PC Upgrade Pending

[Paul]

After getting barely 40-50FPS last night while playing SQDM I have decided that I really do need to upgrade. So I plan on upgrading in February/March and want to get the ball rolling

I am currently running

AMD Phenom II 965 Black edition
ASUS Crosshair Formula III
8 GB Dual Channel Ram (I think it is 1600)
EVGA 570 GTX Superclocked Edition
850w Corsair

These are the two base systems that I want to chose from but Skoup advised that the AMD is not a good idea. I am not a fanboy at all I don't mind Intel or AMD I just want bang for my buck.

AMD FX-8350 with suitable Mobo and R9 280x
Intel Core i5 3570K with suitable Mobo and R9 280x

So my constraints are

Budget R8k-R9k
I need a new CPU, Mobo, GFX
I would prefer the components to be from the following manufacturers because they either have a good rep or I have had them before
ASUS
Gigabyte
Sapphire

[RussianElite.]

R9 280x Nuff said

[TygerBS]

Go with the i5 Paul.

[Salty Ferret]

you need a Razer mousepad too.

[RussianElite.]

ROFL

[KakHard]

I bought one of these for a friend.
Nothing wrong with the card, good cooling etc. and price.

http://www.wootware.co.za/powercolor-axr9-280x-3gbd5-dhe-radeon-r9-280x-384bit-pci-express-3-0-desktop-graphics-card.html

[Phatso]

Can't tell you about the rig specs as there are more knowledgeable folks in these parts. I can highly recommend http://www.rebeltech.co.za/ though.

I got my GTX770 from them and the customer service was excellent for me. Not to mention that the price of my card at the time was better than Frontosa.

Have a look.

*EDIT: Seems I might of gotten lucky because one of their "specials" for January is 8GB of RAM for R6000....

Never hurts to price around I guess.

[J_Th4ng]

Paul, that 3570 is a perfect gaming CPU, I'd go with that if your budget will cover it.

As Phats said, GPU prices are worse at Frontosa than buying from etaillers. I can get you quotes on mobo and CPU from Frontosa though if you like.

Happily, your 8GB of Ram will be reusable in the new build.

As for makes, I would go with a ASUS mobo if you can, they are excellent. As for the graphics cards, manufacturer doesn't really matter, the GPUs are all made by AMD/nVidia so go with the most affordable.

I don't know if you're fixed on the 280x, it'll give you good benefits for BF4 (Mantle), but doesn't give you Shadowplay, which is a really cool feature available to nVidia cards. If your budget permits, consider a GTX770 as an alternative to the 280x.

[Paul]

What is the difference between a 3570K and a 4670k? What I have read is that the 3570 uses the 1155 mobo where the 4760 uses the 1150 mobo which is the tech replacing the 3570. If I prices are similar should I rather not go for the 4670k?

That being said I usually upgrade every 3 or so years so chances are the 1150 would be replaced by then as well so it is not like I will just upgrade the CPU

[Skouperd]

Paul, this is my recommendation:

Option 1:
CPU: i7-4820k @ R3750
MOBO: Asus P9x79 @ R3800
GPU: Asus GTX760 @ R3550

Total = ~R11,000.
Longevity = 4 to 5 years on the CPU and motherboard with the GPU replacable in 3 years time.

Option 2
CPU: i7-4820k @ R3750
MOBO: Asus P9x79 @ R3800
GPU: get a second GTX570 @ R1300 second hand and SLI the two.

Total = R7500 + R1300 = R8800
Longevity = 4 to 5 years on the CPU and motherboard, 1.5 years on the GPU

Option 3
Well their aint' any really. My logic is as follows.

