PC Upgrade Pending

[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 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 microarchitecture was introduced on September 8, 2009, as a mainstream variant of the earlier Core i7, the Lynnfield 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.