I am currently looking for a new motherboard as my current is a simple mATX with socket 1155, and I want to ugprade to i7 4770K (Or maybe I should wait for a new generation if there's one coming soon?), and I wonder which one would be optimal? I run a single-GPU setup with a GTX 670, but might upgrade that in the future.
My current mobo is an ASUS P8P67-M and I am thinking either the MSI Z87-GD65 or any of the MAXIMUS VI cards. I don't have ethernet cables at home, so I might need to get a new wireless card (Or hopefully one within the mobo) since the PCI-E I currently use is PCI 8x, and if I'd get the MSI Z87-GD65 I wouldn't have any 8x slots.
I use the computer for pretty much everything, so I am not exactly looking for an AMD CPU.
Anyways, if this is in the wrong section, or if I haven't specified enough information, do tell.
What processor do you currently have? What are the gains you expect to gain from upgrading?
If you're looking to SLI, i'd strongly advice against it. There's a few games that get frames, but it also adds some microstuttering. Most games aren't properly optimised for it at all, causing terrible fluidity, stuttering, and in the worst case [I]less frames than a single card[/I]
If you've got an i5 2500(k) or an i5 3670(k), you won't gain a performance improvement from upgrading to an i7, not counting the small improvement from sandy/ivy to haswell(this isn't worth spending this much money on). The only valid reason to upgrade would be multithreading on the i7 if you spend a lot of time rendering/compiling/etc, and even then i can't find a valid reason to get the haswell instead of the 1555 equivalent and save money on the motherboard(or spending this much money on an i5->i7 upgrade)
The highest end i5 series have the best gaming performance. The i7 usually has worse, unless hyperthreading is disabled. If you're looking for gaming, there's no reason to upgrade, short of ARMA3 or the future WATCH_DOGS(probably the few games that would benefit from an i7)
If you want to upgrade to haswell anyway, the GD65 and MAXIMUS VI are more expensive than what your money is worth, unless you're going to do extreme overclocking. The MSI G45 Gaming or Gigabyte Z87X-D3H (or UD3H which is slightly better) are a much better alternative and usually recommended around here, the MSI having better sound and the D3H having more USB ports and a better BIOS. I'd recommend the gigabyte myself, as the sound isn't noticable unless you're an audiophile, in which case you'd probably want a dedicated soundcard anyway.
If you want more gaming performance, getting a R9 290(X) with a custom cooler or a GTX 780 would probably be your best bet. This depends what kind of resolution you're running or what issues you're having, however.
If you want a motherboard upgrade, i'd rather recommend getting a 1155 for the price. You won't really miss anything.
To recap:
-SLI/CFX is in most cases a gimmick
-Going from sandy/ivy bridge to haswell is a waste of money
-Going from i5 to i7 is a waste of money unless you [I]really really really[/I] need hyperthreading
-Getting a new motherboard is better if you just want a motherboard upgrade
-The most expensive motherboards are useless unless you want to do [I]extreme[/I] overclocking
-Getting a new graphics card is better if you want more game performance
-I'm doing guesswork because i have no idea what your processor is, what kind of issues you're having, and in what way you want your performance to increase
[QUOTE=RandomGamer342;43440602]What processor do you currently have? What are the gains you expect to gain from upgrading?
If you're looking to SLI, i'd strongly advice against it. There's a few games that get frames, but it also adds some microstuttering. Most games aren't properly optimised for it at all, causing terrible fluidity, stuttering, and in the worst case [I]less frames than a single card[/I]
If you've got an i5 2500(k) or an i5 3670(k), you won't gain a performance improvement from upgrading to an i7, not counting the small improvement from sandy/ivy to haswell(this isn't worth spending this much money on). The only valid reason to upgrade would be multithreading on the i7 if you spend a lot of time rendering/compiling/etc, and even then i can't find a valid reason to get the haswell instead of the 1555 equivalent and save money on the motherboard(or spending this much money on an i5->i7 upgrade)
The highest end i5 series have the best gaming performance. The i7 usually has worse, unless hyperthreading is disabled. If you're looking for gaming, there's no reason to upgrade, short of ARMA3 or the future WATCH_DOGS(probably the few games that would benefit from an i7)
If you want to upgrade to haswell anyway, the GD65 and MAXIMUS VI are more expensive than what your money is worth, unless you're going to do extreme overclocking. The MSI G45 Gaming or Gigabyte Z87X-D3H (or UD3H which is slightly better) are a much better alternative and usually recommended around here, the MSI having better sound and the D3H having more USB ports and a better BIOS. I'd recommend the gigabyte myself, as the sound isn't noticable unless you're an audiophile, in which case you'd probably want a dedicated soundcard anyway.
