Phenom 1090T and GTX970 SLI or FX-8350 upgrade?

Reizla

I think this is one for @Quizzical but all are free to help me out...

In games like Black Desert online I can't max out the settings during a world boss fight because of the (graphical?) lag caused by all the effects going on. I realize that the 1090T is already a somewhat *LOL* older CPU, and I hear from other players in BDO who have an OC i5 or i7 that their FPS in general is almost double that of mine (not complaining with 25-30 FPS in Calpheon though).

Now I'm wondering if adding a 2nd GTX970 would totally be a waste of money for performance and that I'd rather spend half that money on a CPU upgrade...

Cleffy

Doesn't matter at this point. Just remember, the FX chips are less efficient at single threaded applications than the 1090T, so it will probably not make a difference. There is a good chance the bottleneck is your CPU, but at this point it really makes no sense to swap the CPU.

botrytis

I would wait and see what AMD Zen is really going to do. If it is as good as it seems, there is where I plunk plunk my money down. Right now, there really is very little difference between all the various flavors of Intel CPU's as they had no competition.

Meescha

id wait till early nex year when the new AMD come out, if your set on getting an AMD otherwise go with intel, the amd you have will end up bottle necking your gpu

Loke666

The game does support SLI but there are different opinions on how good it actually works: http://forum.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?/topic/3227-sli-supported/

This chart might help you:


Edit: I forgot to mention that your CPU might bottleneck you GFX card so don't see the chart as a fact for your computer but more as a hint.

Reizla

Cleffy said:

Doesn't matter at this point. Just remember, the FX chips are less efficient at single threaded applications than the 1090T, so it will probably not make a difference. There is a good chance the bottleneck is your CPU, but at this point it really makes no sense to swap the CPU.

Oh, didn't know that the 1090T was superior on multi threading compared to the FX series. Good to know and one very good reason to stick to the 1090T since I'm running multiple programs at once from time to time (certainly when programming).

Meescha said:

id wait till early nex year when the new AMD come out, if your set on getting an AMD otherwise go with intel, the amd you have will end up bottle necking your gpu

I'll certainly wait till next year and see what the AMD Zen will be like (other than benchmarks, which are much like VW diesel test results ). If it ends up being not as good as it seems now (and I have the money from the lawsuit currently running), I might switch Intel for the first time since decades again...

Loke666 said:

The game does support SLI but there are different opinions on how good it actually works: http://forum.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?/topic/3227-sli-supported/

This chart might help you:


Edit: I forgot to mention that your CPU might bottleneck you GFX card so don't see the chart as a fact for your computer but more as a hint.

There's always a discussion on how well SLI works or not compared to a single GPU. When I look at the chart, an increase of roughly 25% would not be really worth it though. Perhaps like last time I gotta skip the one series and wait for the 11x0 serie to come out...

And yeah, I'm aware that my CPU is totally bottlenecking the GPU in Black Desert (I tend to freeze for half a second from time to time when I race with my T7 horse on max speed...). It's one of the few games where it's really happening. Most other games I play the performance is about on-par with other systems. I guess the architecture/engine of BDO is just so different that it does need a balanced CPU/GPU system.

Meescha

well ive had a phenom II and it bottlenecked my gpu when playing the secret world, then decided to go intel cause the FX chips were just under performing, and intels from years ago are still more powerfull, so i got an intel. tho im hopefull for the new amd, if the new amd is what they say it is, im definatly getting an amd lol, but i wanta see the reviews first from actual gamers not what AMD PR sais lol.

Reizla

Meescha said:

well ive had a phenom II and it bottlenecked my gpu when playing the secret world, then decided to go intel cause the FX chips were just under performing, and intels from years ago are still more powerfull, so i got an intel. tho im hopefull for the new amd, if the new amd is what they say it is, im definatly getting an amd lol, but i wanta see the reviews first from actual gamers not what AMD PR sais lol.

Oddly enough, TSW is not giving me any problems at all. As said before, It's only BDO for me so far (perhaps 16Gb RAM helps a lot here as well?)

Ridelynn

I don't play BDO so I can't be certain, but there are a lot of titles, and MMOs are very common offenders, of just having some scenarios that ~no~ computer can handle very well. It's usually when there are dozens (or hundreds) of players all congregated together, commonly in "city" areas or during large boss encounters that have a lot of graphical detail. WoW, and possibly other games, even have a separate set of graphics options that you can configure for large raids, so it will dial everything down to prevent the lag issue.

