?
Basically I'm looking to grab the GTX 680, 8GB(2x4) of memory, and an aftermarket heatsink or liquid cooler (I'm a bit nervous about liquid cooling, and I don't OC, at least I haven't yet, so a heatsink might make more sense. But my CPU is running ~10c hotter on idle than usual, and I'm getting tired of the stock fan noise so I'd like to fix those issues). If I can get all this for ~$650 I'll be set.
EDIT: And knowing that my PSU is good to go is a huge relief.
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Fair enough. I'm itching to build a new rig myself, although I totally can't justify it at all.
Yes, you can upgrade the video/RAM now (assuming you are on an AM3 motherboard and running DDR3, and not an older AM2 motherboard with that X4), and the motherboard/CPU later.
But, you may want to do both at the same time. The reason being that your video card and CPU are fairly well matched right now, but your going to find that your bottleneck isn't so much just the GPU, as it is your overall system. A $500 video card is definitely going to bottleneck on the CPU (unless you overclock the crap out of that X4).
Especially in the case of Skyrim, going out and spending just $500 on a video card, and upping the RAM to 8G, you may not get any performance increase at all. That game is notoriously CPU-bound.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, you'd probably get just as much bang out of a $125 motherboard and $225 CPU (just assuming a i5 2500 or, eventually, an i5 3570, which should be about the same price), as you would going to a 680 or 7970 for $500+ - either way you go your still bottlenecked a decent bit. And by the time Ivy Bridge is out (which should be soon), the dust will settle on the 680 release, and we will see if they have stable inventory and what it does to the overall price hierarchy. And when you have both of those upgrades in place, the net result will be a whole lot better than the sum of the invidivudal upgrades, as your bottlenecks will be greatly diminished on both ends. You'll either be running a premium card on a budget CPU, or a budget card on a premium CPU, until you have both upgraded.
As far as watercooling goes - the all-in-one units (Corsair H series, Kuhler, etc) are safe as any air cooler, and pretty dummyproof - no different than using a regular heat sink and mounting a fan. DIY custom water cooling is a totally different animal, and that is more of a hobby than it is anything else. All in all, the AIO watercooling systems aren't really much better than a good air cooler though. Although they do have the advantage of not dumping the heat inside your case, which helps your other components, they won't cool your CPU any better, or get you any better overclocks.
Edit: the previous post there was on the wrong thread. Sorry.
Anyway, as for what I was going to say on this thread:
Skyrim and Starcraft II might well already be processor-bound for you, as those are very processor-intensive.
Processor improvements come a lot slower than video card improvements, because games can't put many processor cores to good use. Graphics computations pretty trivially scale well, so if you double the number of shaders, TMUs, ROPs, memory channels, etc., you double the video card performance. If a game can only put three processor cores to good use, and you double your number of cores from four to eight, you don't improve performance at all. AMD is predicting processor performance gains of only 10%-15% annually--and they think that's all that Intel will be able to manage, too.
So for better performance in those two games I could OC my CPU rather than paying for one with more cores and/or at a higher clock speed? I imagine I'd certainly need a better heatsink then. Are there tools that take care of OCing or is there something I have to change in the BIOS or something like that manually?
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OCing would help - it would give you a straight % performance increase (i.e. if you overclock your 3.0Ghz CPU to 3.3Ghz (10%), you can expect 10% performance increase in CPU-bound applications).
Most of that is in the BIOS, some motherboards have applications that let you do it on the fly. I recommend just googling it, and for starters, avoid any voltage modifications (as that is what can get dangerous) until you get comfortable with the process. It is ~a lot~ of trial and error.
However, there is a marked difference in AMD and Intel CPUs aside from just core count. The easy way to explain it is that Intel has better cores, so each core runs games a lot faster, even with lower clock speeds. Your X4 isn't a bad CPU, it's still a very nice budget CPU, but it's about the bottom of what still gets recommended these days.
Just to give you an idea, here is an AMD PII X4 at 3.4GHz vs a Core i5 2500 at 3.3Ghz, both quad core CPU's
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=288
Ivy bridge will be about 15% faster than Sandy Bridge, which is all I could find comparison benchmarks for.
Take note of the games down at the bottom (these are run with the same video card) - The Fallout 2 test in particular demonstrates what I mean about bottlenecking. You can see in many of the tests how the Intel CPU is simply a good deal faster - about 30-50% on average, but when it comes to gaming, it all comes down to your biggest bottleneck, and right there you can see that both CPU's are fast enough, the video card is just slowing things up. With Skyrim and SC2, the biggest bottleneck is the CPU by far
Is Ivy Bridge worth waiting for? Or would an i5 2500k slightly OC'd offer close to the same performance? Or is it just an unkown until Ivy Bridge is out? I'm willing to wait until the end of April, but I sort of want to decide by then.
