Upgrading PC (probably CPU), need advise

[wiekey]

Required Thread Info:
1. What YOUR PC will be used for? Gaming (FPS, 3PS, Action RPG)
2. My budget: $150 - $250 for CPU
3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from: USA, probably
4. IF you're buying parts OUTSIDE the US... Unlikely
5. IF YOU have a brand preference... Intel (due to existing MB)
6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts... See list below
7. IF YOU plan on overclocking... Yes, will OC
8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using? 1920x1200
9. WHEN do you plan to build it? Immediately
X. Do you need to purchase any software... No

Current Build
Motherboard: EVGA nForce 780i SLI
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo e8400 3.0Ghz (OC'ed to 3.6)
RAM: 4GB Corsair XMS2-6400 Dhx DDR2
Storage: Crucial M4 256 GB SSD, WD Raptor 150 GB HD, 1.5 TB HD (Samsung, maybe?)
GPU: EVGA Geforce 465 Superclocked

Question
I'm looking for advise on upgrading my gaming PC's hardware. I'd prefer a low-cost, high-gain upgrade, but would bite the bullet for a major upgrade if need-be. Aside from a GPU and SSD upgrade, all of the above is from January 2008.

All-in-all this setup still holds up to modern games surprisingly well, but it's starting to show it's age. I'd rather not have to replace the motherboard, CPU, and RAM if I can help it. If a CPU upgrade and possibly extra RAM would give me decent returns, I'd rather do that. So with my current MB, that means a high-end Core 2 Quad, possibly Extreme (e.g. q9550, q9650, qx9650, etc.).

Please let me know what you think. Would a high-end Core 2 Quad extend the life of this PC with a good cost/benefit ratio, or should I start looking into a new system? Thanks for your help.

Edit: With new consoles coming out, I imagine developers will finally start taking advantage of high-end PC hardware to a much greater extent than they currently are. If I should just ride out this generation with what I have and start from scratch in 6 months to a year, please let me know. Thanks again.

 

[Termie]

Welcome to the forums, wiekey!

The problem is that upgrading to those obsolete parts will cost you nearly as much as upgrading the whole system. You're talking $250 for your proposed upgrade (used) and $350 for a brand new motherboard, 3570k, and 8GB of DDR3. The latter option will be close to 50% faster if overclocked.

There's no reason to wait. The next gen of CPUs will be about 10% faster than what's available today, but today's chips are 75% faster than your e8400 is. Trust me, that 465 is being badly bottlenecked right now.

 

[Torn Mind]

The most cost-effective temporary option is to get a Q6600 with a SLACR on it and overclock it to "high-end levels" (about 3.3 ghz max).

But you will need to upgrade the CPU eventually though. Even a i5-3570 is substantially better than a high end Core 2 Quad.


But, the system "showing its age" might be due to the graphics card as well.

 

[Torn Mind]

Welcome to the forums, wiekey!

The problem is that upgrading to those obsolete parts will cost you nearly as much as upgrading the whole system. You're talking $250 for your proposed upgrade (used) and $350 for a brand new motherboard, 3570k, and 8GB of DDR3. The latter option will be close to 50% faster if overclocked.

There's no reason to wait. The next gen of CPUs will be about 10% faster than what's available today, but today's chips are 75% faster than your e8400 is. Trust me, that 465 is being badly bottlenecked right now.

The E8400 still holds its own against the Pentiums and Celerons of Intel, and by extension, the A6 APUs. But the i5s do crush it.

 

[wiekey]

Welcome to the forums, wiekey!

The problem is that upgrading to those obsolete parts will cost you nearly as much as upgrading the whole system. You're talking $250 for your proposed upgrade (used) and $350 for a brand new motherboard, 3570k, and 8GB of DDR3. The latter option will be close to 50% faster if overclocked.

There's no reason to wait. The next gen of CPUs will be about 10% faster than what's available today, but today's chips are 75% faster than your e8400 is. Trust me, that 465 is being badly bottlenecked right now.

Thanks for your reply! I guess I'll start researching tech again (thanks for your suggestions). It's been a few years and I'm way out of the loop.

