'Max' GPU for a 5 yo PC? i7-920 etc

[rakenven]

Hello!
So, I have a pc from summer 2009, which is still fast enough to play most games, but I want to partially upgrade it.

Current specs:
Core i7-920 2.66 GHZ
Kingston 9GB ram (around 14900 speed, triple channel config)
ASUS P6T SE mobo
Thermaltake W0203 TOUGHPOWER QFAN 750W PSU
Sapphire 4870 Toxic 1GB GPU

My main problem is that the GPU does not support DX11, so I cannot play some games. So I'd like to upgrade only that.

The question is: What is the fastest (modern) GPU I can get, before my CPU becomes the bottleneck?

I can see that CPU performance has not improved dramatically lately. So, even at cpu-bound jobs like zipping, you don't get more than 1.5 times the speed, when comparing first gen i7 to latest. This article is 1.5 yr old though.

I can overclock the 920 a bit I guess, as I have a good box (Colermaster HAF 900) and a big heatsink. I could also find a used i7-965, too, if that's needed. Also, the mobo supports 3 GPUs so I could go with 2-3 less powerful instead of one.

I play games like GTA, and planning to play Watchdogs when I have DX11.

Thanks for your help!
Cheers

 

[AtenRa]

OC the core i7 920 to 3.2GHz and above and get a AMD R9 290. OC the card to 1GHz and you are set to go for a long time.

Next year upgrade to Windows 10 with DX12 and enjoy.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Depends on the game and the settings. If you like image quality and turn on msaa (or worse, dsr) you won't be cpu limited easily.

Could get a 290, they're pretty affordable, especially used (ex mining, but still in warranty)

 

[SlickR12345]

I guess you can go as far as 290x if you want. That CPU (overclocked) is unlikely to be a bottleneck at higher resolutions than 1650x and above.

 

[Magic Carpet]

A friend upgraded his 7870 to 290 and seems happy enough. Has got a similar CPU clocked at ~3.3 Ghz. Certainly prefers 290 over 7870 Crossfire which I helped him to build.

But yeah, he's too lazy to do a complete re-build. That CPU has seen better days, imo. But it's all relative, you know. After playing Far Cry 4 with an ancient X2 4600+ last night, i7 920 is in a different league. Had to use an injector to get the game working on a dual-core, such PITA. You will have no such problems

 

[raghu78]

as suggested above overclock the CPU. Get a R9 290 and you will be very happy with the performance and price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202080

Get the sapphire R9 290 Tri-X. At USD 270 keeps going out of and coming back into stock.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The R9 290 is probably your best bet, as others have suggested.

If you can find a used i7 970 for a reasonable price, then you'll be set for a long, long time. The resale value on the 920 probably isn't all that bad either.

 

[CP5670]

The 920 is not that much slower than modern CPUs when running at the same frequencies, especially in singleplayer games. I have one at 4ghz on that same motherboard, and went from a GTX 280 to 980 recently. I'm looking at getting a 4790K soon but don't expect it to make much difference in most games, and want it more for other things.

 

[KaRLiToS]

The fastest you can get is a GTX 980. Or if you want a Dual GPU (single card) it is the R9 295x2

The best and wisest choice though is a R9 290 or a GTX 970.

 

[Magic Carpet]

The 920 is not that much slower than modern CPUs when running at the same frequencies, especially in singleplayer games. I have one at 4ghz on that same motherboard, and went from a GTX 280 to 980 recently. I'm looking at getting a 4790K soon but don't expect it to make much difference in most games, and want it more for other things.

My biggest problem with X58 and 9xx is power draw, especially when overclocked. Add to that extra noise from the fans that are necessary to remove heat. Adding a power hungry 290/290x would just be icing on the cake. On a hot summer day, you know what happens. Personally, I would just water cool everything had I had such a build. But it's easier to switch platform. But then again, I like things quiet and efficient.

 

[digitaldurandal]

On my i7 920 to i5 2500k with one GPU I didn't see a large difference, only in SLI was there a notable difference. Of course at the time the 6xx series were newest cards so YMMV. Either way it didn't seem to handicap a 670 really at all (decent GPU intensive settings mind you) but it did hold back 2 of them.

 

[lehtv]

Depends entirely on the game. There are some games that are CPU limited in certain situations no matter how fast your CPU is.

Personally I would sell the i7.920 setup while it's still worth something and upgrade to a Haswell Xeon, at least that way you ensure a more consistent experience.