1. More and more games make use of multiple cores
2. We had the exact same argument when quad cores arrived and people insisted that dual cores with higher clock speeds are the future, it is virtually impossible to buy any single or dual core CPU today, ergo they were wrong, multi cores are the future.
3. Hyperthreading is a very cool solution and it basically doubles up your core count on the CPU. The fact that some games, and I re-iterate SOME games benefit from not using said hyperthreading is nothing more than bad programming. If you have a CPU with hyperthreading, you can very easily disable said hyperthreading in the BIOS, if you really HAVE to play SAID "some" games. If your CPU does not support hyper threading, well, guess what, even if MOST games perform better with hyperthreading, you will still not be able to turn it on.
4. i7's for the above reasons is thus a no brainer.
5. Considering the various i7 platforms, LGA1150, 1155, 2011, the cost between the 3 different CPU's are nothing material which brings us to the only differentiator being the motherboard. Again, for me this is a no brainer that the LGA2011 is the obvious choice, marginally more expensive but you get quad channel memory (read my article on understanding cache, latency and bandwidth). Bottom line, more bandwidth is good.
7. CPU's are no longer getting dated as quickly as they used to. Not to long ago, the performance of a CPU will double ever 18 months, and unless you really had the lastest CPU, you just could not enjoy the latest games. Today, even a 3 year old i7-950 is capable to play any game that there is on the market without any form of constraints. (granted, it does not score as high in benchmarks, but what is your objective, high benchmarks, or a good solid gaming experience?)
8. GPU's are really pushing the bounderies. Mantel is coming out which may, or my not, be a game changer. I am very keen to see what happens in that space but unless you have game developers getting onboard, this is nothing more than pie in the sky theoretical mind masturbation excercise. The same can be said with NVidia's GSync. GSync I think hold a lot of promise and may be something that will extend the life of a GPU considerably. Right now, a game at 40 FPS is unbearable, but with GSync and the way that it is supposed to work, you may get a couple of extra milage out of the card. Again, mental masturbation until monitor manufactures start supporting it. In my mind, I don't rate Shadowplay that highly, there are enough other programs that can capture your game while you play if you absolutely have to. So unless we have some clarity on which way the market is going, I am not quite prepare to call who is the winner being AMD or NVidia. I must say, I am leaning towards NVidia for increased longevity.
9. Given my views on the above, the fact that you can quite easily drop your graphics quality just a tad bit, if you go with option 2 mentioned above, get yourself a second hand GTX670 or another GTX570 then not only will you be sticking in your budget, but you will also ensure that you will be standing in line in a year's time, or 18 months, when the GTX8x series launches to pick yourself a good GTX770 up, plug it into your hyperthreaded ready RIG and game on. If you go with the normal i5 route, then when the time comes, you will be sitting there needing to upgrade not only your GPU when you start hitting bumbs, but also you CPU and motherboard.

I want to use Geth as an example here. His pc is currently a Q9xx series, one of the second (or third) generation quad cores that hit the market. (the first was the Q6xxx series). That CPU is about 6 years old now. He had to upgrade his GPU a number of times since then and even with that CPU of him, he could upgrade his GPU (currently GTX570) and plug in a GTX670 or something and get another nice boost. (Granted the CPU is getting long in the tooth). The point I am trying to make, when that CPU of Geth became available originally, the big argument was "ooh, no, don't go quad core, rather get dual core with higher clock speeds". How many dual cores do you know are still able to play games today? Ps, I should add, I still have a QX6700 (older CPU than Geth's) which Ursula uses for her gaming. Bottom line, get yourself the best CPU you can.

Ok, that's my 2cents on the topic. Now, I am curious to hear the counter arguments, because I know a lot of people will defend their own purchases (being predominately i5's), but I would really like to hear their arguments in a logical fashion as I've put down my logic behind my reasoning.

Ps, and this my dear friends is how you open up a can of worms... ;-)

[Skouperd]

pps, for those not quite following my argument of Geths' CPU, quad core CPU's are about 6 years old already, the i5 is nothing more than a quad core CPU with some slightly faster clock speeds a bit of optimisation from a processing perspective. This reminds me very much of the the Pentium D series versus the core 2 duo's, the core2duos also had a bit of a better optimisation to the CPU and higher clock speeds but the quad cores, with their slower clocks but more cores was the winner then and more cores will again be the winner this time round.

The future is more and more cores and game developers are writing their code accordingly. Having an 8 core (even if it is not real 8 cores) will still give you longer longevity than a simple quad core with higher clock speeds will give you. That argument about what is the fastest, a ferrari or a mini bus taxi has reference. For those that haven't read the whole article, most people will claim a ferrari is the fastest but if you need to transport 20 people, then the mini bus is the faster option. (people = bandwith, car speed = CPU frequency).

Anyevent, good luck with your choice and as mentioned, feel free to shop around. I have noticed that Frontosa is no longer as competitive on GPU's as they used to be.

[J_Th4ng]

I have to disagree with Denis here...

Although the HT CPUs are awesome (love mine long time), they are absolute overkill for someone that is on a tight budget, and are priced at an absolute premium - both CPU and mobo. Sure the CPU might last longer, but you're hamstringing his rig's gaming potential but putting in an inferior GPU (which is still the ultimate bottleneck in modern games).

Quad core is plenty, and will be for some years to come. My HT core CPU offers virtually no performance improvements over a quad core clocked at the same speed.

Ultimately PC games will be optimised to the capability that the majority of games have. Take a look at the Steam hardware survey, and look at the proportion of users with 4 thread vs more cpu's (I can't link numbers for you, Steam is blocked at my new work - along with most gaming sites :()

Saying that an i7 CPU and a helluva price premium is the only option is crazy!!

Paul, don't listen to the crazy horse. You were already on the right track...

EDIT: Oh, and on the old technology question, how old is that X79 chipset? It doesn't even have native USB 3 or SATA 600...

[Salty Ferret]

So, about that mouse pad :P

[TygerBS]

Yip i agree. Skouperd is always about cpu overspecing.
Your argument is also flawed Deins. My cpu is now coming upon 6 years old and and its an i5.
It was the best bang for the buck. It is not always about about the best CPU. But i know we ill never convince you of that denis.

Paul isnt concerned with ultimate best performance.
he wants best gaming performance.
In that regard spending more on a GPU is a better bet for him.

