Time to upgrade my CPU? It s from 2012

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

Alienware Gamer ALX

Member
Sep 5, 2016
133
2
51
I m using a old 3970x (overclocked to 5GHz) with a titanxp.
I m using a 1080p screen at 120hz and this cpu is under heavy usage.

is it time to upgrade ?
 
A

Alienware Gamer ALX

Member
Sep 5, 2016
133
2
51
it s not a good time to buy many parts you re rig
NTMBK said:
A 5GHz Sandy Bridge is still very potent, especially with 6 cores and a nice big L3 cache. I'd say it's not worth upgrading yet; you'd have to replace all that memory, and memory prices are crazy at the moment.
Click to expand...

true,memory prices are crazy at the moment. :(
 
M

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
8,152
6,867
136
I'd hold on to it for at least one more year. By then Intel should have chips with the meltdown issues fixed in hardware and AMD will have their third generation processors out on 7nm which should give them a considerable speed bump. Hopefully by then the lawsuits over anticompetitive behavior against the memory manufacturers will have resulted in price drops there as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Midwayman and Headfoot
E

epsilon84

Golden Member
Aug 29, 2010
1,142
927
136
Just looking at your current system, to get a noticeably better gaming experience, you would need a 8700K. That will enable you to better maintain 120fps+ for your games, with less dips in framerates. That being said, it would be rather costly, as DDR4 is still pricey, especially if you get 32GB of it as I doubt you would want to 'downgrade' to 16GB, though for gaming it makes no difference.

Just to give you a rough idea of the improvements you can expect by going from a 'Sandy Bridge' CPU to a 'Coffee Lake' CPU, though your 3970X should do a bit better than the 2600K shown below as its 6C/12T and has a bigger L3 cache.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1546-intel-2nd-gen-core-i7-vs-8th-gen/page5.html
Average_1080p.png

Average_1440p.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: Alienware Gamer ALX
H

Headfoot

Diamond Member
Feb 28, 2008
4,444
641
126
I agree Mopetar. You would see some gains from an upgrade but I would wait for Meltdown/Spectre fixed CPUs before buying anything new. You don't want to lose the speed gains right away due to Meltdown/Spectre mitigations
 
  • Like
Reactions: Alienware Gamer ALX
A

Alienware Gamer ALX

Member
Sep 5, 2016
133
2
51
you re right and these graphs are really plain. thanks :)
Probably it s better wait for a price drop,(ram ). btw i wasnt looking for a 6core

i was evaluating these options:

- new 7940x 1200e
- used 7980xe 1400e

can i have a good oc with these and a good mb? over 4.6GHz at least ?
TDP are pretty high
 
E

epsilon84

Golden Member
Aug 29, 2010
1,142
927
136
Alienware Gamer ALX said:
you re right and these graphs are really plain. thanks :)
Probably it s better wait for a price drop,(ram ). btw i wasnt looking for a 6core

i was evaluating these options:

- new 7940x 1200e
- used 7980xe 1400e

can i have a good oc with these and a good mb? over 4.6GHz at least ?
TDP are pretty high
Click to expand...

Are you upgrading for gaming, or another reason? Because there is no need to spend so much money on a gaming CPU, in fact both those CPUs will be slower than a 8700K for gaming.
 
MajinCry

MajinCry

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2015
2,495
571
136
Is 20% more performance at the same clocks worth another half grand just for a platform upgrade? I'd say not.

But there is an edge case where Haswell and newer CPUs dominate the older CPU architectures, and that's emulation. If you love PS2, Wii U and PS3 games (all three having very intensive emulators), then there's some tangible benefit to upgrading.
 
T

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,437
1,659
136
epsilon84 said:
Are you upgrading for gaming, or another reason? Because there is no need to spend so much money on a gaming CPU, in fact both those CPUs will be slower than a 8700K for gaming.
Click to expand...
This is a really good question. Both those would kind of suck for gaming. So obviously it seems like you are trying to go more of high core count, more professional oriented solution. While both are good at that, you would get as good if not better performance out of something like a 1950X, which would with it's clocks compete well with the 7980xe in multitasking work, and while I don't know the e amount generally goes for about 750USD here. Less than half of the 7980xe cost.
 
  • Like
Reactions: epsilon84
Shmee

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
7,840
2,799
146
You should be good for a little while longer. Only thing you are really missing is NVMe support and PCIe 3.0. Both of which are not really necessary for gaming, and NVMe support may even be possible with a bios mod and a PCIe card adapter.
 
HutchinsonJC

HutchinsonJC

Senior member
Apr 15, 2007
466
205
126
Yeah, my 3960x allows PCIE 3. It's been a good minute, but I had to tweak some stuff to allow it.

I think it came down to something about the 3930k/3960x having the capability of PCIE 3, but that it was never full proof tested (quality assurance) and thus never turned on by default? It's been years since I did whatever tweak I found to turn it on. Not sure if the 3970x had to have a similar thing done or not.

Edit: Oh, and I wouldn't replace a 3970x at 5GHz in today's world unless you're wanting more than 6 actual cores. That's a very impressive OC, btw. I had my 3960x at 4.6 for a few years before I got tired of the heat it dumped into my room haha.
 
D

Dribble

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2005
2,076
611
136
I went from an o/c 2500k to an 8700k. To be honest if anything it feels slower, I think because the SSD's are slower on the spectre patched 8700k then they were on the unpatched sandy bridge. Go figure. Games I guess must run faster, but as they never ran slow on the 2500k I can't really tell the difference.

I would wait if I were you.
 
S

scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
1,960
1,678
136
I would wait unti Spectre variants and Meltdown are addressed in hardware. It's not like what you have sucks, so don't be in a hurry.
 
E

epsilon84

Golden Member
Aug 29, 2010
1,142
927
136
Dribble said:
I went from an o/c 2500k to an 8700k. To be honest if anything it feels slower, I think because the SSD's are slower on the spectre patched 8700k then they were on the unpatched sandy bridge. Go figure. Games I guess must run faster, but as they never ran slow on the 2500k I can't really tell the difference.

I would wait if I were you.
Click to expand...

Can't say I share the same experience, my 8700K gets about twice the framerates my 2500K did in CPU bound games. That being said, a 3970X is a totally different beast to the 2500K, 6C/12T vs 4C/4T makes a big difference in modern games
 
Midwayman

Midwayman

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2000
5,723
325
126
I went from 2600k to 8700k and if I had it to do over knowing about meltdown and spectre, I would just have waited it out. The 8700k is faster sure, but the 2600k was doing allright. Just so much in flux right now, but I was Jonesing for an upgrade after so long.
 
moonbogg

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
10,643
3,101
136
For what its worth, I had a 3930K @4.6ghz until about a year ago and it was honestly doing great still no matter what I played. I only game on the rig though. Well, I make drawings but you hardly need a CPU at all for that. If I were in your position, I would simply wait until Intel releases the 8 core coffee lake and jump right on that sucker with a Z390. That would be my move. No point in waiting around another year or two for them to fix these meltdown and spectre issues. I don't think they matter to 99% of people anyway to be honest.
I say 8 core coffee lake + Z390 or bust for you. It makes the most sense from where we are in time and where you are coming from in terms of what you already got under the hood.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom