PC hardware and gfx card - opinions on upgrading please

I built this PC five years ago now and am wondering if updating a few things might extend the life cycle a bit. It was a pretty decent spec that I spent a bit of money on when it was new and haven't felt the need to upgrade really, but I want to ensure I get decent graphics performance out of newer games now.

I doubled the RAM to 8GB before Xmas and am now looking at the graphics card. I'm happy to drop a bit of money on a card, but only if it's worth doing with the rest of the components taken into account, and will keep things decent for a few more years or so.

Here's the specs;

Gigabyte EP45-DS3L mobo, supports 8GB RAM max, single gfx card only, PCI-E 2.0
8GB Kingston HyperX PC2-8500 underclocked to 800mhz, 4-4-4-12 timing
Intel Q6600 CPU overclocked to 2.8Ghz (FSB:RAM ratio of 1:1)
Asus Radeon HD4850 1GB DDR3
Other stuff: my monitor supports max. 1920x1080, Coolermaster 620w PSU, Coolermaster case plenty of room for full size cards.


Let me know what you think I should look at, if anything.

Your CPU is probably going to be the most worthy upgrade, but admittingly it would be expensive. I went from a C2D e6700 2.6ghz to a i5-4670k overclocked at 4.5ghz and it was quite a jump and well worth it.

If you upgrade your card to any 700 series nvidia, your cpu will be a bottleneck.

BlackFish said:

If you upgrade your card to any 700 series nvidia, your cpu will be a bottleneck.

Does this old wives tales still fly with any CPU made after 2005? It's no longer possible to create such extreme mismatches like e.g. a Pentium III CPU coupled with a late-gen AGP 8.0 card.

Today, unless you're coupling a quad-SLI card with the most budget 32-bit ATOM CPU )only possible to do wtih an embedded/micro ATX board), even the weakest modern CPU should be easily capable of oversaturating the PCI-E bus and DRAM lines with texture and geometry pushing. Plus: GPGPU FTW.

I went from HD4850 to HD7870, but I got an i5-3570k first. My framerates doubled after the GPU upgrade.

Not sure how much you would gain running it with a 7 year old CPU but on my next upgrade I'm definitely going GPU first.

Well, this is the thing, wait for a whole new build or achieve noticeably better performance in modern FPS games now by updating one discrete component?

You're right, I'm pretty hamstrung by Socket 775, at the time I knew it was on its way out but the consensus was it was much better value for money and a more proven platform where mobo manufacture was concerned. I don't regret going with it for a moment - the Q6600 has been the best processor I have owned in terms of longevity, customisation and value.

It seems the same stage is there now with 1150/5 and 2011? Or is 115x going to be around quite a while longer? If I did start looking at a new build it wouldn't be for a while - probably next year earliest.

The Haswell LGA 1150 is not going away, as it will support the next Broadwell generation too (unless this happens: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/141443-leaked-intel-roadmap-shows-the-end-of-socketed-cpus-the-end-of-upgradable-pc).

The Sandy/Ivy LGA 1155 is on its way out I suppose. The parts don't seem to be getting any cheaper, so there's no reason not to move right to Haswell (or Broadwell if you're going to upgrade in a year or two). Even though the performance boost is negligible, you'd be getting newer tech for the same price.

2011 is for the Extreme line of CPUs, not something anyone in their right mind should care about (unless they feel like wasting a lot of money).

775 isn't too bad by today's standards. Q6600 is comparable to a Phenom II X4. I've read various reports and reviews of bulldozer/piledriver being slower than phenom II so you should consider that and see them for yourself. You could even get a skulltrail mobo if you must have 8 cores (2 q6600's); that would be interesting to benchmark against AMD piledriver.

Personally would go with at least a Geforce 750TI or faster GPU from Nvidia. 750Ti is nice since it requires no external power and has decent memory bandwidth (128 bit bus with GDDR5). Would go with as fast as possible single gpu anyway since it's always possible to upgrade mobo/CPU down the road... Nvidia has better drivers vs ATI for Linux.

I think your Q6600 would go to waste if you upgrade that right now. Why not try a nice air cooler and hit 3.3ghz linpack stable? That wouldn't be very slow of a CPU, especially since games are only sort of starting to use multiple cores better.

Waiting for a future CPU will make a bigger difference and save you more money. Who knows, AMD might surprise us and release something really worth waiting for (original Athlon 64's were ahead of their time).