If you want more gaming performance, getting a R9 290(X) with a custom cooler or a GTX 780 would probably be your best bet. This depends what kind of resolution you're running or what issues you're having, however.
If you want a motherboard upgrade, i'd rather recommend getting a 1155 for the price. You won't really miss anything.
To recap:
-SLI/CFX is in most cases a gimmick
-Going from sandy/ivy bridge to haswell is a waste of money
-Going from i5 to i7 is a waste of money unless you [I]really really really[/I] need hyperthreading
-Getting a new motherboard is better if you just want a motherboard upgrade
-The most expensive motherboards are useless unless you want to do [I]extreme[/I] overclocking
-Getting a new graphics card is better if you want more game performance
-I'm doing guesswork because i have no idea what your processor is, what kind of issues you're having, and in what way you want your performance to increase[/QUOTE]
Don't have that many issues per se, it just feels like it runs slow, and when rendering I want it faster. I wanted to future-proof my build, since my current mobo only uses PCI 2.0 thus bottlenecks my GTX 670.
But if I would just want a motherboard upgrade, what would you recommend?
The performance difference between PCI 2.0 and PCI 3.0 is around 5%, and could be attributed to a difference between processor generations. It shouldn't be bottlenecking any single modern card.
If it's running slow, do you mean in general tasks around the OS? If that's the case, you're much better getting something like a samsung 840 EVO SSD(preferrably 250GB or above) if you don't have one, as general "slowness" is usually due to harddrive bottlenecks and not CPU.
If you want an upgrade for rendering purposes, you've got to ask if it's worth the money. If you believe the increase is worth it, i can't exactly stop you. Be aware that it won't really increase gaming/OS performance however.
I'll leave it to flayne or someone else to recommend a good Z77 chipset motherboard, as they're probably more knowledgeable there than i am. I'd expect the Z77-alternatives of the Z87 motherboards i mentioned to perform just as well, though
I currently have one of the early SSDs for my OS, and then a 7200RPM 2TB harddrive for everything else, so doubt it might be that. But yeah, I'd rather hold the money instead of putting it at an unecessary upgrade. However, I do want to upgrade the mobo, so if anybody could help me get that, that'd be great.
I don't understand what you are wanting here. You have a Z77 motherboard, you can't upgrade to a Z87 motherboard without upgrading your processor. Your old processor won't be compatable with the new motherboard. Therefore the only thing you can actually be gaining out of a new motherboard is the ability to SLI (PCI 2.0 actually doesn't even have a 5% performance decrease, it's 0-2%, it is not nearly near almost sort of noticeable so I don't even count this as an advantage). You say you want to hold your money instead of unnecessarily upgrading, well upgrading your motherboard will not increase performance at all. Wait until you can afford a new processor or GPU.
[QUOTE=flayne;43442272]I don't understand what you are wanting here. You have a Z77 motherboard, you can't upgrade to a Z87 motherboard without upgrading your processor. Your old processor won't be compatable with the new motherboard. Therefore the only thing you can actually be gaining out of a new motherboard is the ability to SLI (PCI 2.0 actually doesn't even have a 5% performance decrease, it's 0-2%, it is not nearly near almost sort of noticeable so I don't even count this as an advantage). You say you want to hold your money instead of unnecessarily upgrading, well upgrading your motherboard will not increase performance at all. Wait until you can afford a new processor or GPU.[/QUOTE]
Well I can afford a new processor, but if the upgrade would be a waste, I really wouldn't want to put money on that. What I really want is to upgrade, but if there's no reasonable upgrade available maybe I'll just wait for another gen.