A high quality mobo but not over kill is about 2k - 2.5k
That i5 will be just fine for him for a 3 year life cycle.
Getting a a higher end GPU will give him way for value now and down the line.

[Skouperd]

I knew you would have been the first to respond... Jarrod... ;-)

Regarding the price premium, the i5-4670k is a R1000 less expensive with more or less the same clock speeds. On the motherboard side, it all depends what you are going for as you could get a lot more expensive boards than the one I suggested in the i5 range as well. Now, the price premium is say R1000 on the CPU and say another R1000 (extremely over optimistic) on the motherboard, you want to tell me that a R2,000 extra now is not worth an additional 2 years in longevity? I appreciate that for some people R2000 may be a lot of money, but for phuck sakes, R2000 for a serious gamer is peanuts. Hell, you go to the restuarant, for people of 2 and the bill easily exceeds R500. If it is BadAss and me going for Sushi, the bill can very easily exceed R800 (and that is just the two of us), include the wifes, and suddenly a Sushi event with the four of us takes us to R1000. That is two meals dude, and you have covered your R2k. If the R2k is really that big a problem, then wait 2 months and you should have it.

Regarding going SLI, 2 cards in SLI is the cheaper option to still get you the speed boost that you need. If he is currently getting 50FPS, pluing in another one and it stacks only 70%, then that still means he is getting in excess of 80FPS within his budget. In 18 months, or 2 years time, he can pick up a GTX770 for about R2500, and that should give him yet another boost.

I will not be looking at what the "steam" community is running on, the Steam community have a lot of indie games which yuo can run on a cell phone, if you want to run those games, hell, just get a laptop. The only steam specs that you should be looking at, and they are not available, is what hardware is use to run the more serious types of games. The big houses will be writing software for THOSE PC's. It is like saying when Malema finally depart SA and move to Australia he would increase average IQ in both countries.

Paul, doesn't upgrade nearly as often as you or me Jarrod, give him the best platform (CPU and motherboard) that will last him the longest and get him the most milage is the best option. Bear in mind that Paul will not break world records with that budget, he will NOT be able to play the lastest games for the next 2 years at ULTRA with that budget. If he, or anybody else even remotely think that is possible (given his budget) then they are smoking some really bad stuff. My recommendation will ensure that over a 5 year period Paul will be able to play the most taxing games are reasonable (potentially even high) settings. When the settings becomes so low that he no longer can enjoy them, then the option is a much smaller investment be that another second GPU (assume he goes with something like the GTX770 in 18 months) or get himself a GTX9x when they release rather than buying a whole new rig from scratch.

The thing, at the end of the day, what you pay is what you get. There is a reason why the i7's goes for a premium, it is the same reason why XEON's go for even a higher premium over the i7's, what you pay is what you get.

[Skouperd]

Your argument is also flawed Deins. My cpu is now coming upon 6 years old and and its an i5.


Kak!, and I quoted from wikipedia: "The first Core i5 using the Nehalem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_%28microarchitecture%29) microarchitecture was introduced on September 8, 2009"

now class, lets all count together...
September 2010 is 1
September 2011 is 2
September 2012 is 3
September 2013 is 4
September 2014 is 5

huh, Tierjite, you mind explaining to the class just how you calculated your CPU is going on 6 years? According to my calculation, which given the status quo I think is a tad bit more accurate than yours, when September 2014 finally arrive and we are all getting rAge2014 fever, assuming you bought the first EVERY i5, your CPU will only be 5 years old... so the correct term is, "my cpu is going on 5 years now"

oh, and shall I continue with quoting the said article in wikipedia:
"The first Core i5 using the Nehalem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_%28microarchitecture%29) microarchitecture was introduced on September 8, 2009, as a mainstream variant of the earlier Core i7, the Lynnfield (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynnfield_%28microprocessor%29) core"
now what do we have here? Oh my, you actually have a i5 that is based on an i7... now I'll be damned.

Seriously Paul, stop listening to these guys and for once in your life make the right decision.

[J_Th4ng]

Denis, I know that you like arguing for the sake of it, but seriously mate. You recommendation is seriously flawed.

The only benefit of the CPU that you are touting is that is has Hyperthreading. HT adds minimal difference to anything. You are also recommending an i7 CPU that runs on an outdated chipset. If he were to go i7 for HT purposes, then why not a 3770K, which at least has native USB 3 and SATA 600?

R2000 will make a massive difference in turns of the graphics card he can buy. That is where his budget should go.

On the Steam survey, every PC game I know has Steam. Therefore their data is in the Steam survey. Sure there are a lot of other people that are indi gamers that would bring the averages down, but the raw numbers are still staggering. Take a look: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Oh, and saying that an HT enabled CPU will give him a significantly extended lifespan over a non HT CPU is pure speculation on your part. I find it an extremely unlikely hypothesis.

[TygerBS]

Sorry 5 years you right.

But you do like to argue your point even when you wrong.

No matter what you say Paul will benift most from a higher spec GPU, not CPU.

But in the end its up to him.

