750 to spend, what should I do?

[Kokiafan]

Playing FPS and Driving, Flight Sims.
Running a 3 monitor system, routing sound through a pioneer receiver and a 6 piece surround sound speaker system. I was thinking of spending a bit of money on myself, and when I looked at specs for new videocards, I saw that almost all the test rigs are using an i7 processor and intel mobo.
I am an AMD guy since forever, and have the setup shown below.
Do I...get another 16 gig of ram and a MSI Computer Video Graphics Card GTX 980TI GAMING 6G?

Or does it make more sense to spend another hundred, go Intel, and put in:
Intel Core BX80646I74790K i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz)
ASUS Z97-A ATX DDR3 2600 LGA 1150 Motherboards Z97-A
Kingston HyperX FURY 16GB Kit (2x8GB) 1600MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM - Black (HX316C10FBK2/16)
With this video card:
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC GAMING ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling Graphics Card 04G-P4-3975-KR


Here is my rig
Mainboard : GigaByte 990FXA-UD3
Total Memory : 16GB DIMM DDR3
AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor (4M 8T 4.12GHz, 2.21GHz IMC, 4x 2MB L2, 8MB L3)
Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1333C9 8GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-33-10-5)
Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1333C9 8GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-33-10-5)
Video Adapter : AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series (20CU 1280SP SM5.0 1.1GHz/1GHz 10% OC, 2GB DDR5 4.8GHz 256-bit, PCIe 3.00 x16)
Monitor/Panel : Dell Computer DELL E2414H
(1920x1080, 24.0")
Monitor/Panel : ACI VW246
(1920x1080, 24.0")
Monitor/Panel : Dell Computer DELL E2414H
(1920x1080, 24.0")
Hard Disk (C : 447GB (NTFS) @ SanDisk SDSSDHII480G (480.1GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD)
Seagate ST3000DM001-9YN166 (3TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm) : 3TB (F
HGST HDN724030ALE640 (3TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm) : 3TB (K
Audio Device : Gigabyte IXP SB600 High Definition Audio Controller
Audio Codec : Realtek Semi High Definition Audio
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 6.01.7601 (Service Pack 1)
Platform Compliance : x64

 

[bystander36]

You don't need to spend any money if you are happy with your current performance, but your system does have room to improve.

Unless you are a high FPS gamer (turns down settings to achieve 85+ FPS), you will see the biggest gains by upgrading your GPU. If by some chance, you find yourself CPU bound a lot, which is most likely going to happen if you look to play at high FPS, then an Intel upgrade would be a good place to start.

A GPU upgrade will allow for higher settings, and higher FPS if you aren't CPU bound.
A CPU upgrade will raise the FPS ceiling, so it's possible to get higher than X FPS when using the low enough settings your GPU is not slowing you down.

 

[Kokiafan]

Was hoping the CPU isn't the choke point in this system. The testers all use the i7 for a reason...

Plus, I would have to reload windows for a new mobo.
Thnks

 

[EliteRetard]

Honestly, keep your current system...the CPU is fine for now, you have plenty of good RAM, even have a good sized SSD. For gaming, you don't need more than 16GB and buying more DDR3 now would be a waste when everything is moving to DDR4. The only thing I would touch is the GPU, since you have 3 monitors.

However, there is a completely new generation of GPU tech coming in less than a year, so it wouldn't be wise to spend all your money now. You can just about double your performance (and double your RAM) with less than $250 getting an AMD 290 GPU like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...sipation_Radeon_R9_290-_-14-150-701-_-Product

I don't know which 78xx series card you have, but here's a comparison with the faster 7870 vs a 290:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1034?vs=1056

This upgrade alone should hold you over for another year. Then save the other $500 for a serious upgrade when the new stuff drops. We haven't seen a node shrink or architectural change in 4-5 years, and haven't had new memory types since 2007-2008. All of that changes next year.

 

[happy medium]

Just buy a gtx970 for 243$ and use it with your current system until new gpu's come out later next year. This should double your performance.

https://jet.com/product/Zotac-ZT-90...08-GHz-Core-/e7f49c84a9a34b4f87f40cfe506e5491

Next time go with a Intel setup, they are much much faster.

If you want to spend the other 500$ now, 155$ for a Asus Z170-A and grab a 6600k for about 250$ and you have about 90$ to spend on ddr4ram. I think you can do it, mabe for a few bucks over your budget.
The Z97 setups are good but why invest in last years tech?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Dont most flight sims favor high IPC (aka Intel)? In any case, I would first go with a gpu upgrade and see how it goes. Either the 290/290x or GTX970 would be a good choice. Save the rest for a cpu upgrade if you are not satisfied after getting a better gpu, or for another gpu upgrade when the next generation hits.

Is your 8350 overclocked? If not you should probably be able to get another 10% or so out of it without too much problem.

 

[EliteRetard]

For triple monitor I'd take a 290 vs 970. The AMD card seems to do better the higher resolution you go and also has higher effective VRAM (4GB vs 3.5GB) while also being cheaper.

A moderately overclocked 8350 encroaches on i5's for gaming, and it's not worth the large investment at this time to switch out your entire system. Sure an Intel system is faster, by maybe 15%... Even if an Intel system were 50% faster, it costs far more than a GPU upgrade and still gives you less of a performance gain.

An 8350 isn't going to hold back a 290 or 970 by a significant degree. Certainly not enough to justify an additional $500 and a complete system rebuild.

 

[Seba]

While your gaming would benefit more from a better graphics card (but do not go above R9 390 or GTX 970), a platform upgrade to Skylake with DDR4 (not to Haswell at this point) would make more sense, because on the CPU side there are no major performance increases expected in the near future. In contrast, the new generation of graphics card is expected to provide a big performance increase.

 

[littleg]

Yeah, 290 is a good shout to tide you over until the next gen drops. Maybe even one of the 8GB 390s depending on the resolutions, triple monitor is gonna be pushing a lot of pixels so the extra VRAM might be useful.

 

[NTMBK]

Don't flight sims tend to throw around a lot of data? You might be better off with an 8GB video card, like an R9 390.

 

[Erenhardt]

Way too many pixels for your 2GB 7850. I would go for 4gb 290 at least, or even 8GB 390. It would fly at this resolution.

I am sporting r9 290 and have fx8300 overclocked to 4.4Ghz. It depends on the game, but I'm GPU bound at 2560x1080 in witcher 3