 

[RussianSensation]

Overclocked i7 920 @ 4.0ghz will provide you with 85-90% of the performance of the latest chips with a single GPU card and AA (excepting games that are heavily CPU limited). I would suggest R9 280X for $200 or an after-market R9 290 for $250. Those are by far the best deals. Don't forget to overclock that CPU though or no point in getting anything faster than a 280X.

Sapphire Tri-X R9 280X = $200
Asus R9 290 = $270

^ If you can wait until Sapphire Tri-X R9 290 comes back in stock at $250.

A Core i7 920 @ 4.0ghz will even benefit from an R9 295X2 or a 980 but I wouldn't recommend those GPUs as you seem to be a very light gamer given that you still have a 4870. GPUs improve in performance and drop in price too fast. Given your purchasing habits, these sub-$300 GPUs will be good enough for you and then in 2-3 years just do a full system upgrade. i7 920 can overclock to 4.0Ghz on default/stock voltage or with a very minor bump. You just have to raise the BCLK close to 200.

This guide will help you:
http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz

 

[Leyawiin]

I would suggest R9 280X for $200...

Sapphire Tri-X R9 280X = $200

They still have the $25 Visa Checkout promo as well. Would bring that down to $175 and that's a good amount of performance for the money. I think it would be a perfect match for a moderately OC'd i7-920.

 

[toyota]

The 920 is not that much slower than modern CPUs when running at the same frequencies, especially in singleplayer games. I have one at 4ghz on that same motherboard, and went from a GTX 280 to 980 recently. I'm looking at getting a 4790K soon but don't expect it to make much difference in most games, and want it more for other things.

4ghz is insane for those old chips. even if possible that would be a ridiculous amount of power used.

and sorry but the first gen i7 cpus were not all that impressive. in some cases they could not even beat the Core 2 quads even at the same clocks.

 

[KaRLiToS]

4ghz is insane for those old chips. even if possible that would be a ridiculous amount of power used.

and sorry but the first gen i7 cpus were not all that impressive. in some cases they could not even beat the Core 2 quads even at the same clocks.

This makes no sense at all. I could easily OC my i7 930 at 4,3ghz 24|7 and I had a Q9650 before at 4,25 GHZ and there was a very big noticeable difference. The i7 930 ran my HD 5870 Trifire pretty well.

I had a BFG Tech 8800GTX OC2 with my Q9650, that setup was awsome.

 

[toyota]

This makes no sense at all. I could easily OC my i7 930 at 4,3ghz 24|7 and I had a Q9650 before at 4,25 GHZ and there was a very big noticeable difference. The i7 930 ran my HD 5870 Trifire pretty well.

I had a BFG Tech 8800GTX OC2 with my Q9650, that setup was awsome.

it most certainly makes since as hardly anyone oced those 920 cpus past 3.8. and at 4.0 or more the power consumption is laughable. a 920 at more than 4.0 will use more power than my entire system.

and here you go as the i7 at 3.2 is not even beating the Core 2 quad at 3.2 in every case. http://www.anandtech.com/show/2658/19

 

[Flapdrol1337]

D0 stepping usually makes 4GHz, the ones before that usually don't.

I found a 2500K at stock was a tiny bit faster than an i5-750 on 4 Ghz, ivy bridge and then haswell have increased the ipc a bit, but a 4 Ghz 920 is still pretty good.

 

[Headfoot]

Yeah OC that 920 and get a 290. Donezo

 

[crashtech]

Lots of recommendations for AMD GPUs, and I run one myself (290) but from the many results I have seen, it looks like in general Nvidia tends to play better with weaker CPUs, unless of course the game supports Mantle. Based on this I would get a GTX 970 if the budget would allow, especially considering as last I heard Watch Dogs does a lot better on Nvidia.

 

[RussianSensation]

4ghz is insane for those old chips. even if possible that would be a ridiculous amount of power used.

What? 920, especially D0 overclocks to 4-4.4Ghz. Those are normal overclocks on air for that chip with 4-4.2Ghz on stock volts. Sure, the power consumption is a lot but even 150W extra will work out to $25-30 a year max for anyone but the most hardcore PC gamer. Not worth upgrading for him yet until Skylake since he waited that long.

and sorry but the first gen i7 cpus were not all that impressive. in some cases they could not even beat the Core 2 quads even at the same clocks.