As least you have provided him options.

[kmckelvin]

HT virtually splits up cores to try and improve performance by letting a core switch contexts during blocking operations on a single thread. There are times where HT is known to hinder performance more than speeding it up.

I'm running the i5 2500K with a Radeon R9 290 and 8GB of RAM. Performance is looovely. Even on the older CPU I'm never getting close to maxing the thing out though. The bottleneck is always on the GPU.

Other recommendation - if you want super fast load times, get a SSD. It won't do much for frame rates (unless you're low on RAM), but I'd much rather put some cash into a mid-range SSD than into a high end CPU.

[Megageth]

I find it hard to believe you are getting 40-50 fps with a 570. I have the same card and, low settings, getting 60-90odd.
I haven't played recent patches so not sure if thats affected it. I do get serious drops every now and then but its generally higher than 50.
When we went to visit SiB at the MWeb offices, I remember all the pc's there were 570's as well (with i7's) and they were getting decent frames.

I can suggest overclocking your cpu slightly and seeing if it ups your frames. I dont think the GPU is limiting you to 50.

I am also looking upgrade shortly but am hanging back a bit for newer tech.

Paul if you do upgrade I would hang on to the 570, and see how it performs with a new CPU/Mobo/RAM. Then upgrade the GPU if you still aint handling.

[Megageth]

PS the problem with asking for advice is that everyone has an opinion and they hardly ever agree.

PPS I'm on the i5 > i7 bang for buck on a gaming rig train. i7 is the better CPU but does not add that much to games from reviews I have read.

PPPS There are new sockets coming out with support for DDR4 this year, I say OC the CPU you have.

PPPPS I have had a few.

Advice from http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-4.html

We have seen a small handful of games benefit from Hyper-Threaded Core i7 processors, though. Because we believe this is a trend that will continue as developers optimize their titles, we're including the Core i7-4770K as an honorable mention, now selling for $325. In a vast majority of games, the Core i7 won't demonstrate much advantage over the Core i5. But if you're a serious enthusiast who wants some future-proofing and values highly-threaded application performance, this processor may be worth the extra money.

PPPP...S If Mantle comes in to BF4 then you may find that an AMD cpu thrashes the i7 in BF4. Still to be seen.

What a post, I need a publisher.

[Skouperd]

HT virtually splits up cores to try and improve performance by letting a core switch contexts during blocking operations on a single thread.


hmm, that is not quite how multithreading works. CPU architecture is quite complex (obviously) but if you are keen to learn more about exactly how CPU's operate and work, may I recommend you look at something called NAND2Tetris as that will allow you to actually build your own CPU together with things like ALU (arithmic logic units) and logical processors. Just to make it clear, hyper threading is slightly more complex than your description and a CPU with hyperthreading available actually has two logical processors per core. There are certain units within the core that they do share (like Cache, memory addresses etc) but hyperthreading is not just software.

What happens with hyperthreading, and when you get poor performance is just bad coding be that form the OS or from the game developer. Given the crap quality of BF4 versus the pretty stable version of Windows, I would venture to guess the fault is not with Microsoft on this one. What happens from a programming perspective, and this is what you see when you start overclocking the kak out of a CPU is that not all the units (remember, I said certain units within a core is shared by the logic units) is not getting overclocked to the same extend as the logic cores etc. and this then causes a bottleneck.

Crappy programming does not realise that half the cores are HT cores and instead of spreading the workload out over the physical cores (core0, core2, core4 and core6) it will give it to core0,1,2, and 3 which effectively have 4 logic units processing the data and waiting for the shared units on the core. Whereas, in a perfect world, the workload should have been shared.

I seem to recall reading once that the die size increased roughly 5% (if memory serves me right) with the additional physical hardware needed on the CPU for the implementation of HT. So I say again, HT is not just software switches, there are actual hardware also doing the work.

Jarrod / Tiertjie, Let’s do a quick comparison between LGA2011 and LGA1150. For starters, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell parts all feature 16 PCIe lanes whereas the Extreme parts, i.e. Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge-E (i.e. Socket 2011) features 40 PCIe3.0 lanes that branch off of Ivy Bridge E. Remember the Ferrari versus the Mini-bus… more lanes is good, less lanes is bad.

I will agree that X79 does not have native USB3 ports, and that it generally only features 2 6Gbps SATA ports. However, saying that, motherboard manufactures have incorporated third party chips directly into their motherboards for either more SATA 6Gbs ports or additional USB3.0 support and with the amount of PCI-express lanes to play with, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. The difference between going native USB3.0 versus non native is that there will be a pico second increased in latency between the two. USB 3 is used to predominately use to transfer data, I assure you, you will NOT notice a difference between copy a 2GB file on a native USB3.0 controller versus an third party onboard controller. I could argue, that some motherboards have 3rd party Ethernet adapters therefor surely that is worst for online gaming?

