Upgrading CPU/RAM/MOBO... video card upgrade?

[Mad Lion]

I'm planning on finally moving on from my Q6600 to an 4770 (or maybe 4771) this Christmas. I already have a 7850 2GB that overclocks well to 1050/5000 without any problems that I've seen.

I have a few questions regarding the video card. First of all, my resolution is 1080p, 60hz.

My first question is, do you think a 7850 at 1050/5000 will be sufficient to get between 30 and 60 fps in modern games at 1080p? I can turn down AA, but I'd really like to run ultra or close to it.

Second question is, if the one 7850 won't be able to do what I'd like, would it be better to add a second one for crossfire or sell it and try to find a 7950?

The most important question that I really don't know the answer to is, if I decide to go with an H87 board (the Asrock h87 Performance Fatality), will the second PCI-E slot being x4 and PCI-E2.0 really hurt crossfire performance?

Basically, I don't plan on overclocking the i7, but if I need a Z87 chipset to make use of crossfire, that changes my calculation. I've read that having the slots be 16x and 4x for crossfire really doesn't matter much, but those I'd like to hear more opinions and experience first.

Thanks!

 

[nwo]

The only advice I can give you is that your overclocked 7850 is enough to currently run games smoothly maxed out at 1080p.

I do not have any experience with crossfire or dual gpu setups, so I can't really answer the rest.

However, I would really recommend you to go for an unlocked version of the CPU. Overclocking the CPU will significantly boost your multiplayer gaming performance, regardless of which GPU route you decide to go with. The difference can be very noticeable in certain games/situations. It will also give you a small boost in single player performance as well.

 

[Techhog]

Well, you first need to tell us which specific games you'd like to play. That makes a big difference both in terms of which GPU and which CPU you really need. The i7 is pretty expensive and doesn't offer much over the i5 (4670/4670K) to make it worth the extra money for the vast majority of games. It might end up that you're better off stepping down to an i5, selling the 7850, and upgrading to a 7970 or even R9 290.

You should also give the full system specs that you want.

 

[Mad Lion]

I'm actually pretty set on getting the 477x i7 because it's faster in productivity software and encoding/decoding than the i5, and also because everything I've been reading even from developers is that games will start to use more than 4 threads in the next year or two because of the consoles.

As for games, I have a backlog:

Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Batman Arkahm City and Asylum, Crysis 2, FEAR 3, possibly Crysis 3 though I don't own it yet, and anything new going forward.

I'm not 100% against overclocking, I've been overclocking my processors since the barton athlon (1.8 to 2.2, quick jump from 2500 to 3200xp!). My current Q6600 is overclocked from 2.2 to 3.0. I just hate the headache, and I've not seen very good results from others with haswell. I have a coolermaster hyper 212+ with dual fans for push pull which I will be re-using on the haswell.

I just am not sure overclocking to 4.0-4.2 is worth the headache with haswell. I've seen people burning their chips out early and having to back down back to stock really fast after the insane over-volts that are required to get 4.3+ and I just don't care that much. Stock 4771 is really damn fast already, and I have no interest in using a cooler other than my hyper 212+ with dual fans.

I really would love to know if crossfire is severely impacted by having one card on a PCI-E 3.0 slot at 16x and the other on a PCI-E 2.0 slot at 4x. That's what I'd be dealing with if I got the ASrock board I'm looking at, the H87 performance: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/57...mance-intel-h87-motherboard-review/index.html

 

[Mad Lion]

Oh, the rest of the system specs are just what I've already got:

NXXT gamma case with 5 120mm case fans (3 push, 2 pull with one over the video cards), Hyper 212+ with dual 120mm case fans push/pull, Sandisk Extreme 120GB SSD sata 3, a DVD-RW, two storage drives (my old 250 GB sata and my 1 TB sata), and the Dell 24" 1080p monitor.

Basically, all I'm buying is the mother board, processor, and new ram (DDR3). My current motherboard, CPU, and RAM are Q6600 @3.0ghz, 8 GB of DDR 2 1050mhz, and a Gigabyte DS3L or whatever it was.

 

[Techhog]

I'm actually pretty set on getting the 477x i7 because it's faster in productivity software and encoding/decoding than the i5, and also because everything I've been reading even from developers is that games will start to use more than 4 threads in the next year or two because of the consoles.

As for games, I have a backlog:

Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Batman Arkahm City and Asylum, Crysis 2, FEAR 3, possibly Crysis 3 though I don't own it yet, and anything new going forward.

I'm not 100% against overclocking, I've been overclocking my processors since the barton athlon (1.8 to 2.2, quick jump from 2500 to 3200xp!). My current Q6600 is overclocked from 2.2 to 3.0. I just hate the headache, and I've not seen very good results from others with haswell. I have a coolermaster hyper 212+ with dual fans for push pull which I will be re-using on the haswell.

I just am not sure overclocking to 4.0-4.2 is worth the headache with haswell. I've seen people burning their chips out early and having to back down back to stock really fast after the insane over-volts that are required to get 4.3+ and I just don't care that much. Stock 4771 is really damn fast already, and I have no interest in using a cooler other than my hyper 212+ with dual fans.

I really would love to know if crossfire is severely impacted by having one card on a PCI-E 3.0 slot at 16x and the other on a PCI-E 2.0 slot at 4x. That's what I'd be dealing with if I got the ASrock board I'm looking at, the H87 performance: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/57...mance-intel-h87-motherboard-review/index.html

I wouldn't deal with the headaches of crossfire personally, especially with this bandwidth issue. The thing is that going up to an R9 290 would boost framerates far more than hyperthreading ever will. If you really must get the i7, sell the 7850 and see about getting a 7970 with a decent cooler.