Thanks for the input. As far as the current setup goes, the current clocks were the best I found when benchmarking it in 2009. That's pushing the FSB and favouring lower timings for the RAM over clock speed with slightly higher voltages. Yes, I could revisit, push both the CPU and RAM harder still maybe, but I'd need to change the cooling from stock and I don't want to spend new money on old hardware now - I think it would be better saved for whenever.

I specced up a system based on the i5 4670k this morning for £430 re-using everything except mobo, cpu, ram, card.

Gigabyte GA-Z86-DS3H
Intel i5 4670k
8GB Kingston HyperX Beast 2400mhz
PowerColor Radeon R9 270 (basically the new 7870, but actually slightly cheaper - it's more or less the same price as a 750ti but a step up in performance)

If I was really going to do this though, I'd probably want to add an SSD to this. So it is looking pricey anyways.

So I think I would hold off on that basis. The only thing that may promote doing this is that my dad's Dell is getting seriously old now, and it was a budget machine in 2007 or something so I'd consider sticking my current hardware either into his case with a clean install of 8 or into a new case if the Dell isn't a true ATX (I can't remember without looking at it).

The card though, may get purchased. There's a few cheapish 270s knocking around on ebay (the 270x doesn't seem worth the extra) so I'll see if I can snag one.

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4481#ov

If you're getting a gigabyte mobo, that's the one I got above. It's great for ocing the 4670k that you're getting (providing you're getting a decent heatsink for it).

Also note: Afaik the 4670k is haswell so you'll need a z87 mobo like the one linked above. I couldn't find the mobo you linked besides the z77 version.

edit: nvm I found it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?gclid=CNmJpJPZq70CFYMcOgodBFsAsQ&Item=N82E16813128677&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Intel+Motherboards-_-N82E16813128677&ef_id=UWsQUwAAATwQVAoL:20140324172904:s

If the card works out for you the SSD would definitely be the next thing to get if you're not going to upgrade the whole thing.

My bad, typo, that should of course be GA-Z87-DS3H

SSDs are completely new to me, well I've known about their existence, but since I last looked they are considerably cheaper per GB.

Again, if prices of higher capacity SSDs continue to become more and more affordable at this rate, it's another motivation to maybe hold off for a while.

Just an update - I've picked up a new sealed Asus Radeon R9 270 on ebay for £110 which seems a pretty decent price, though the seller may have accepted a slightly lower best offer, but never mind.

After doing quite a bit of reading I liked this card at the moment - my 4850 is an Asus card and the fan etc. still going strong after 5 years, so that's been a good experience. I considered a 78xx or even 79xx series cards, but most of them are used (I'm wary of buying used cards) and the prices were stupid - £155 for a year-old 7950?!? It seems the bitcoin boys are all over these older cards, well screw that...

I'm expecting lower temps from the 270 at idle, and not much increased strain on my PSU under load - the 270 is a single six-pin solution which is fine by me.

Despite that reports suggest there seems to be a little headway for some overclocking too. That's what sold me on the 270 vs the increased outlay on a 270X - the extra money doesn't seem to be worth it in this generation, especially when there's a few offers around on the 270, but nothing much on the 270X.

Who knows, if I get a whole new board etc. in the next year or so I may end up crossfiring two of these as a second might be cheap enough by then to make that useful. Or it may not, heh.

Will post some results when it arrives, if anyone's interested.

Thank the maker for long warranties. My i7 cpu overheated because of manufacturing flaw and today got new replacement and it has 3 year warranty. One year or lesser warranties are laughing stock

I'm going back to Nvidia with my next gfx card. I don't have anything against ATI/AMD, I just want to see what all the fuss about.

Satyr000 said:

I'm going back to Nvidia with my next gfx card. I don't have anything against ATI/AMD, I just want to see what all the fuss about.

I'm not sure there is one atm, unless you're willing to pay big bucks? The exciting stuff from Nvidia (Pascal) looks like still being 2 years away...

Maxwell is coming out soon as the 800 series hits later this year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_800_Series#First_generation_Maxwell_.28GM10x.29

Maxwell is not looking like being quite as innovative as it was initially supposed to be now though. That looks like being with Pascal now, though Maxwell still may be a worthy addition for dx12 and may ultimately become the affordable series choice for dx12 a couple of years down the road if all goes smoothly.