mild upgrade

[fourdegrees11]

Hi, I currently have this setup:

AMD 720 x3 2.8ghz
4850 512mb gpu
4gb ddr3 1333mhz
22" 1680x1050 monitor

I'm considering a final upgrade of my am3 platform to get a couple more years out of it. I haven't really kept up with what's been going on to much but here's what I'm looking at.

AMD 970 x4 3.5ghz $130
6870 1gb gpu $180
Corsair dominator 8gb ddr3 1600mhz $45

I'm only a moderate gamer, but I like to have a decent rig for the occasional game that interests me. I was disappointed a couple years ago when I got this current setup and couldn't run NWN2 on maxed settings at a decent frame rate. is it worth the CPU upgrade?

 

[lehtv]

X3 720 vs X4 970 - a pretty big difference, but unfortunately no gaming benches. It would increase the longevity of your setup, you could probably pair it with a mid-high 28nm GPU with little to no bottlenecking

As a comparison of 4850 vs 6870, I'm going to use 4870 vs 6950 as 4850 isn't available for comparison... So roughly 2x better framerates. I'd expect though that your current CPU won't bottleneck a 6870. Perhaps you should only get the GPU for now, and if the increase in FPS seems much lower than what it should be, then upgrade the CPU. If you're satisfied with the FPS increase, you could aim for an upgrade to Intel Ivy Bridge in 2012.

Your current RAM doesn't need upgrading. BTW where do you get 8GB Dominator for $45?

 

[fourdegrees11]

Amazon, thanks for the feedback

 

[Ken g6]

- Does your motherboard do unlocking? Can you unlock the fourth core of the x3 you have? Can you overclock with your current mobo?
- The GPU is a significant upgrade. But can you wait a couple of months? The new 7000 series should be out by January.
- RAM might not be a bad idea, especially if it's 1.5v: You could move it to an Ivy Bridge system later. However, I wouldn't expect it to help your gaming much.

 

[fourdegrees11]

Sorry that ram is vengeance not dominator

 

[fourdegrees11]

- Does your motherboard do unlocking? Can you unlock the fourth core of the x3 you have? Can you overclock with your current mobo?
- The GPU is a significant upgrade. But can you wait a couple of months? The new 7000 series should be out by January.
- RAM might not be a bad idea, especially if it's 1.5v: You could move it to an Ivy Bridge system later. However, I wouldn't expect it to help your gaming much.

I haven't seen an option for unlocking a core. I tried OCing, but it would crash with a mild oc of a couple hundred MHz.

As far as waiting on the new serious of gpus, if the $180 price range offers a decent increase of at least %20 I have no problem waiting.

While the CPU and RAM won't matter much with gaming, my overall system performance should improve with Windows 8 in mind right? I'm still running vista 64.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I was disappointed a couple years ago when I got this current setup and couldn't run NWN2 on maxed settings at a decent frame rate. is it worth the CPU upgrade?

Were you fully patched? At release NWN2 was HORRIBLE. I was getting like 15FPS on low settings with an X2 5200+ and 320MB 8800GTS, which was a pretty high end system at the time. Fast-forward a few years and I tried playing it again, and I was getting a solid 40FPS with 2xAA on high settings (medium shadows) on the same X2 5200+ (video card was now a 9600GT which is in the same league as the previous 8800).

As for buying a new processor, have you tried just overclocking your 720? The fourth core of a 970 will rarely be used unless you're doing something like video encoding, so if you can get your 720 up to near 3.5GHz you'll basically have a 970 for free.
^^ Ah I see you tried.

But really, I'm not seeing much reason for you to upgrade to a 970. You should be having no problems with "overall system performance" with that 720. If you are having issues I'd tend to believe your problems lie with Vista, not that processor.
Also not seeing any reason for more RAM.

Prices are good on the 6870. This one is $149 after rebate and promo (promo ends today.) Wait or not is up to you.

 

[lehtv]

Windows 8, IIRC, will use less RAM than Windows 7. That's just something I remember reading, don't have a link sry. I don't see why it would be more intensive on the CPU either.

