Question Debating on upgrading my older Z68 gamer

[Charlie98]

RE: Both my main desktop, and game rig in sig below...

So... my game rig is still running an OC'ed 2500K; I don't have any problems with it, and I'll grant I've not used it a bunch lately. The most modern title I play is CoD/MW3, FSX, X-plane, and maybe something like Train Sim, which it does with relative ease.

I built my current desktop 2 years ago, picking the Ryzen 2700x as the best balance of performance and money... but I don't really like it. Even with 16 cores/threads it seems like it's laggy and struggles sometimes. Here's my dilemma...

Would moving the 2700x system to the game rig, replacing the old Z68/2500K, benefit me in any way? I don't know enough about benchmarks to really tell if it would be a good move or not, and the fact that I'm not playing any modern titles. I would then rebuild my main desktop with something else. I don't have any plans on replacing the GPU... not with the cost of them at the moment... my other thought would be that if the CPU change would be a boost, it might leave the GPU behind. This is all stuff I don't know.

Thoughts?

 

[RLGL]

Run it till it dies. Save your time and money for the future build.

 

[Charlie98]

Run it till it dies. Save your time and money for the future build.

It's not a question of waiting til it dies, my question is... would transferring my Desktop 2700x to the Game rig make a noticeable improvement for the trouble? If it's a lateral performance move, then I won't bother.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Get an 5800X3D?

 

[Charlie98]

I guess I'm not explaining myself well...

Yes or No. Will swapping out the old Z68/2500K combo to an AMD 2700x benefit me in any way as far as gaming, given the older, limited titles I'm running? I have a GTX970SSC as a GPU, it is not getting upgraded at this point.

 

[Tech Junky]

Why not just load a game to the AMD setup and test it?

Also, you can get an Intel A770 16gb GPU for $350.

 

[In2Photos]

I guess I'm not explaining myself well...

Yes or No. Will swapping out the old Z68/2500K combo to an AMD 2700x benefit me in any way as far as gaming, given the older, limited titles I'm running? I have a GTX970SSC as a GPU, it is not getting upgraded at this point.

The 2700X should be a better gaming CPU compared to the 2500K. I'll assume that you are running at 1080p resolution? If that's the case you could see a marked improvement as that resolution scales with the CPU more than the GPU typically. But if your current CPU isn't limiting your experience you may not see an improvement. I think it's worth trying though. Maybe a refresh on your gaming rig will get you back playing more frequently.

 

[RLGL]

After seeing your other post, I think the rig with the corruption should be retired.

 

[Charlie98]

After seeing your other post, I think the rig with the corruption should be retired.

So... retire the 2 year old system, and keep the 11 year old system?

As much as I don't like the 2700x chip, it's not the hardware that's bad... it's the OS. It's not a powerhouse, for sure, but I wasn't really having problems with it until the last update.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

So... retire the 2 year old system, and keep the 11 year old system?

As much as I don't like the 2700x chip, it's not the hardware that's bad... it's the OS. It's not a powerhouse, for sure, but I wasn't really having problems with it until the last update.

I haven't checked your other thread, but I recently sold a Ryzen 2600 system that was super snappy with 10 pro.

Unlike the old days, when it was advised to not update the bios unless absolutely necessary, that is the first thing I do with AM4 setups now. An old bios on AM4 can be problematic.

I'd also manually install the latest AMD chipset drivers. Then, I'd do a repair windows install if it is still nerfed. Keeps all your stuff that way.

 

[Charlie98]

I'm sure I checked the BIOS when I built it, I don't remember off hand what I did. I've not checked the BIOS versions lately, maybe I'll give it a whirl. I'll look at the AMD drivers as well. If memory serves, there was a chipset update recently.

 

[Charlie98]

but I recently sold a Ryzen 2600 system that was super snappy with 10 pro.

I just built an i3 system for a friend, although I'm comparing a new OS with my 2yr old one, that i3 was pretty darn snappy!

 

[In2Photos]

When I built my son's 5600X B550 system last year it worked great out of the box. About a month later it started crashing while playing games. I spent several days trying all sorts of stuff. Finally I tried a BIOS update and it resolved all his issues. So it's worth a shot.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I just built an i3 system for a friend, although I'm comparing a new OS with my 2yr old one, that i3 was pretty darn snappy!