Personally, I would much rather prefer Intel to give me the PCI express lanes to do with them as I please. If I am in the mood for uber-fast hard drives (shall we say 8 SATA 3 drives) then I can plug in a proper high end raid controller, and not need to worry about the card impeding my graphics card’s bandwidth in the process. If I would rather prefer 4 Titans, then again, no problem I can plug them in and not have to worry about the natively supported USB3.0 features taking up all my PCI-express lanes which I will not use. Unless you are saying Paul will use USB3.0 to output his monitor, I don’t see a problem that it is not natively supported on X79.

Ok, so what else is the difference between 1150 and 2011 apart from the PCI-Express lanes discussed above? Shall we look at memory quickly? Obviously the better the CPU, generally the more L3 cache it supports, and as I’ve explained here: http://blog.skoups.com/?p=592 more cache is good. Quad channel memory versus dual channel memory, need I even go into this topic?

We can argue stable platform, mature platforms, blah blah blah.

I like your Steam graphs... if that is anything to go on, all games will be written for dual core CPU's running 2.4GHz.


I think the one thing we can all agree on is that graphics cards is the first thing that will show it's age no matter what built you go for. Going for the uber GPU now, and a crap CPU means that in 3 years time, Paul will need to spend another R8k to get his games playing. (with diminshing returns from day one after buying the system). My solution on the other hand provides Paul a solid platform within his budget still, playing games are fairly good FPS NOW, in 18 months, another say R2k or R3k for say a GTX770 which should give him another 18 months game time. 3 years from now, (i.e. 18 months after getting the GTX770) he could pick up another GTX770 for R1000, or he could go ape shit and just get himself the GTX970ti for R3500. Over a 3 year time frame, going my route, you have not only ensured that he is able to continously play the latest games at very acceptable frame rates, but you have also saved him a lot of money in the process. My estimated second hand prices is based on historical averages of how fast GPU's depreciate in value. I also have not taken into account inflation in any of my quotes but that should cut both ways so not too concerned about it.

[kmckelvin]

I'm hardly likely to explain all the theory and varying methods of doing HT in one sentence :P

However the operating system is responsible for scheduling threads to be executed on the CPU and more recent operating systems are a lot better at making sure that the primary cores are prioritised. From a programmer's point of view all of the scheduling is abstracted behind the concept of a Thread and handed off to the operating system to manage.

The place I've really seen HT kill performance is in running virtual machines.

Bottom line about my comment though is that I'm running a 2 year old CPU architecture with a top of the line gfx card, and the bottleneck is still the GPU, not the CPU or memory bus. And if there's any question about disk speed, running a mid-range Sandisk SSD I'm almost always the first person to spawn in on a map load.

Obviously there are places where a CPU makes a bigger difference. When it comes to database servers there's a noticeable improvement in performance with more CPU cores available (provided that the database is properly optimised in terms of indexes, data organisation with clustered indexes, RAID, enough RAM, disk access speed, etc). CPU cores make a big difference in compiling binaries as well. These are tasks that grind the CPU by orders of magnitude more intensely than Battlefield 4 ever will.

When it comes to 3D graphics, given a reasonable spec CPU, the GPU is the next most important thing to throw money at.

With all of that said though, I agree with Skoup's last paragraph about spend over time. Getting onto newer architecture now will mean that you have more freedom to upgrade later at a lower cost. You'd be able to pick up a second graphics card later at a pretty decent price and keep up to acceptable frame rates. If you want MOAR FPS NOW, drop more on the graphics card now and worry about newer architecture when it becomes a barrier/bottleneck.

[Paul]

Geez never thought this would stir up such debate. Thanks for all the input. After reading all I am leaning towards the higher end GPU with a mid range CPU.

Mega, that is why I am only upgrading in Feb/March, I hope that new info on mantle, new architectures etc are out before then. However I also beleive to put a stake in the ground and upgrade when needed instead of waiting. There is always going to be something better just around the corner.

So for now I am looking at the i5-4760 with a decent enough Mobo (suggestions) and either R9 280x or 770 (depending on price)

[Cat Nipples]

Nimbzy what did the SanDisk cost you? (sorry for derailing) Just asking out of curiosity

[Paul]

I got an 128Gb SSD for R1500 about 6 months ago, it is a Corsair so a good make

[Cat Nipples]

Oooh... Hmm..

I think I need to go into male stripping, need some cash..

[kmckelvin]

Nimbzy what did the SanDisk cost you? (sorry for derailing) Just asking out of curiosity
256GB for R2400 at Matrix (got it at rAge, so it might have been a discount)

[KakHard]

So for now I am looking at the i5-4760 with a decent enough Mobo (suggestions) and either R9 280x or 770 (depending on price) 4670? If so, rather pay the R120 extra and get the 4670K so that you can overclock if you later feel like doing that.

[Skouperd]

The place I've really seen HT kill performance is in running virtual machines.

Ahem to that! I think I know why that is happening but yes, I have seen that too.


Bottom line about my comment though is that I'm running a 2 year old CPU architecture with a top of the line gfx card, and the bottleneck is still the GPU, not the CPU or memory bus. And if there's any question about disk speed, running a mid-range Sandisk SSD I'm almost always the first person to spawn in on a map load.