You mentioned next gen CPUs being about 10% faster than current tech. Aside from speed, are there new architectures coming out anytime soon? Do you have any other insight on upcoming chipsets that will be optimized for next-gen tech (new graphics engines, new Direct X, physics, 3D, multi-monitor, etc.)? Thanks again.

 

[wiekey]

The E8400 still holds its own...

Hell yeah! I'm amazed how well this thing still performs after all this time. It's easily the most impressive processor I've ever had in terms of performance over time. I'll be kind of sad to see it go. Although I suppose I'll get over it pretty quick after I upgrade. :biggrin:

 

[ElFenix]

if you live near a microcenter you can get an i5 3570k and a board within your budget. might even have enough left over for 8 GB of ram (though ram prices are skyrocketing right now)

 

[DominionSeraph]

Wait for Haswell. Besides the 10% IPC gain, the AVX2 instruction set has the chance to more than double integer performance.

 

[Termie]

Thanks for your reply! I guess I'll start researching tech again (thanks for your suggestions). It's been a few years and I'm way out of the loop.

You mentioned next gen CPUs being about 10% faster than current tech. Aside from speed, are there new architectures coming out anytime soon? Do you have any other insight on upcoming chipsets that will be optimized for next-gen tech (new graphics engines, new Direct X, physics, 3D, multi-monitor, etc.)? Thanks again.

You're welcome!

All the features you're asking about above actually depend on the graphics card, not the cpu. Believe it or not, your GTX465 is still current with all the standards.

If you're feeling games not performing as you'd like, I promise you it's the CPU. I used to run a GTX460 with an e8400, and it performed poorly in new games. I then upgraded just the CPU, and performance jumped significantly, as in 50%.

This is how you can test your system: download and install MSI Afterburner. Run it in the background with the graph open while playing games. Then look carefully at the GPU usage information. Unless it is above 90% the whole time, you are being limited by your cpu.

 

[DominionSeraph]

All the features you're asking about above actually depend on the graphics card, not the cpu.

"Architecture" would include AVX2, and that's Haswell. Games are reliant on integer performance, so AVX2 has the potential to increase performance dramatically.

 

[Termie]

"Architecture" would include AVX2, and that's Haswell. Games are reliant on integer performance, so AVX2 has the potential to increase performance dramatically.

Haswell won't be widely-available until mid-June, and even then, Intel has acknowledged that the first run of Haswell chipsets have a USB3.0 bug in them. I wouldn't recommend buying a Haswell setup right away.

While AVX2 may help with gaming, it will require games that are programmed to take advantage of it.

If the OP would like to wait until later this summer to upgrade, then Haswell will be the obvious choice. If he'd like to play modern games between now and then, however, he should not wait.

 

[Durvelle27]

Here you go

AMD FX 6300+ 970 MOBO+ RAM $229.99 = $209 AR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...&SID=u00000687


just buy one more 4GB stick

 

[mfenn]

Wait for Haswell. Besides the 10% IPC gain, the AVX2 instruction set has the chance to more than double integer performance.

I don't think that's really true. While AVX2 does expand AVX to include common integer operations, that doesn't necessarily mean that games are going to get a two-times improvement in integer performance.

The problem is the V in AVX stands for Vector. In other words, I'm going to the same operation on a vector (array) of data. That doesn't really happen a lot for integers in the context of a game engine. Most integer functions are for control flow (if/else, pointer chasing, etc.) that isn't really well suited for vector processing. The big bulk data operations happen when you're simulating the game world, which nearly always done in floating point.

Also, using new instructions is not trivial. You don't get any sort of improvement without changing the machine code (executable). You have to specifically code for them to get good performance. You can get some improvements from a simple recompile with a new compiler that has optimization paths for the new instructions, but that's not as good as hand-coding. At any rate, you still have to ship a new executable to users to realize any gains.

Given the current game market, I don't see how massively changing the code of an already-shipped product makes any business sense. You've already gotten most of the revenue you're going to get, so why spend any money on giving a tiny slice of the player base a nebulous performance improvement?

Games that are currently early enough along in development are a different story of course, but we are years away from realizing those benefits.

 

[Termie]

^ Informative, mfenn!

 

[mfenn]

^ Informative, mfenn!

Thanks.

 

[wiekey]

Thanks to everyone for your responses. You've been very informative.