Fresh windows be like that. Any Ryzen CPU should feel that way. I ran benchmarks and stress tests before selling the 2600 combo, and would have neve known I'd forgotten to enable XMP if not for the scores and system info provided.

@In2Photos

 

[AnitaPeterson]

"I built my current desktop 2 years ago, picking the Ryzen 2700x as the best balance of performance and money... but I don't really like it. Even with 16 cores/threads it seems like it's laggy and struggles sometimes "

A 2700x feels laggy? What are you doing with it, if not gaming (since it's the "main" machine)?
I am very curious, because a 8c16t Zen+ should be miles ahead of a 4c Sandy Bridge: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/804vs3238/Intel-i5-2500K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-2700X

(And by the way, that 2500K is an extraordinary CPU, I ran one for almost 11 years.)

Like others have already said, something seems set up improperly - either in BIOS or missing chipset drivers. Even with an SSD for OS drive, if those m2/SATA drivers are outdated, you may have trouble.

You also haven't mentioned what operating system you're running on the "laggy" 2700x, even though you admit in a later post the OS is to blame, not the hardware.

 

[Charlie98]

"I built my current desktop 2 years ago, picking the Ryzen 2700x as the best balance of performance and money... but I don't really like it. Even with 16 cores/threads it seems like it's laggy and struggles sometimes "

A 2700x feels laggy? What are you doing with it, if not gaming (since it's the "main" machine)?
I am very curious, because a 8c16t Zen+ should be miles ahead of a 4c Sandy Bridge: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/804vs3238/Intel-i5-2500K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-2700X

(And by the way, that 2500K is an extraordinary CPU, I ran one for almost 11 years.)

Like others have already said, something seems set up improperly - either in BIOS or missing chipset drivers. Even with an SSD for OS drive, if those m2/SATA drivers are outdated, you may have trouble.

You also haven't mentioned what operating system you're running on the "laggy" 2700x, even though you admit in a later post the OS is to blame, not the hardware.

It's in my sig... W10Pro.

I still have 2 2500K's running, even after all these years they are pretty hard to beat. Besides gaming, they don't see the demand my main desktop sees, however. The stars really aligned when the 2500K was dropped from the heavens.

Well, as I mentioned, file transfers are slower, the computer will hang sometimes when I try to open a file, either off the OS m2 SSD, or one of the attached drives. My spreadsheets seem to work well enough... once I get them open. I work with a fair amount of photos and images, and navigating through them is slower, now.

Because I'm not necessarily a geek, software is not my thing, I never think about manually updating drivers and such. I do check the BIOS once in a while, although it's been a bit, and I usually rely on Windows to keep everything up to date, since I don't have much say over that, anymore. I've got some good suggestions, here, on things to try.

I keep going back to the last Windows update, however... that's when things started to stray. Periodically, the System will draw down everything...

...and I'm not smart enough to find out why it's doing that. Reading a bit on the forums, it might be a process of the Edge Updater, even though I have Edge completely disabled (as much as I know how.) I've gone into Task Scheduler and disabled the 2 triggers there... and that seemed to help.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Download and run Malwarebytes free edition just to eliminate some of the usual suspects for system slowdowns.

I have the same AN750 as a boot drive in one of my systems, and it is a solid budget choice. You can run Crystaldiskinfo and Crystaldiskbench to be certain it is performing properly.

Another thing that won't hurt, is type disk cleanup in the windows search bar and run it. Click on the system files tab and checkbox everything. Windows eventually does it on its own, but being proactive is warranted when having issues like yours'.

If all else fails, doing a windows repair install using the latest version is a good idea. If you already know the process of downloading it and having it create a bootable USB drive, you are half way home. The directions for a repair install are easy and straight forward. Post back if you need help with it, should you decide to proceed.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Slow transfers? Hmmm...
I use Teracopy (which also verifies after copying), but I think that points to a storage issue.
Aside from storage drivers, are you sure your SSD is OK? Did you check it with CrystalDiskInfo or something like it?
I see in your sig you're using a NVMe disk - is that the boot drive?