While my main gaming rig is leased out to a company requiring a bit more processing power, I had to revert back to my LAN pc which sports an i7-950 CPU, (released Q2-2009) and I paired that with a GTX780ti. I agree with you that a better GPU will increase frames but I disagree that your CPU is not bottlenecking you. How can I explain this, ok, let's take a hard drive (say a 7200RPM drive) for instance which I think we will all agree is one of the slowest components in your computer. Run a benchmark on your harddrive, (copy files between two folders) your throughput on your harddrive is say for argument sake 100MB/s. Now, underclock your cpu with 50%, run the same benchmark on your harddrive, your throughput will still be 100MB/s. Increase your CPU overclock to say 50% above normal, your hard drive will still only give you 100MB/s. Doing that test you know that your harddrive is indeed the bottleneck in your system. When you drop your CPU to something stupid like 50MHz or something, then your CPU will become the bottleneck and then that is the slowest component.

Now, let's do the same thing with your GPU as you say your GPU is your bottleneck. If your GPU is the true bottleneck, then what one should expect is that as we underclock the CPU, at some stage the CPU will become the bottleneck and no longer your GPU. (obviously the CPU will become a bottleneck much sooner than the HDD example when it only becomes the bottleneck at say 50Mhz). Now, if you are saying that your GPU is bottlenecking you, then if you double up the speed of your CPU you should NOT see any difference in performance of the GPU. (the hard drive did not increase from 100MB to 120MBs just because we overclocked the CPU). However, I am prepare to bet you my rAge2014 ticket that when you increase your CPU speeds on your current rig that you will get better performance from your GPU thus your GPU is NOT your bottleneck.

It is very dangerous to assume just because your CPU is sitting on 30% util and your GPU on 99% that your CPU (or something else) is not also holding you back. Building a fast system, and understanding what is causing what bottlenecks is a very complex situation. You can only say that your GPU is bottlenecking you if you see no improvements when you increase the speed of your CPU.

Back to my original statement above, as mentioned, I have a GTX780ti running in an old i7-950. Let's compare that to BadA$$ machine, he currently has a GTX660ti paired with a socket 2011, 3820 CPU. Running one of my favourite graphics benchmarks, he scored 28,089 points, compared to my score of 27,578. BadA$$ with a bottom of the range LGA2011 (non overclocked) and a comparitively no-starter GPU (compared to my GTX780ti) still manage to out scored one of the fastest GPU's on the planet with the main difference the CPU. Saying that, I hit 200FPS, dropping to 120 on occasions, in BF4 (that was before I stripped my moer for EA and Dice) with everything on Ultra apart from the last three things in the GPU options.

Either way, Paul, good luck with your decision, and I am looking forward to recall this thread in 3 years time when you start the thread again by saying... "ooo.... guys help I need to upgrade my computer as my game sucks and I am not able to get anything more then 40FPS...."

[Skouperd]

Oh, and Jarrod, socket 2011 doesn't just need to be paired with X79 chipset. I am running my main rig with chipset C602 which also include things like SAS support. At the end of the day, what you pay is what you get.

[kmckelvin]

Ahem to that! I think I know why that is happening but yes, I have seen that too.

It was pretty clear what was happening when looking at the CPU graphs. The host OS (Windows Hyper-V Server) was allocating two logical cores of the same physical core to the VM instead of prioritising the primary core.


However, I am prepare to bet you my rAge2014 ticket that when you increase your CPU speeds on your current rig that you will get better performance from your GPU thus your GPU is NOT your bottleneck.

No need to bet, I know the CPU will make a difference with my current rig. But if I go back to when I was running the Radeon 6970 I'm pretty convinced that the new graphics card has given me a bigger FPS boost than an equivalently priced CPU.

[Skouperd]

No need to bet, I know the CPU will make a difference with my current rig. But if I go back to when I was running the Radeon 6970 I'm pretty convinced that the new graphics card has given me a bigger FPS boost than an equivalently priced CPU.

Yes, an upgraded GPU will always give you a boost in FPS. A GPU is also the easiest thing to upgrade in a computer. Any gamer, and I mean any gamer, can unplug a GPU and plug in a new one. Now not every gamer has the knowledge, experience, skills and confidence to upgrade things like CPU's or rebuilt a complete system from scratch. Hence my recommendation that for somebody like Paul to get a solid platform and just change the GPU's as and when the games become an issue is a no-brainer. (and still keeping within his budget I should add).

[kmckelvin]

And hence, I agreed with that point ;)

[Skouperd]

And hence, I agreed with that point ;)

Then stop arguing with me for FFS, your target is Tierjie and Jarrod...

[Skouperd]

Ps, I see you can now get a TITAN for R7200

http://www.carbonite.co.za/f40/asus-gtx-titan-68190/

[Megageth]

Paul the question of AMD vs Nvidia, from what I've read:

AMD + Probable performance boost from Mantle for BF4, cards are good value
AMD - Reference cards are noisy and run hot, Crossfire still sounds like it has more issues than SLi

Nvidia + new cards have support for GSync and Shadowplay, run cooler and quieter than many AMD
Nvidia - slightly more expensive than AMD for similar performance, current versions wont run mantle (might be a + if Mantle is buggy)

Doubt you will go wrong with either.