And that sounds exactly like what you are describing.

Vrika

Better to upgrade your CPU before you upgrade GPU any more. GTX 970 is already good enough graphic card for just about anything, whereas your Phenom loses to current I5 processors a lot in single-threaded performance.

Further upgrading your GPU would not make the computer faster as much as it would make it more unbalanced.

Malabooga

Reizla said:

I think this is one for @Quizzical but all are free to help me out...

In games like Black Desert online I can't max out the settings during a world boss fight because of the (graphical?) lag caused by all the effects going on. I realize that the 1090T is already a somewhat *LOL* older CPU, and I hear from other players in BDO who have an OC i5 or i7 that their FPS in general is almost double that of mine (not complaining with 25-30 FPS in Calpheon though).

Now I'm wondering if adding a 2nd GTX970 would totally be a waste of money for performance and that I'd rather spend half that money on a CPU upgrade...

I wouldnt listen to those "other players" without video proof. Because when you include video proof you will soone realize they dotn tell the truth and often speak of "im out here alone with noone else around miles" FPS and not thick of a battle in group content/PvP FPS.

Like that useless GTX1060 "benchmark" that was conducted by this site which consisted of running alone around starting area as a nice example lol

I can give you and example, a bit older one. GW2 Lions Arch (old)

Fx8300 @ 4GHz - ~30 FPS
i53570k @ stock 3.8 GHz ~36 FPS

but when you ran out to north area you wold get ~120 FPS with i5 vs 90 FPS with 8300.

rojoArcueid

One gtx 970 is more than enough for this game. Everyone i ask tells me the same thing, that BDO is very CPU intensive, not GPU intensive. Apparently, going SLI wont help you much if you keep using an old CPU.

Also, make sure you turn off "high end mode" in settings. It gives you a massive FPS boost and the game looks exactly the same.

zaberfangx

@op If you do end upgrading the cpu just hold on until AMD drops down there new cpu then you'll end up getting the cpu even cheaper unless a better cpu for the same cost.

Loke666

Reizla said:

There's always a discussion on how well SLI works or not compared to a single GPU. When I look at the chart, an increase of roughly 25% would not be really worth it though. Perhaps like last time I gotta skip the one series and wait for the 11x0 serie to come out...

And yeah, I'm aware that my CPU is totally bottlenecking the GPU in Black Desert (I tend to freeze for half a second from time to time when I race with my T7 horse on max speed...). It's one of the few games where it's really happening. Most other games I play the performance is about on-par with other systems. I guess the architecture/engine of BDO is just so different that it does need a balanced CPU/GPU system.

Yeah, and that is my general experience as well, with a few games exception SLI increases performance but not enough to justify it's cost. It is generally better to start out with a really good GPU instead. The 980 Ti is just below the regular 980 in SLI for instance.

One thing you can do to increase your performance for free is to optimize your computer. Particularly should you see what programs that start with Windows and have that kept to a minimum. Anything stealing precious CPU power should be carefully considered, only have programs you must have to start on reboot. That could be of little matter but I seen many cases where windows start up a load of crap that suck precious resources (I am looking on you, Google toolbar and Adobe updater).

Here is the CPU chart BTW: 
As you can see is the game more optimized for Intel then AMD for some reason even if they don't have your specific CPU (I had the same 2 1/2 years ago before getting a Haswell-E CPU, it was a rather acceptable one for the price when it was new).

Also, there are a lot of people saying that it is CPU heavy, more then a few said it was about the same as GW2 but it might be that it is AMD users that say that. Some games just work better on one or the other manufacturer.

Anyways, my guess is that the CPU is your largest problem, not the GFX card. 

Quizzical

Neither.  If you want a faster CPU, then get Sky Lake (Core i5-6600K or better) or else wait for Kaby Lake or Ryzen, both of which should be coming soon.  AMD officially says Q1 2017 on Ryzen.

If you want a faster GPU, don't add a second GTX 970 in SLI.  Get rid of the GTX 970 you have and get a single faster card instead.  I generally argue that you need to at least double your GPU performance to justify an upgrade, which would put you in GeForce GTX 1080 territory.  At least some of the coming AMD Vega cards are likely to be faster than that, too, but they're not out yet.

That said, I see no good reason to upgrade your video card unless you insist on fairly extreme graphical settings.  A single GTX 970 is a rather capable card as it is.  I'd look more at the CPU side of things as the priority for an upgrade.

