I Just Realised I Am Way Behind the Times

[Bang]

I had a 3570k and was given an i7-3820, and Asus Rampage IV, so I installed it about a year ago, keeping all my old hard drives, case, gpu, Corsair H100i, etc. It was a pretty good upgrade for me and saved me some money at the time. Today I got a warning from Microsoft saying they are ending support for Windows 7 come January 2020. For laughs I clicked the thingmo and it takes me to a page trying to get me to buy a more modern machine. That's when I realised my upgrade is pretty bloody old, even if it does run stabley at 4.7Ghz, but I still get computer lag in some titles.

So, now I'm in the market for an upgrade and have no clue as to what motherboard, CPU, and ram is decent these days, having never owned DDR4.

Video editing may come in the future, if I get a decent enough kit, but the primary use of the kit will be gaming, not even in 4K. I recently bought a 27" monitor with 144Hz refresh rate @1080p.

Pricewise, I'm intrigued by the AMD 3700X for a cpu, because in what little research I've done, it has really good performance without a super hefty price. Which brings me to the next questions: What is a good gaming motherboard and RAM? How much RAM should I plan on purchasing? What speeds? How high will the 3700X overclock?
Should I even consider an Intel CPU?

I can worry about a new GPU later, as my 1060 runs things petty well, for now. Most games I can run on Ultra, so I'm not really worried about that at the moment. However, if I did, what mid-range GPU's are good these days, comparing AMD to Nvidia?

Any suggestions for a motherboard (I know zip about todays sockets/chipsets) and ram would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Excalabur50]

If you're mostly gaming I'd highly recommend you go for a 3600 with an MSI B450 Tomahawk board and pair that with 16 gig of 3200 cas 14 or 3600 cas 16/17 ram I really like GSkill when it comes to ram then put the extra dollars saved from the CPU to either a 5700/XT or 2070 super depending on who you like, if it were me I'd go the 5700XT from one of the aftermarket vendors next month.
As to overclocks AMD are already pretty much as fast as they'll go out of the box so I wouldn't stress too much about that if I were you.
Hope this helps!

 

[WYP]

If you want an upgrade to tide yourself over, you could always try that ASUS Rampage IV with an i7-3930K and see what kind of overclock you can get. Will get you some extra cores and threads.

The CPU is dirt cheap at CEX ATM. (£55)(A UK store) Perhaps there is something similar in Australia where you can get a good deal.

https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail...ng&title=intel-core-i7-3930k-(3.2ghz)-lga2011

I'm not saying that you shouldn't upgrade to a fully new platform. DDR4 is pretty good ATM. Really depends on what you want to do.

The new Ryzen stuff is a good bet ATM. Works very well but there are some cases where Intel is still ahead. With the next-generation consoles offering eight cores, an 8-core PC seems like a good bet.

 

[KingNosser]

I went from a 2500k to a Ryzen 7 1700 it was a bigger upgrade than I expected and the older Ryzen's are dirt cheap in the UK maybe you have similar deals ok the 2nd and 3rd gen are obviously faster but you can make a pretty big saving there on the CPU and Mobo.

Depends on your budget I know in Ozz you pay more bit like sweden in that sense, but I wouldn't rule out older parts as WYP said maybe you can find something decent at a far lower price.

I kinda look at Ryzen longer term and when they change socket I'll aim to pick up better parts but I think I'll need a new mobo for the last parts made or they will have given a new option that's hard to turn down.

For me Ryzen 1st gen at nearly half price on cpu and mobo with reduced ram prices made it well worth the jump.

 

[AlienALX]

I sold my last X79 stuff last winter. I had a 8 core Xeon in there (Ivy, 2870V2 ES?) Either way I wish I'd kept it. Was still more than capable of 1440p+ gaming.

You can get 8 core Sandy chips for peanuts tbh. I think I'd rather have a better GPU because of science. IE pushing to a better GPU will negate the need for a better CPU (due to the resolution) and thus you'd get a much better improvement by doing that.

No matter how fast your CPU is if the GPU can't keep up it's a waste. Plus one thing I don't like are the unrealistic testing conditions on CPUs. Let me explain that before I get lynched.

So everyone tests CPUs at 1080p with high end GPUs and then says "oh look the Intel CPU is faster!" Which makes people think that Intel CPUs are still better for gaming. The thing is, if you bought a GPU that makes your CPU a problem and then ran it at 1080p you'd clearly be an idiot. Why? Because a GPU that can make the CPU a problem should be doing the hard work and you should be using that GPU to take the CPU out of the equation and either run a higher resolution monitor *or* be using DSR or VSR to drive up the res to provide you with better visuals end of.

Nothing gripes my ass more than seeing people do silly things like buy a Vega for 1080p. It's such an epic waste of money.

1080p has been around for a decade, and with more and more GPUs capable of 4k it's time to move on.