[Skouperd]

Mega, AMD cards are no longer as cheap (or good value for money) due to a supply shortage caused by bit coin (and similiar groups) of people using AMD cards for their mining. The demand as such have increased the demand for AMD cards thus causing the prices to increase. They are still marginally cheaper than NVidia, but not quite as much a difference as in the past.

[Paul]

Got an email from Rebeltech, they got a shipment of R9 280X in most other places are out of stock, I think I will get this in the mean time because PC part prices are going to go up as the exchange rate gets worse

http://www.rebeltech.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=20&products_id=11135

(This is R500 cheaper than a 770)

[Phatso]

(This is R500 cheaper than a 770)

You should most certainly look at GTX770 benchmarks then Paul. The difference in FPS is small but remember the AMD vs nVidia stuff (mantle vs shadowplay etc). Then it purely comes down to personal preference. I love my GTX770 and was an AMD fan for years.

[Skouperd]

(This is R500 cheaper than a 770)

and R250 more expensive than this XFX R9-280x http://www.carbonite.co.za/showthread.php/68632-XFX-R9-280x-Double-D-Stock
or R600 cheaper than a GTX780 http://www.carbonite.co.za/showthread.php/68577-MSI-GTX-780-Twin-Frozr-OC-Edition
or R1700 cheaper than a Titan. http://www.carbonite.co.za/showthread.php/68190-Asus-GTX-TITAN?highlight=titan

you are getting too much GPU for the CPU you are thinking, but hell, what do I know...

[Cat Nipples]

:popcorn:

[TygerBS]

If you gonna stretch for the 770 you might as well get that 780

[J_Th4ng]

That 780 would be a great buy. The 780 is quite different architecturally from a 770, and is more akin to the Titan. You should definitely consider it Paul.

You're going to need to get your CPU choice sorted pretty soon as well, that AMD processor is going to slow you down.

[Paul]

So I went ahead and ordered the R9 280X, they got 3 more in today so I got it for R4400

I have settled on the Intel Core i5-4670K as the CPU, can anyone recommend a good MOBO. I know J said I should try get an Asus so how does this one look?(not actually keen on the colours)

http://www.nivo.co.za/#buy~asus.intel.z87.socket.lga1150.atx.motherboard .z87.a.~p40359

or this MSI, read some reviews and seems to be good bang for your buck

http://www.nivo.co.za/#buy~msi.intel.z87.lga1150.intel.atx.motherboard.z 87.g45.gaming.~p39794



Jarrod can you get me Frontosa prices please

[Phatso]

Regarding colours, if you have a glass windowed case.. PLEASE get colours you want. I know it sounds silly...

But the blue colours on my mobo and the red colour on my XFi and cooler hurt my OCD.

[J_Th4ng]

Denis, could you please help Paul out with pricing from Frontosa? I'm not able to look at it currently. Paul, frontosa don't offer MSI gear, but they do have ASUS and Gigabyte.

EDIT: Of the two mobos that you linked, the MSI one is the better IMO.

[TygerBS]

Lol yes i agree with phatty shit must be colour coded!

[Reaper]

Hey Paul,

I just recently upgraded and took that exact same CPU and the MSI board. No issues what so ever and running like a dream.

I purchased a GTX680 off Carb and works perfectly!!!

[Skouperd]

If you gonna stretch for the 770 you might as well get that 780

phuck, why stop there? just stretch all the way to the Titan? BTW, I see you can now get celeron CPU's for around R250, i.e. why not just go Titan GPU, Celeron CPU and still stay within the R8000 budget?

Ok, guys, on a slightly more serious note. Yesterday evening, BadAss and me ran some benchmarks on his computer, using his i7-3820 CPU and my GTX780ti. We ran one of my favourite benchmarking programs, being 3dMark06 as well as some 3dMark13. Now, some caveats with regard to 3dMark06, it only uses DX9 (not DX10 or DX11). However, most games todays are still able to run on DX9 hardware so I would not disregard those results completely.

The below is a list of 3dMark06 benchmarks that I have ran over the years on various degrees of computers, pretty much anything from a basement special office computer up to a R70k monster.

548

Ok, the above may be a lot of information for some, so what I have done is just limit the results to NVidia GTX560 and up and / or the CPU Q8300.

549


The thing that I want you to look at is the impact of the CPU with the same graphics cards. Let’s look at the Q8300 CPU, let’s assume the base we starting off on is the 8800GTX (which is an OLD card) and which scored 11,855 points. Going to a GTX560 resulted in an 8.22% improvement. The GTX660ti to an 8.37% improvement. Even the GTX580 resulted in a mere 10.68% improvement. Now, the 8800GTX against a GTX580 yet the difference is less than 11%.

