worth upgrading to a gtx780 or r9 290 ?

[stag3]

specs are in the sig, it's been about 5 years since i built her. in that time i only upgraded the video card once to a 7970. at this point i'm pretty sure i'm cpu limited and upgrading video cards again will probably be pointless?

i'm fine if i have to build a new pc, was looking @ a i7 4770k system. will i notice a large improvement? or will another video card upgrade tide me over another ~2 years?

 

[Rvenger]

What resolution do you play at? 7970 still has a ton of grunt for 1080P.

 

[stag3]

just picked up a 27" U2711, so 2560x1440

 

[Termie]

Just consider this - a stock 780 or 290 will only be about 10% faster than your OC'd 7970. You can get about another 20% performance gain on the 780 through overclocking, and maybe 15% on the 290, but neither is going to make a tremendous difference.

Also, you almost definitely are not CPU-limited at 1440p in modern games, with BF4 and Crysis 3 being the exceptions.

If you wanted a really big jump in performance, you'd have to go with dual cards, but then you'd need a new power supply. I'd suggest either a 780 Ti if you're really itching for a new card, or simply waiting until you build a new system.

 

[HWfreak]

Grab a 290, but not one with a reference cooler, its the same cooler that was on the reference 7970, it was never even enough for that let alone the 290. pathetic little block of alloy under the shroud.

An AIB cooled 290 is a great card.

 

[stag3]

i don't play bf4 or crysis 3 so i'm good on that front, i was debating building a new system entirely as i tend to build a new one every 4-5 years if not earlier. will i notice a large performance increase going to an i7 4770k, 16gigs of ram and a 780 or 290, or should i hold out that much longer and see what comes down the pipe.

edit: sorry for the questions, i don't really keep up with hardware much anymore except when it's time to build a new pc. i came up with this list in about 20 min last night for a new build but if it's not gonna be a large performance increase i can just wait.

i7 4770k
asus maximum vi gene mb
corsair rm 750 watt psu
xfx double d r9 290
mushkin redline
sound blaster z sbx - are sound cards even needed nowadays or is the onboard sound good enough? i mainly game and listen to mp3's.

 

[Termie]

Hard to say if the speed increase would be worth it to you. The 4770K is about 30% faster clock-for-clock. The average 4770K hits about 4.3-4.4, your 965 is at 3.85. Overall perhaps it's 40-45% faster once overclocking is accounted for.

Really depends what you're looking to do with your system. For games, yes, it will help slightly, but you'd need more power than even an R9 290 can deliver at your resolution for it to really matter. That seems to be your most demanding use.

If you wanted to do something totally different, like build a compact, quiet system around that Maximus VI Gene, then perhaps the investment would be worth it to you.

BTW, I'd avoid the Corsair RM series. It really isn't up to Corsair's typical standards. Go for the Seasonic G series instead if you decide to build a new system.

 

[stag3]

roger, replaced corsair with G series

 

[Headfoot]

The thing I've noticed with CPU upgrades is that you dont notice them all that much (when you have an SSD like you do) in the day-to-day but when you really need the CPU grunt, like many poorly threaded games (or simply demanding games), it's very noticeable in both absolute FPS increase and more so in increased minimum framerates. Better frametimes generally too so that it seems smoother