PC Upgrade Pending

[Skouperd]

(This is R500 cheaper than a 770)

and R250 more expensive than this XFX R9-280x http://www.carbonite.co.za/showthrea...Double-D-Stock
or R600 cheaper than a GTX780 http://www.carbonite.co.za/showthrea...ozr-OC-Edition
or R1700 cheaper than a Titan. http://www.carbonite.co.za/showthrea...ighlight=titan

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

[Cat Nipples]

[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.inte....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...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.

3dMark06.jpg

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.

Limited results.jpg


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.

Same card - different CPU.jpg

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!)