 

[mfenn]

But really, I'm not seeing much reason for you to upgrade to a 970. You should be having no problems with "overall system performance" with that 720. If you are having issues I'd tend to believe your problems lie with Vista, not that processor.
Also not seeing any reason for more RAM.

Prices are good on the 6870. This one is $149 after rebate and promo (promo ends today.) Wait or not is up to you.

:thumbsup: My thoughts exactly.

Windows 8, IIRC, will use less RAM than Windows 7. That's just something I remember reading, don't have a link sry. I don't see why it would be more intensive on the CPU either.

Here ya go.

"One of Microsoft's stated goals for Windows 8 is for it to run on any system capable of running Windows 7, which at a minimum will require the its resource usage to remain the same as its predecessor's. Today on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft's Bill Karagounis details how the company has worked not just to maintain memory usage relative to Windows 7, but to reduce it, with an eye toward making it run acceptably on ARM-based tablets that lack the beefy processors and multi-gigabyte RAM banks of today's PCs."

 

[fourdegrees11]

So would I be better off going with a cheap LGA 1155 motherboard like the MSI H61M-E33 ($70) and an i3 2120 ($130)? Is there any AM3 CPU that could better this combo? This would also give me another upgrade path for the future, asumming Intel dosent release another socket type...

I do game at 1680x1050, which does seem to require more from the cpu acording to all these benchmarks I've been looking at.

I built my current pc, but I've never upgraded one before. Since I'm keeping the same HD, everything should just boot right up from swapping a MB and CPU?

 

[lehtv]

The video card would still be your biggest upgrade gaming-wise. The i3-2100 isn't a huge improvement over the X3.

Crysis Warhead, 1680x1050 mainstream quality (more CPU-dependent):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/83?vs=289

X3 720: 74 fps = 100%
i3-2100: 89.5 fps = 121%

Crysis Warhead, 1680x1050 enthusiast quality (more GPU-dependent):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/290?vs=304

4870: 14.7 fps = 100%
6870: 32.3 fps = 220%

As you can see, you'll get much better gaming performance if you upgrade the video card. Your CPU should be fine with a 6870. You can upgrade the platform to Ivy Bridge next year if you need to, depends on your requirements for image quality and the games you play. A quad core Ivy Bridge would last you several years and many GPU upgrades.

 

[fourdegrees11]

I plan on the GPU upgrade regardless of the CPU. I think AM3 being a dead platform has me wanting to move on.

 

[fourdegrees11]

Wow, looking at that comparison the 2100 is much better then the 720 at everything, and better then the 980 at basically every game but Left 4 Dead. I dont know what all of those other comparisons really mean. The 2120 would of course look a bit better vs 2100.

 

[lehtv]

Sure, 2100 is better than the 720 but only by 30-50%. Given that your CPU would handle the 6870 fine, I really don't see a point in upgrading at the moment, unless you use the CPU for actually CPU-intensive tasks (in which case it'd make more sense to get an i5). You'd get better value for money with Ivy Bridge

 

[Ken g6]

I tried OCing, but it would crash with a mild oc of a couple hundred MHz.

Look around and/or ask in the CPUs and Overclocking forum. I bet you can do better than that. Maybe you need to adjust your memory multiplier or voltage or something. Do get speedfan or something to watch your temperatures, though. If heat is a problem, a new CPU cooler could be a nice, cheap upgrade.

Edit: 720 unlocking comment from Newegg:

To unlock all i did was update bios to f 4g, go into bios ctrl+F1 to advanced opts, go into acc, switch to Hybrid in ecc, Auto on all cores, and walla 4 working cores.

 

[lehtv]

and walla 4 working cores.

By walla did he mean voilà?

 

[mfenn]

By walla did he mean voilà?

Don't hate, he's from 'murrica. :awe:

 

[mfenn]

Wow, looking at that comparison the 2100 is much better then the 720 at everything, and better then the 980 at basically every game but Left 4 Dead. I dont know what all of those other comparisons really mean. The 2120 would of course look a bit better vs 2100.

I guess the definition of "much" is debatable, but I generally look for a 2x improvement if I'm going to be spending $200 on an upgrade. The i3 is faster, but it's not like your X3 720 is terribly slow.