However, let’s see what happens if we plug the same GPU’s with some proper CPU’s. The same GPU, paired with a proper high end CPU, you are looking at almost a 100% improvement.

550

Bear in mind that people running the early i7’s (such as the i7-950) which was launched in Q2-09 still don’t really have anything that they could upgrade to. (Unless you are talking 4930 or 3930 which have 2 more cores). The i7-950, which according to Tiertjie’s maths is approaching 5 years (to the rest of us, 4 years) when paired with one of the fastest single GPU’s on the planet only scored 4.26% worse that a much newer generation i7-3820 CPU.

The thing that I am taking away from these results is that if you have a proper base to begin with (Q8300 is not a good base as that CPU is clearly bottlenecking the GPU’s!), then even 3 years down the line you can get yourself a new GPU, plug it into your current platform and you will get some nice jumps from it. Having a crap CPU, such as the Q8300, then no matter how many jumps you take on the GPU, you will still be bottlenecked and get crap results. It is based on this information and data, that I have drawn the conclusion that the GTX770 which Paul is considering buying is overkill on the CPU he is thinking of.

Ok, now most of you will say that the 3dMark06 is not representative etc and I will agree with you that 3dMark06 is getting a bit old in terms of accurately scoring the latest hardware. Which is why we also ran 3dMark13 which uses the latest and greatest DX technology. Unfortunately, I am still busy building up a new database for it and it will still take some before I get to where I am with 3dMark06 but guess I have to start somewhere.

Ok, so over to 3dMark13 and let’s not fool around here, let’s go straight to Fire Strike Extreme. (I have very limited results here so bear with me) but effectively the GTX660ti scored 2,504 versus the 4,822 the 780ti scored using BadA$$ i7-3820. The i7-950 in turned scored 4,828 with the GTX780ti which is statistically insignificant to the results scored on the i7-3820 (i.e. they are the same). So, even despite the latest games and benchmarks, I can take a GTX780ti, plug that into a 4 year old CPU (5 years according to Tiertjie) and basically compete head to head with a i7-3820. Again, the data seem to support that it is better to get a proper CPU that will last you some time and then to just upgrade the GPU as and when you need more oomph.

So, let’s see if we can make some sense of all this data. On the one hand you can go overboard on a graphics card (GTX560 paired with a Q8300) and effectively get virtually no benefit whatsoever from upgrading from the 8800GTX, on the other hand, you can use a GTX560 graphics card but with a better CPU and basically double the results. (Scores will jump from 13k to an estimated 22k). The oldest generation GPU I ran on the Q8300 is the 8800GTX scoring 11,855 points, 4 GPU generations later (i.e. the generations being 9800GTX, GTX280, GTX480) using the same CPU, and using the GTX580 improved those scores only 11%. The Q8300 for me is representative of the cheap i5 CPU today whereas the i7-950 is more representative of the i7-4x range.

The key thing to remember is that when you are trying to build a fast system, especially on a budget, that you need to really understand what is causing what bottlenecks and you really need to look at what your upgrade path will be to minimise those bottlenecks in future. It is based on that information that I am making my recommendation as to what to get.

Ps, I also have a list of benchmarks running a hex core CPU whereby I’ve enabled 1 core, then 2, then 3, then 4 then 5 then all cores, each benchmark was run with hyper threading turned on, then turned off, each of those in turn was run with standard clock speed, then when the CPU was underclocked, and then again when it was mildly overclocked. If anybody would like to go through those results, please feel free to let me know and I can share with you those results as well. Again, I am not just shumphucking some recommendations out of my arse when I made my recommendations for Paul initially.

PPs, I don’t like online benchmarks ran by professional reviewers since they tend to run things with considerable overclocks on their CPU’s (especially with GPU benchmarks or when gaming benchmarks is involved) and that is just not what the end user gets.

PPs, this was my last post on this topic, it is Paul’s money, he is a grown-up (according to the law at least) and as such capable to make up his own mind (again, according to the law) on this matter. But Paul, I just think you are making a mistake to not get yourself a proper CPU and motherboard especially with that GPU you’ve got. (it is a hell of a GPU btw!)

[Skouperd]

So I went ahead and ordered the R9 280X, they got 3 more in today so I got it for R4400

I have settled on the Intel Core i5-4670K as the CPU, can anyone recommend a good MOBO. I know J said I should try get an Asus so how does this one look?(not actually keen on the colours)

http://www.nivo.co.za/#buy~asus.intel.z87.socket.lga1150.atx.motherboard .z87.a.~p40359

or this MSI, read some reviews and seems to be good bang for your buck

http://www.nivo.co.za/#buy~msi.intel.z87.lga1150.intel.atx.motherboard.z 87.g45.gaming.~p39794



Jarrod can you get me Frontosa prices please

the i5-4670 goes for R2212 (excl VAT)
the Asus Z87-A goes for R1874 (excl VAT)

Feel free to place the order in JHB if you want to buy this on my account. Just know, that I am not going to get involved whatsoever with any returns etc.