You must be confusing Nehalem/Lynnfield with Pentium D Prescott and Pentium 4 C. Nehalem/Lynnfield was THE biggest improvement in IPC for gaming compared to ANY generation from Intel since then, much more than Nehalem -> SB or SB -> HW. People seem to have completely forgotten how much faster Nehalem was. My stock i7 860 at the time leveled my Q6600 @ 3.4ghz. On paper SB and HW provide nice improvements in IPCs, but it doesn't translate into games, but going from C2Q to i7 @ 4.0Ghz did translate massively.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/far_cry_3_graphics_performance_review_benchmark,7.html

You are seriously mistaken if you think SB or even HW provides some major improvement in games on average unless you are going SLI/CF or are specifically playing extremely CPU limited Blizzard games or Total War strategy games or if all you do is play Crysis 3 all day. It's only recently that we are seeing i7 4700 @ 4.5-4.7Ghz pull off 20-30% gains and that often comes when you are combining it with 780Ti SLI or 980 SLI.

 

[toyota]

What? 920, especially D0 overclocks to 4-4.4Ghz. Those are normal overclocks on air for that chip with 4-4.2Ghz on stock volts. Sure, the power consumption is a lot but even 150W extra will work out to $25-30 a year max for anyone but the most hardcore PC gamer. Not worth upgrading for him yet until Skylake since he waited that long.



You are strongly mistaken. You are confusing Nehalem/Lynnfield with Pentium D Prescott and Pentium 4 C. Nehalem/Lynnfield was THE biggest improvement in IPC for gaming compared to ANY generation from Intel since then, much more than Nehalem -> SB or SB -> HW. People seem to have completely forgotten how much faster Nehalem was.

My stock i7 860 at the time leveled my Q6600 @ 3.4ghz.

You are seriously mistaken if you think SB or even HW provides some major improvement in games. It's only recently that we are seeing i7 4700 @ 4.5-4.7Ghz pull off 20-30% gains and that often comes when you are combining it with 780Ti SLI or 980 SLI.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/far_cry_3_graphics_performance_review_benchmark,7.html

I guess I am thinking of the pre DO 920 cpus. and at well over 4.0 we are talking way more than just another 150 watts.

and I already linked to a review clearly showing that even at the same clocks, the first gen i7 cpus were hardly any faster for gaming and in some cases were no faster and even could lose to the Core 2 quads.


EDIT: I knew 3.8 was about the max on the very first i7 cpus so some of you are just exaggerating. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-920-overclocking_11.html#sect0

"But to our great disappointment, it refused to work at 4GHz even after a serious increase of the Uncore voltage."


EDIT 2: and another review showing little to no improvement in gaming. heck the i7 loses in Far Cry 2 on settings thay used. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/03/intel-core-i7-920-945-965-review/5

"Our Far Cry 2 numbers offer surprising results to say the least. We checked and double checked these numbers and even upgraded to using the latest Nvidia 180.43 drivers (which are the results shown above) but it made no difference. It seems that the Far Cry 2 engine just doesn't like the Core i7 architecture as much as it likes the previous generation Penryns, as they are a lot faster. Even the significantly cheaper Q6700, E8500 and AMD hardware outperform the Core i7s that all sit at the bottom of the table."

 

[RussianSensation]

^ Even if he overclocked to 3.6-3.7Ghz, for now a cheap R9 280X is a major improvement over his 4870. Then he can do a full system rebuild around Skylake or even 6820K BW-E in Q1 2016. I mean looking at his system, he is probably OK turning down some settings as he has used his stock 920 and a 4870 for this long.

Even a $130 R9 280 will go a long way for him if he doesn't plan on overclocking at all.

 

[toyota]

^ Even if he overclocked to 3.6-3.7Ghz, for now a cheap R9 280X is a major improvement over his 4870. Then he can do a full system rebuild around Skylake or even 6820K BW-E in Q1 2016. I mean looking at his system, he is probably OK turning down some settings as he has used his stock 920 and a 4870 for this long.

Even a $130 R9 280 will go a long way for him if he doesn't plan on overclocking at all.

no where was I saying he needed to oc over 4. I was simply saying that 4 and above is not normal like some of you are claiming. in fact it seems impossible on the pre DO chips.

I dont disagree with you at all about your upgrade suggestions. again my main point here was that the first gen i7 cpus were not all that great like some people seem to think.

 

[psolord]

I would recommend a GTX 970 for the sole reason that Nvidia's drivers have much less cpu overhead than AMD's.

Go to gamegpu.ru and see comparisons of AMD and Nvidia on the same cpus. Differences are as high as 50% or more. This is crazy.

example



What this means for you, is that when you will hit a cpu limit and your game will be running at 40fps with an AMD card, it will run with 60fps with an Nvidia card of the same caliber, simply because the cpu will be free to do its stuff, instead of doing whatever it's doing with AMD's drivers.