Question on buying the 4970k

[sketchus]

Hi all,

Here is my current rig:

HX 750W Corsair Processor
2x 7970 3GB GPU
12GM 1600MHZ RAM
i7 950 processor with V8 Coolermaster oc'd to 4.2GHZ
Rampage II Extreme mobo


I have a few questions regarding this. Is it worth the upgrade? I play a lot of games and like to get as good as FPS as possible.

Also, what would be the best mobo to go for? I plan to oc the processor.

Finally, will it be possible to keep using the same cooler?

Thanks in advance.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Hi all,

Here is my current rig:

HX 750W Corsair Processor
2x 7970 3GB GPU
12GM 1600MHZ RAM
i7 950 processor with V8 Coolermaster oc'd to 4.2GHZ
Rampage II Extreme mobo


I have a few questions regarding this. Is it worth the upgrade? I play a lot of games and like to get as good as FPS as possible.

Also, what would be the best mobo to go for? I plan to oc the processor.

Finally, will it be possible to keep using the same cooler?

Thanks in advance.

Looks like an error of dyslexia: you mean the 4790K Haswell, don't you?

It's become harder for me to "keep up" first-hand and practical. There are some folks here still rocking Nehalems of a more modest sort than yours. " . . play a lot of games" shifts your decision-point in favor of upgrading -- I would think. I'm only guessing that you don't have an immediate need to flip your Crossfire parts.

I'm guessing you'd want to look at the Z97 boards, which -- for being relatively new -- mean less advice forthcoming. If I were planning to OC, I'd consider slightly more expensive boards like the Sabertooth.

As for the cooler, I'd do a "round-robin" with the V8 or offer it up in the "For Sale/Trade" forum. Not so familiar with that cooler's spec, I'm sure you could continue using it. But if you stick with air-cooling AND plan to over-clock, I'd look at coolers like the Noctua d14, d15, or even the U14S. Your other choices are AiO water-coolers. Or -- custom-water.

Perhaps it depends as much on what your OC'ing expectations are.

Anyone else?

 

[crashtech]

The Coolermaster V8 is a big cooler that should be right at home with a 4790K. In raw computational power terms, the 4790K at a modest 4.3GHz should represent around a 50% increase over a 950 @ 4.2, but of course that will not translate to game performance. It's pretty tough to find modern game benchmarks that include your CPU, so you have to infer some things. I would make an educated guess that your OC'ed 950 will perform similarly to an i5-4430 in games that don't utilize HT, based on some fairly dicey extrapolations of the two CPUs ST performance. YMMV. From there you can look at charts like thishttp://The Coolermaster V8 is a big.... YMMV. From there youcan look at charts like, or CPU charts for whatever games you play, and decide whether the performance delta is worth it to you.

 

[toyota]

i7 950 at 4.2 is still pretty fast but even a 4790k at stock would be pretty decent upgrade. plus that 950 at 4.2 uses an insane amount of power. I am guessing around 300 watts or more during full load for just the cpu. a 4790k even oced to 4.6 for all 4 cores will use about 1/3 of that. if you have your gpus oced too and if you actually ran something both gpu and cpu intensive then I would not be surprised if that 750 watt psu is right at the edge. certainly a lower quality psu would have been seriously compromised by now.

for games you will not see much difference except in the most cpu intensive titles especially those that need raw speed such as Hitman Absolution.

 

[daveybrat]

I'd do the upgrade. I'm also upgrading to the same i7 4790K on launch. My PhenomII has lasted me over 5 yrs., so i'm guessing the new 4790K and Z97 board should last me at least as long if not more.

 

[sketchus]

Sorry all, I did mean the 4790K, not 4970K! I'm used to writing 7970 so it's a habit at least.

I think upgrading will be the right choice for me then. While my 4.2 OC is stable, it's not something I particularly like having on as it's a fairly major OC as as has been pointed out below, my PSU might be struggling with it.

With the boards something I forgot to mention - is the space between PCI slots standardised? I ask because I need to make sure both my GPUs can actually fit next to each other without overheating.

Cheers.