I'm looking to build another desktop for my significant other now as well. She's been using a bargain bin laptop for gaming and its practically dead as of tonight. It's over heating really quickly, hardly picks up wifi, runs slower than usual, etc. So I figured if I upgraded mine, I could use my current parts in the one I'd be building (my current mobo, cpu, RAM, and the gtx 460) rather than build hers from all brand new parts now, then upgrade mine later and be left with spare parts.
She plays things like Warcraft, Amnesia, Minecraft, Portal 1/2, Tribes Ascend, and stuff like that (all at lowest settings @~1366x768 res. so anything would be a major upgrade for her). So I figured if I'm replacing my 460 in a month or so, I could just build a system for her built around that and whatever other parts I decide to replace. She should be able to get by for at least a month, as it still does fine running the MS Office programs (which she needs for school), just not anything else.
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Also just wanted to add a huge thanks to everyone who's given feedback so far, especially to Quizzical and Ridelynn. Without you guys and this forum, I'd probably be off on some site like cyber power PC building whatever looked or sounded the "coolest" with no regards to price, performance, reviews, etc. So, again, thanks everyone for taking the time to help someone like me who isn't all that extremely tech savvy.
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That is a good question.
Clock for clock, Ivy Bridge is about 15% faster. That much we do know from leaked benchmarks at stock clocks. I haven't seen anything "official" about Overclocking though to say if it would be worthwhile to wait.
A Sandy Bridge will typically overclock better than 15% (sometimes higher than 20%). Overclock performance on IB is still somewhat up in the air. Some rumors have said it OC's poorly (possibly due to new tristate transistors), other people have said the new process node lets it OC fairly well.
~15% seems to me like it may be worth waiting out until the of April to see if it or any more information comes out about IB.
I'm figuring now, that since the girlfriend needs a new system, and I was planning on replacing the majority of mine anyways, I'd just give her my current one. If I have to build a new one anyways, might as well throw in an extra couple hunred and get me something built around an i5(SB or IB depending) and a 680/7970 and leave the current one as is since it's not all that bad, especially for her considering she's been using a $500-$600 Acer laptop from Staples, and running games at bare minimum settings.
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I couldn't fault anyone deciding to go either way honestly - it's a tough call to make. If you need the computer now, then there is no sense waiting anyway (although ~need~ is a relative term with a gaming computer I guess). That being said, I know I always hate to buy something just to see the next model come out in like 1 week - just psychologically.
You can read about Ivy Bridge for yourself if you like:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k
I'd say the improvement looks more like 10% than 15%, and if anything, less than 10% rather than more. And some of the improvement that is there is from the higher clock speed. That pretty much matches Intel's official claims of 4%-6% gains in IPC, and then bumping the clock speed by about 3%. Note that the proper comparison is of the 3770K to the 2600K, not the 2500K.
I'm expecting somewhat less overclockability for Ivy Bridge, just because it's the very first chip on a brand new process node--and Intel had to delay the chips in the first place because they were having trouble with the process node. It might just mean greater variability in overclocking, with some chips able to hit 5 GHz and others unable to reach 4.5 GHz on air at any voltage. Remember that Sandy Bridge is on a very mature process node that has had chips commercially available for well over two years now, so yields there are surely very good by now.
Once Ivy Bridge is out, you'd rather have it than Sandy Bridge, of course. I'm expecting it to be a huge deal for laptops (where the reduced power consumption from the die shrink is a big deal), but a lot less so for desktops.
I'm personally willing to wait, but she's got a $500 paperweight that happens to let you type on it now. And yeah, I'd be a bit upset if I bought the SB i5 and the IB came out a week or so later. But building one system from scratch is cheaper than building two, and she needs something pretty soon. So I think I'm just going to go with the i5 2500k and OC it a little, and give her my current system.
Here's what I'm thinking:
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W (I have 2 of these and have both been great, but if there's something better for the same price or less I'm all for it)
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz + CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SSD
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus
LG 22X Super-Multi DVD Burner
GTX 680 (or 7970 if I can't find one in stock in ~a week or so. The $50 higher price makes me a little meh, but I do like the sound of Powertune more than GPU boost)
Windows 7 ~$100 (if she can't get me a copy from her school for cheaper)
I'm good to go with mouse, keyboard, speakers, and monitor.
I just want to make sure everything there is compatable and has a good quality to price ratio. Some of this stuff is from what I've seen Quizzical link to others, so I figured they'd be okay to use.
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