Loke666

zaberfangx said:

@op If you do end upgrading the cpu just hold on until AMD drops down there new cpu then you'll end up getting the cpu even cheaper unless a better cpu for the same cost.

I am not so sure I would do that if BDO is the main game I play. Even the best current AMD CPUs performs like an I5 in BDO and while the new ones might perform better that is just a might.

I would go for a mid priced I7 who work excellent in the game, no need to get the most expensive since it would just bottleneck you at the GPU instead.

That is just for BDO, if you play other CPU heavy games as well you will need to take that into account as well but for BDO it is Intel all the way.

filmoret

That cpu is bottlenecking your GTX 970.  The new CPU you are looking at is 2x better then the one you currently have.

123ffxiv

Wait for Zen. They have already shown Zen to be on par with a 6900k with no boost enabled while operating at a lower tdp than Intel. If you wait, you can get either Zen or an Intel processor at a better price.

filmoret

123ffxiv said:

Wait for Zen. They have already shown Zen to be on par with a 6900k with no boost enabled while operating at a lower tdp than Intel. If you wait, you can get either Zen or an Intel processor at a better price.

Then he will have to replace his MOBO as well.

Loke666

filmoret said:

123ffxiv said:

Wait for Zen. They have already shown Zen to be on par with a 6900k with no boost enabled while operating at a lower tdp than Intel. If you wait, you can get either Zen or an Intel processor at a better price.

Then he will have to replace his MOBO as well.

He will need to do that anyways. Anything he can fit in his current socket wont perform good enough in BDO to be worth the upgrade. But as I said above, BDO is optimized for Intel and while I seen no Zen benchmarks for it yet I would not bet on it for this game. 

Even the best current AMD performs like an I5 in the game, this is a CPU heavy game optimized for Intel so getting anything else is a risk, at least until anyone can find a good benchmark test for Zen Vs the I7 CPUs.

Of course, if OP is in no hurry it might still be a good idea to wait until a comparison is out, the Zen might work a lot better in the game then any other AMD CPU but I wouldn't bet any money on it.

Cleffy

Reizla said:

Cleffy said:

Doesn't matter at this point. Just remember, the FX chips are less efficient at single threaded applications than the 1090T, so it will probably not make a difference. There is a good chance the bottleneck is your CPU, but at this point it really makes no sense to swap the CPU.

Oh, didn't know that the 1090T was superior on multi threading compared to the FX series. Good to know and one very good reason to stick to the 1090T since I'm running multiple programs at once from time to time (certainly when programming).

I meant single-threaded applications. Multi-threaded applications will favor the the FX chips. Depending on the application some will have the 1090T up 10~20%, and others the FX up by a similar amount due to the difference in architectures and clock according to CPU-boss. In BDO you will probably experience no difference. The FX chips just take too many steps to do 1 calculation verse the 1090T that is 700 mhz slower.
It's best to wait until the Ryzen CPUs and switch platforms like what Quizzical said. If the CPU is the bottleneck then switching platforms is the only real solution.

Malabooga

lol no. FX83xx is significantly better chip than 1090T, but it wont matter much in BDO as its heavy bottleneck game. MMOs are pretty much broken, bottlenecked in quite a few ways and nothign much will help.

Just look at some old(er) games, you would say that now after 10 years they should run in thousands of FPS but they still drag at 40-50 FPS just like they did 10 years ago.

Loke666

Malabooga said:

lol no. FX83xx is significantly better chip than 1090T, but it wont matter much in BDO as its heavy bottleneck game. MMOs are pretty much broken, bottlenecked in quite a few ways and nothign much will help.

Just look at some old(er) games, you would say that now after 10 years they should run in thousands of FPS but they still drag at 40-50 FPS just like they did 10 years ago.

It would still be an improvement and probably fix OPs problem, but it is still 10% below an I5 2500K if you run the same GFX card. The I5 is as much improvement as he can get though, anything faster will be bottlenecked.

The FX 8350 is a generally better CPU though, just not for that specific game and since that is the one OP wants to upgrade for he should go Intel or possibly wait for the new AMD CPU.

One could wonder why the AMD CPUs perform so badly in BDOs engine though, it is clearly rather crappy coding. That the later I7 outperforms them is one thing but even the cheaper I5s? They seriously needs to optimize the game still.