Honestly, I would consider a reinstall from scratch.
Remove the boot drive and replace it with a brand-new SSD.
That way you can always revert to the existing system, no permanent changes made to it.
Use the news SSD to install Windows (an older version before the update you think it's to blame would be great).
Stop the automatic Windows updates.
Go to Gigabyte, search the motherboard's page and download the latest drivers and BIOS. Make sure all is well under "Device Manager".
Try the activities which you found to be choppy before, and play with them a bit. See if they're still there.
If you like the way the computer responds, create a restore point.
Reenable the Windows updates. See if after they're all installed you're still experiencing the lag.
If yes, restore the system to an earlier time and then you can figure out which update is the culprit - or avoid updates altogether.

 

[igor_kavinski]

that i3 was pretty darn snappy!

12th gen i3? I can totally believe that. I used a i5-12400 briefly and I was blown away by how quickly software installed. It was like experiencing my i7-5775C running at 7 GHz. And it wasn't even a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Just a WD RED using PCIe 3.0. Not really a screamer.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Which colorful utility is that?

 

[Charlie98]

12th gen i3? I can totally believe that.

No... just an i3-10100... it was a very budget build. Gigabyte B560m board and an SN770 M.2, with W10. Very clean, very fast.

 

[Charlie98]

Which colorful utility is that?

All CPU Meter by addgadgets. It used to come in Windows widgets, but they now consider it a security vulnerability. I like it... a LOT.

 

[Charlie98]

Download and run Malwarebytes free edition just to eliminate some of the usual suspects for system slowdowns.

I have the same AN750 as a boot drive in one of my systems, and it is a solid budget choice. You can run Crystaldiskinfo and Crystaldiskbench to be certain it is performing properly.

Another thing that won't hurt, is type disk cleanup in the windows search bar and run it. Click on the system files tab and checkbox everything. Windows eventually does it on its own, but being proactive is warranted when having issues like yours'.

If all else fails, doing a windows repair install using the latest version is a good idea. If you already know the process of downloading it and having it create a bootable USB drive, you are half way home. The directions for a repair install are easy and straight forward. Post back if you need help with it, should you decide to proceed.

I actually run the free MWB utility, and SAS Pro, regularly. I also check my disks every few days with CrystalDiskInfo to monitor my old spinners, and I have that and the WD utility to monitor the main OS SSD. I use 1 internal and 2 portable external spinners for storage, but they aren't regularly queued... so I don't think it's a matter of them slowing the system down, but, having said that, trying to move files back and forth between the OS or storage SSD and the spinners or thumb drives is where I'm really seeing the hangs.

Slow transfers? Hmmm...
I use Teracopy (which also verifies after copying), but I think that points to a storage issue.
Aside from storage drivers, are you sure your SSD is OK? Did you check it with CrystalDiskInfo or something like it?
I see in your sig you're using a NVMe disk - is that the boot drive?

Honestly, I would consider a reinstall from scratch.

I've been considering a fresh install of W10, or... maybe... W11. I need to replace the 250GB WD SSD... It was expensive when I bought it, and I couldn't afford the 500GB version. I'm at 80% capacity right now, and I know that needs to change. The WD is an NVMe drive, and I would replace it with a similar WD.

I'd forgotten about using Device Manager to see if there are problems... I'll check that.

 

[In2Photos]

I actually run the free MWB utility, and SAS Pro, regularly. I also check my disks every few days with CrystalDiskInfo to monitor my old spinners, and I have that and the WD utility to monitor the main OS SSD. I use 1 internal and 2 portable external spinners for storage, but they aren't regularly queued... so I don't think it's a matter of them slowing the system down, but, having said that, trying to move files back and forth between the OS or storage SSD and the spinners or thumb drives is where I'm really seeing the hangs.



I've been considering a fresh install of W10, or... maybe... W11. I need to replace the 250GB WD SSD... It was expensive when I bought it, and I couldn't afford the 500GB version. I'm at 80% capacity right now, and I know that needs to change. The WD is an NVMe drive, and I would replace it with a similar WD.

I'd forgotten about using Device Manager to see if there are problems... I'll check that.

80% capacity may be some of your issues. I would definitely consider a larger replacement.

 

[Charlie98]

80% capacity may be some of your issues. I would definitely consider a larger replacement.

Quite true... although I've noticed on more modern SSD's it's not quite the penalty the old ones used to be... ...but 80% is 80%