do i need to upgrade or...

[avizeke]

Looking for some advice guys.

following this winter with some great new games coming out, i am looking at upgrading but not too sure if i need to update the full system to a new one or to just update the gfx cards and then leave the rest.

Currently have
Cpu is water cooled with laing D5 punp and 3 fan RAD.
CPU : sanybridge 2600k
RAM : 8 gig corsair dominator
GFX : 2 x GTX 480's
MOBO : Gigabyte UDH5
case : Xigamatek Elysium case
PSU : corsair 800 watt modded
240 GB SSD + 2 TB HD

£2k budget

So question is, is my rig holding back my gaming performance. I want to upgrade on the graphics anyway one way or another.

Is haswell better or IVY bridge CPU;s if i am gonna be upgrading... and will it make any difference to gaming performance.

Is the chipset mobo slowing overall bandwidth bottlenecking performance for the graphics... if so then i will definitely upgrade... i am just not sure if its the mobo thats slowing everything.

I liked the Asus MAXIMUS VI FORMULA Socket 1150 Motherboard for the water cooling feature and colour feature too.

Really need suggestions for this as am stuck.

 

[SuB]

Budget will help people's responses here fella.

 

[avizeke]

sorry. its a 2k budget. am more about justifying the price tag. for example, buying the obsideon 900D case for £300 quid is questionable. however, i havnt properly looked at reviews yet for it.

 

[WYP]

Is your cpu overclocked? if so what clocks?

Haswell will be better than ivy, but to be honest not many games are cpu bound now.
you will not gain very much from upgrading, especially if your 2600k overclocked.

 

[avizeke]

no never bothered, it has never hit its capacity. i did get the 2600k because it was known for its overclocking... i have had it to 4.7 watercooled, but was pointless. The mobo ram restricted to DDR2 800mhz ... so i think that maybe a bottleneck..

 

[WYP]

no never bothered, it has never hit its capacity. i did get the 2600k because it was known for its overclocking... i have had it to 4.7 watercooled, but was pointless. The mobo ram restricted to DDR2 800mhz ... so i think that maybe a bottleneck..

what do you mean restricted to ddr2 800mhz, that doesn't make any sense.
please specify what you mean?

 

[avizeke]

the outburst or the memory read speed. the quickness of how fast applications boot up. If the CPU isnt being fully used and it has a SSD. I am just beilieving that its the ram that maybe slowing the process or performance.

 

[WYP]

what speed is your ram rated at? and are your running it at rated speeds?

 

[avizeke]

yes everything is at clock speeds. the only thing worth overclocking i think is the cpu... thinking about it a bit more... just think its best getting a new rig.

 

[Damien c]

Is it only gaming that you do on the PC?

The 2600K is still a very good cpu and does overclock like stink.

The only thing really that I think you would be best doing is upgrading your graphics card from the 480 sli to a single 780.


If you really must upgrade the whole system then, you might as well go for the Haswell based system with the board and chip you want, combined with a 780 and that will be less than the 2K budget and will be a very, very, very good pc.

 

[avizeke]

photoshop editing, dreamwever . thanks for the feedback on haswell.

this is what i am currently looking at.

Intel Core i7 4770K haswell = £270
Asus MAXIMUS VI FORMULA = £247
Corsair Dominator 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 8 = £90
240Gb SSD Vertex 3 £180

this will be watercooled

 

[Damien c]

Looks good add in a EVGA 780 with a waterblock on it and you iirc you will get better gaming performance and lower power use.