Upgrade Path

[Xa3phod]

Hey folks. I am contemplating upgrading my rig. The only reason for upgrading is superior gaming. I play FPS like Planetside 2. I currently run at 1920x1200 on a 27" monitor. The game runs nicely, but I see it often drops below the magic 60fps and I would like to see a solid 60fps. At least in Planetside 2, it shows you where your bottleneck is. On the bottom of the screen it shows your fps and a [CPU] or [GPU] Next to it, meaning that's the source of your limitations.

On mine, it 95% of the time shows [CPU].

My current rig is as follows:
I5-2500K overclocked to 4.3ghz on an evo 212 cooler.
16 gigs Corsair dominator ram
XFX 7970 Ghz edition
250 gig Samsung SSD 840 EVO
120 gig OCZ-AGILITY (I run the game from this drive)
2TB HHD (ST2000DM001-9YN164)
1000 watt platinum certified PSU)

So my question is. Do I need a whole new build (New CPU/Ram/GPU), or is the GPU strong enough or is the CPU strong enough? Does it make more sense to wait for Skylake to come out before upgrading? I would prefer a build to last 3 years at a minimum. Bought the I5-2500K as soon as they fixed the issue they were having with the mobos.

Thanks for the input

 

[Charlie98]

Do you have any sort of budget in mind?

I'm currently running an i5 2500K the same as you (4.3GHz on a 212+) and with a new GTX970 it is working well playing BF, MW, and some other stuff.

Off the top of my head I would say a GPU upgrade would be in order, something along the lines of a R9 290x or wait for the 3xx series. I don't know if the GTX970 will be good enough for a 3-year upgrade, and the GTX980 isn't a very good deal at the moment.

 

[daveybrat]

Your cpu, especially since you have a nice overclock going on it should be fine. I'd look at upgrading your GPU first as an R9 290X or GTX 970 should give a nice boost over your current card.

Start with that and then maybe later in the year you can upgrade to a Skylake i5 or i7 processor, board, and DDR4 memory to sweeten the build. 🙂

 

[Xa3phod]

Thanks for the feedback. I don't have a budget limit. I don't mind spending the bucks for a solid system, but I am not one of those "Need the best at the moment" people. I like to be smart, and I don't need to eek out the last 5% by going with the devils canyon if I can OC my 2500K to 4.3. I want to be smart.

So, GPU upgrade is the way to go. Should I crossfire another 7970ghz? Cheap now, or will the 970 be enough?

Thanks again!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487088

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202145

Both are close in price.

 

[daveybrat]

From my own experience i'd go with the GTX 970 personally. Love my card and it's extremely powerful without the high power consumption of a 290X card.

 

[mfenn]

The first thing to understand is that Planetside 2 is an absolute dog of a game which is hard on the CPU and hard to get a consistent 60 FPS out of, period.

You're CPU limited in that game with a 2500K, so if you truly want to get 60 FPS minimum then you should get an i7 4790K and go for a 4.6 GHz overclock. You will still go below 60 from time to time, but you'll do it less often than you would with an i5 2500K.