Best upgrade Price VS Performance - Page 2

I have not had an Ivy Bridge, but from what I have read, I have concluded that I would rather have a really good Z68 or Z77 board and an i7 K-series. Then wait for the next family and upgrade then. That seemed like a good pairing that i posted to, found in the OCN marketplace forum.

Just my 2 cents though. I am sure that people disagree. However, I have seen a lot of people looking to trade back to Sandy, or saying that they wish they had kept their Sandy

See, you are missing the point a little here on what a "true bottleneck" is. It is very VERY game dependent. In games like SCII, CIV 5 and Skyrim you would even be CPU bottlenecked by your current setup. They are very CPU intensive (well in Skyrim's case it is poorly optimized).

Would you get higher frames from Intel? yes
Will it make a significant difference? Normally no

You will however see a major difference with multiple cards. Yes in either setup, you will see a jump in FPS. But even with a FX chip overclocked to 4.5GHz, you will notice that Intel will give you much higher frames due to having a better architecture.

You will see the biggest difference when you are at higher resolutions. To achieve 60FPS+ with 3x1080p Eyefinity you will probably have to go intel.

There is a common misconception that most people do not understand is the following:
For benchmarking CPUs for gaming, you normally lower the resolution. Giving them the assumption that at lower resolutions the CPU works harder. That is NOT the case. it takes a lot more out of your CPU to run 60FPS at 1600p than it would to be to run 60FPS at 1080p. The reasoning for lowering the resolution is to negate ANY GPU bottleneck. your GPU will work exponentially harder at higher resolutions. But the point is this. If you cannot achieve 60FPS with your current CPU, meaning, you are CPU bottlenecked at your current resolution. You will not get over 60FPS at a higher resolution.

But the issue for multi-gpu setups is that bulldozer's architecture just cannot keep up. It does not handle multiple GPUs well....
http://www.overclock.net/t/1187898/fx-8150-in-multi-gpu-config-a-test-against-6-core-sb-e-how-does-our-bulldozer-fare-benchs-included-have-fun

You will get a jump in FPS, no argument there, but you will get a larger jump if you were to be on a SB or IB Intel system. It can be anywhere from 20%-100% increase from just switching over to Intel when you already have multiple GPUs.


The only problem right now, is that you can do one OR the other. What games are you playing?
Edited by Ironman517 - 6/15/12 at 1:19pm

That is very very weird, Are any of your cores maxed out? I am pretty sure BF3 uses up to 16 threads or something like that.

How exactly are you measuring this?
Try using something like MSI Afterburner to get real-time GPU usage if you haven't already.

As to what to upgrade, as Ironman said, it is very game dependent.
If you play a lot of, Starcraft II and CIV 5 then you'd most likely be better off switching sides and getting a Z77 board and a 3570k.
However, I think that two 7970's would be a massive waste on one 1080p screen.

If it were me, I'd probably look at getting a higher resolution monitor, like a 2560 x 1440 / 1600 (or maybe a 120hz panel?)

Also, it may just be me, but 47fps in crysis and BF3 doesn't seem right

I don't think you need more than one 7970 for 1080p.

I'd go with an overclocked 2600K

I'd definitely look into a new monitor. Either higher res or 120hz. A few games may not like bulldozer, mostly games running off older engines or lowly threaded engines, BD will suffer. I wouldn't think of a new card, especially at 1080p, that 7970 is fine on its own. My gtx 680 is a waste right now, and my monitor doesn't even do 1080p and all I play is d3! But I finally decided to invest in a new monitor after 3 computers in the past 6 months.

I'm with the others, get a high res monitor. 2560x1440/1600!!

I personally think a high res monitor will give you more enjoyment then peoples obsession with higher frame rates. Getting 60fps on a 1440 vs 120@1080 is going to look a whole lot better. hell even getting 40fps going to look a lot better in my opinion