[QUOTE=OtterSWAG;43442670]Well I can afford a new processor, but if the upgrade would be a waste, I really wouldn't want to put money on that. What I really want is to upgrade, but if there's no reasonable upgrade available maybe I'll just wait for another gen.[/QUOTE]
Unless the roadmap has been changed since I last looked at it, the next gen may be more of an ivy to haswell change (bigger) than a sandy to ivy (small). Saving up until next gen and getting a new proc, mobo, and 800 series gpu (if that's what they are) would be far more worth it.
You haven't actually given us your processor, but I think RandomGamer has adequately explained the performance differential among different processors (to give exact numbers haswell is on average 5% faster than Ivy bridge which is on average 4% faster than sandy bridge, each with different TDPs, and each overclocking at about the same potential). You mentioned rendering, so the best option might be to go with a 4770k and one of the previously mentioned motherboards (I doubt the GD65 would be worth upgrading to over the G45; although, it is one of the best motherboards (or arguably the best) for gaming currently available. I would avoid Maximus as they are really motherboards intended for 3-way and 4-way SLI in addition to an extremely overclocking friendly rich feature set, and they run extremely expensive very quickly. Of course this still only applies if a CPU upgrade would really set you ahead; otherwise, you might consider a GPU upgrade and forgo motherboard/CPU upgrade until Broadwell comes about (or AMDs next line if it does increase IPC as it promises). For the GPU you could upgrade to a 770 or throw in a bit more for a 780 (ti) or R9 290 (the 290X isn't worth the price as it stands especially considering the 290 can often beat it). I suggest you don't buy the non-reference R9 290 unless you plan on throwing on some aftermarket cooling, and I would suggest the same for the 780 (ti) although the difference won't be as bad (as performance goes 780 Ti > R9 290 > 780). It all depends on your needs. In addition to all this, I recommend a full system maintenance. That means dust everything off, reapply thermal paste (I recommend IC Diamond), make sure all dust filters are cleaned as appropriate, and do some software maintenance as well: defragment mechanical HDDs (don't defrag SSDs), uninstall unnecessary software, make sure no programs are running that you don't want running at any given time, run CCleaner and Anti-virus. This kind of maintenance should give you a bit of a speed boost.
[QUOTE=flayne;43443754]You haven't actually given us your processor, but I think RandomGamer has adequately explained the performance differential among different processors (to give exact numbers haswell is on average 5% faster than Ivy bridge which is on average 4% faster than sandy bridge, each with different TDPs, and each overclocking at about the same potential). You mentioned rendering, so the best option might be to go with a 4770k and one of the previously mentioned motherboards (I doubt the GD65 would be worth upgrading to over the G45; although, it is one of the best motherboards (or arguably the best) for gaming currently available. I would avoid Maximus as they are really motherboards intended for 3-way and 4-way SLI in addition to an extremely overclocking friendly rich feature set, and they run extremely expensive very quickly. Of course this still only applies if a CPU upgrade would really set you ahead; otherwise, you might consider a GPU upgrade and forgo motherboard/CPU upgrade until Broadwell comes about (or AMDs next line if it does increase IPC as it promises). For the GPU you could upgrade to a 770 or throw in a bit more for a 780 (ti) or R9 290 (the 290X isn't worth the price as it stands especially considering the 290 can often beat it). I suggest you don't buy the non-reference R9 290 unless you plan on throwing on some aftermarket cooling, and I would suggest the same for the 780 (ti) although the difference won't be as bad (as performance goes 780 Ti > R9 290 > 780). It all depends on your needs. In addition to all this, I recommend a full system maintenance. That means dust everything off, reapply thermal paste (I recommend IC Diamond), make sure all dust filters are cleaned as appropriate, and do some software maintenance as well: defragment mechanical HDDs (don't defrag SSDs), uninstall unnecessary software, make sure no programs are running that you don't want running at any given time, run CCleaner and Anti-virus. This kind of maintenance should give you a bit of a speed boost.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the tip, I'll get right on that. Just putting the topic as solved since I probably won't upgrade this stuff just yet.
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