• Looking to upgrade CPU and GPU - Which first?
    6 replies, posted
I've noticed that although my PC is pretty good at running games it isn't quite as good as I'd like it to be. So after Christmas I'm gonna be looking at upgrading the CPU and my graphics card, but I'm not sure which is the most problematic of the two.. [B]CPU [/B][IMG]http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k55/lew-m-b06/cpu.jpg[/IMG] [B] Graphics card [/B][IMG]http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k55/lew-m-b06/gpu.jpg[/IMG] [B]Motherboard, in case you need it[/B] [IMG]http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k55/lew-m-b06/mobo.jpg[/IMG] At the moment I'm probably leaning slightly towards changing the CPU first, as I've heard a lot of flak about the new AMD series processors and how shit they are. I would like to know if there are still any good AMD chipsets out there of if Intel are the far better option. Would definitely prefer to stick with AMD for the graphics card though. My budget is about £150 for each one, though I'm willing to go over if it seems worth it.
Your graphics card is already pretty good. But your CPU should be fine as well.. Even though AMD CPU's aren't my cup of tea for a reason. Considering your budget, you should probaly save up a bit more for your purchase to actually mean something.
In terms of an upgrade that would be worth spending money on, where would the next step be? I assume one of the Intel Ivy bridge processors or something?
If your mind is set on upgrading your cpu I wouldn't go ivy bridge. The performance you games would see when its sandy vs ivy are minimum at best. Personally I'd save the money for a bigger better upgrade.
[QUOTE=Aide;38618905]If your mind is set on upgrading your cpu I wouldn't go ivy bridge. The performance you games would see when its sandy vs ivy are minimum at best. Personally I'd save the money for a bigger better upgrade.[/QUOTE] Going from an FX-4100 to an Ivy Bridge CPU would be a huge performance boost. The FX-4100 isn't even a true quad core processor. There's no point in trying one of the new Piledriver AMD CPUs, the performance gain is so minimal that it isn't worth mentioning. The HD6850 would benefit from the much better Ivy bridge CPU, you probably won't have to change it out for a good while.
If that's the case then that's probably where I'm gonna be looking. Got my eyes on these two: [url]http://www.ebuyer.com/387254-intel-core-i5-3570-3-40ghz-socket-1155-6mb-l3-cache-retail-boxed-bx80637i53570[/url] and [url]http://www.ebuyer.com/289930-intel-core-i7-2700k-3-50ghz-socket-1155-8mb-l3-cache-retail-boxed-bx80623i72700k[/url] They're both Ivy Bridge right? What's the major difference between the two and does the i7 really warrant an extra £80 to the price tag? If forking out the extra cash is really worth it then I'll probably end up buying the i7, but if the difference is negligible for the price then there isn't really a point is there?
[QUOTE=lew06;38637634]If that's the case then that's probably where I'm gonna be looking. Got my eyes on these two: [url]http://www.ebuyer.com/387254-intel-core-i5-3570-3-40ghz-socket-1155-6mb-l3-cache-retail-boxed-bx80637i53570[/url] and [url]http://www.ebuyer.com/289930-intel-core-i7-2700k-3-50ghz-socket-1155-8mb-l3-cache-retail-boxed-bx80623i72700k[/url] They're both Ivy Bridge right? What's the major difference between the two and does the i7 really warrant an extra £80 to the price tag? If forking out the extra cash is really worth it then I'll probably end up buying the i7, but if the difference is negligible for the price then there isn't really a point is there?[/QUOTE] i7 has hyper-threading, that is only used for rendering & software, it won't really help you in games cause pretty much nothing supports it anyways. Also Sandy Bridge & Ivy Bridge are just different versions. Just like NVIDIA 500 series & 600 series. They both utilize the 1155 slot, so no problem there. 2XXX = Sandy Bridge 3XXX = Ivy Bridge
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