Haswell won't be widely-available until mid-June, and even then, Intel has acknowledged that the first run of Haswell chipsets have a USB3.0 bug in them. I wouldn't recommend buying a Haswell setup right away.

While AVX2 may help with gaming, it will require games that are programmed to take advantage of it.

If the OP would like to wait until later this summer to upgrade, then Haswell will be the obvious choice. If he'd like to play modern games between now and then, however, he should not wait.

I'm considering going this route - minor upgrade now, major upgrade in late summer or early fall, depending on performance reports for Haswell. Of course this decision is probably biased considering that I was already leaning towards this approach before starting this thread. So now the question I need to decide on is do I stick with Socket 775 (e.g. qx9650), or go with a complete upgrade for a similar price and far better performance. I know this is a no-brainer in favor of a full upgrade, on the other hand it's a lot easier to just plug in a new CPU and be done with it (the lazy route).

Question 1: Would it be just plain dumb and lazy of me to stick with Socket 775 vs a complete upgrade? Keep in mind that if I go this route, I'll be buying a new CPU, MB, and RAM in a few months anyway after Haswell is out.

Question 2: I found a qx9775 on eBay for $225, used. I know there's plenty of risk around buying used CPUs, but I'll hopefully only need it for a few months anyway. Assuming I don't run into any problems with it, how significant of an upgrade would this be over my current e8400?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[ElFenix]

Thanks to everyone for your responses. You've been very informative.



I'm considering going this route - minor upgrade now, major upgrade in late summer or early fall, depending on performance reports for Haswell. Of course this decision is probably biased considering that I was already leaning towards this approach before starting this thread. So now the question I need to decide on is do I stick with Socket 775 (e.g. qx9650), or go with a complete upgrade for a similar price and far better performance. I know this is a no-brainer in favor of a full upgrade, on the other hand it's a lot easier to just plug in a new CPU and be done with it (the lazy route).

Question 1: Would it be just plain dumb and lazy of me to stick with Socket 775 vs a complete upgrade? Keep in mind that if I go this route, I'll be buying a new CPU, MB, and RAM in a few months anyway after Haswell is out.

Question 2: I found a qx9775 on eBay for $225, used. I know there's plenty of risk around buying used CPUs, but I'll hopefully only need it for a few months anyway. Assuming I don't run into any problems with it, how significant of an upgrade would this be over my current e8400?

Thanks again for your help.

not worth the risk of losing your money on ebay and trying to resell it.

you can get a 3220 and a z77 motherboard for 225 on newegg right now.

 

[Termie]

not worth the risk of losing your money on ebay and trying to resell it.

you can get a 3220 and a z77 motherboard for 225 on newegg right now.

This is my feeling as well. Don't be tempted by old s775 gear. It's a bad value. The $120 dual core 3220 is the equal of a q9650:

http://anandtech.com/bench/Product/49?vs=677

The platform is ancient and the CPU you're considering is 5 years old. The 150w TDP of the qx9775 is just icing on the cake. If you found a used quad for under $100, an argument could be made for buying one. Beyond that and it's money thrown away.

 

[Durvelle27]

Here you go

AMD FX 6300+ 970 MOBO+ RAM $229.99 = $209 AR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...&SID=u00000687


just buy one more 4GB stick

^^

 

[Termie]

^ I agree that if the OP is on a limited budget, the FX6300 combo is an excellent gaming setup. If he has the money for it, though, the 3570K is significantly faster.

 

[Torn Mind]

As I said before, if you want to get a Core 2 Quad, getting a Q6600 with the SLACR stamped on it and overclocking it is the most wallet-friendly option. But even that would be rather temporary. But, it would not provide much benefit for games that don't take advantage of more than 2 cores and would probably hurt performance in those particular games since the clockspeed is lower than your overclocked E8400.

With an i5, you get four faster cores.

 

[mfenn]

The platform is ancient and the CPU you're considering is 5 years old. The 150w TDP of the qx9775 is just icing on the cake. If you found a used quad for under $100, an argument could be made for buying one. Beyond that and it's money thrown away.

Agree. Just say no to old LGA 775 parts that were built for overclockers and cost as much as a new i5.

 

[wiekey]

Thanks again for the help, and for talking me out of a bad decision!