Upgrade to GTX 970?

[Veriitas]

Good day,

A friend of mine currently has the following set up:
Asus P6X58D-E
i7 930 @ 4ghz
8gb crucual 1533 Mhz
Geforce Nvidia GTX 460

He would like to upgrade to a GTX 970. As everyone knows, this is a beast of a card. However, he is wondering whether it is possible to get the best out of the card with the gear he already has. Would anything be a bottleneck in his set up? What if he chooses for a GTX 980?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Carfax83]

However, he is wondering whether it is possible to get the best out of the card with the gear he already has. Would anything be a bottleneck in his set up? What if he chooses for a GTX 980?

Thanks in advance,

He's going to be CPU bottlenecked, but probably not bad enough to the point that it will impact his gaming experience. What resolution is his monitor?

I wouldn't recommend a GTX 980 for him, unless he's playing at really GPU limited settings on a high resolution monitor (unlikely given that he has a GTX 460), a GTX 970 would be more than enough..

 

[Veriitas]

He is playing on 1920x1080. Thank you for your first response. So best thing to do is to just buy a GTX 970, and maybe upgrade the CPU in the future?

Just one more additional question: Currently his motherboard has a pcie 2.0. The GTX 970 has pcie 3.0, is this going to be a problem?

EDIT: already found an anwer for the pcie slots. Was just wondering how big the impact would be if the CPU is a bottleneck.

 

[Carfax83]

He is playing on 1920x1080. Thank you for your first response. So best thing to do is to just buy a GTX 970, and maybe upgrade the CPU in the future?

Just one more additional question: Currently his motherboard has a pcie 2.0. The GTX 970 has pcie 3.0, is this going to be a problem?

PCI-e 3.0 is backward compatible with PCI-e 2.0 so that won't be a problem..

Upgrading the CPU will require upgrading everything else, as the Core i7 930 is based on Nehalem architecture, which was the first generation of the Core i7 series. So it, and the entirely x58 platform is definitely a bit long in the tooth and he shouldn't upgrade to another LGA 1366 CPU.

He would get much better performance out of the GTX 970 if he upgraded to say something like the new Devil's Canyon Haswells. That alone would give him at least a 20% boost in performance clock for clock over his current CPU..

 

[raghu78]

OP a 4 Ghz Nehalem i7 (on par with Haswell i7 at 3.2 Ghz) is more than enough to run the GTX 970. You are not going to be CPU bottlenecked :thumbsup:

http://www.techspot.com/review/827-watch-dogs-benchmarks/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/712-arma-3-benchmarks/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/733-batman-arkham-origins-benchmarks/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/689-company-of-heroes-2-performance/page4.html

get the MSI GTX 970 Gaming . excellent cooler. crazy overclocker. hits 1.5 Ghz easily. you can ask user feedback on ocn

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/msi-gtx-970-gaming-4g-review/19/

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_geforce_gtx_970_gaming_review,26.html