I have two gaming PCs. I also have a PS4, xb1x and so on. Know why I've not gotten rid of my PCs? Because I still like to sit up close to the screen and game at 4k for the visual treat.

I certainly wouldn't want to sit up close to 1080p. I may as well just move the sofa closer to the TV and notice the nasty graphics.

The moral of this TL;DR story? The GPU is still the most important factor of a gaming rig.

 

[grec]

Yeah the above, you have to be playing 1080p at low settings or with a beastly GPU for the CPU to really become the limiting factor(Beyond a ~5-8% hit) in the vast majority of titles right now. Unless money is no object then in this case you'd get much bigger FPS gains upgrading from a GTX1060 to a GTX1660Ti or something than you'd get going from a 3820K to a 3700X if you stuck with a 1060 in most titles today. Imo it's worth waiting till next gen games come that really start pushing the CPU again to make that upgrade unless you want the platform upgrade since CPU value YoY is making big jumps atm while GPUs are in a bit of a sticky point, while modern AAA games are still designed for the single threaded perf of ~1.6Ghz notebook processors(And indeed my FX8320 was holding up pretty ok in modern titles even against my friends 1600X till the motherboard died, lived in a house with quite a few gaming PCs so also swapped another housemates GTX1060 in there for a summer and wasn't too far off his 6600K rig in the games I played)

 

[AlienALX]

DX12 is making things even better tbh. One of my Broadwell Xeons is probably worse than the 8 core Ivy I had in all honesty. The 10 core Xeon only boosts to about 2.3ghz. However, you never hear me complaining because tbh? with the res pushed to 1440p and beyond the Vega 64 takes over and I never see any stutter or crap like that. I played BL2 HD at 5k the other day with my Titan XP and it was amazing lol.

But yeah, CPUs for gaming really isn't a thing and should stop being touted as such. "Intel ! still the gaming king !!11" what a load of bolacks. They've never designed a single gaming CPU in their bloody life. The slightly higher FPS at massively higher clocks is neither here nor there but they just use it as a selling point.

Fact is 1080p is the bottom of the ladder. So slow clap Intel, you're faster at a ten year old resolution.

Personally I would grab one of those 8 core Sandys that go for about £30, slap in a Vega 56 and 1440p ahoy.

 

[Bang]

Uh, yeah. As I said, i realised I'm way out of date. I dont even know what a Vega 56 is. What I do know is this kit is starting to feel a bit slow to me, and if I upgraded to a 3700X it would nearly triple the performance over my current CPU.

I dont have a 4k monitor and the only game I have that runs at 4K is Grand Theft Auto 5, which does its own scaling. I tried scaling my desktop once through the Nvida software and the icons were so small i couldnt see them. It looks just fine and doesnt frame.

As for sitting across the room... I dont even own or watch TV.

Clearly I need advice on more than one part, like the GPU. I dont even know what the latest mid-range GPU's are these days.

The last time I upgraded my CPU and motherboard etc, was when I moved to the 3570k. I was playing Eve Online and got computer lag so bad my box just froze for like 30 seconds and when it unfroze I was dead, having lost a Tengu in the meantime. When I got the 3570K that stopped.

Another example, I can run the Division at Ultra and never lose a frame with my 1060.
I didnt change GPU's when I did the upgrade from the 3570K to the 2830, but everything ran better, games, apps, you name it; it was a night and day difference. So, my thinking was that if I upgraded to the 3700X I would again see a huge performance gain.

While its true that only in the last few years developers have started to support multithreaded games, they will, in the future, expand that support to 12 or more threads. So I was thinking it might as well be time to upgrade to a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

I also dont know what a DSR or VSR is. I'm not up to date with the lingo.

I sit at a desk, not on a couch. I know one thing, I'm not shelling out $700+ for a 2070, only to find out I need to shell out $1,000 for a new CPU, mobo, and ram.
The cheapest 1660Ti is $393 where I live.

I really do appreciate your advice and hope you continue to educate me. I don't even know if AMD has a GPU that compares to the 1660, but the Radeon 5700 (not even XP) is about $150 more than the 1660. I'm not willing to spend that much on a card. I could buy a 3700X for less than that, then upgrade to a new GPU later.

Am I making any sense? BTW, I'm still on Windows 7, not 10. I know I have to go to Win 10 at some point.

Help, again, is much appreciated.

 

[AlienALX]

Uh, yeah. As I said, i realised I'm way out of date. I dont even know what a Vega 56 is. What I do know is this kit is starting to feel a bit slow to me, and if I upgraded to a 3700X it would nearly triple the performance over my current CPU.

Hmm. I can promise you that your machine would not feel three times as fast. No matter what CPU you had. Well, not in day to day use or gaming. Your CPU will struggle with newer titles that use up more threads that's for sure. You have the overhead of the OS running underneath and it too is using your CPU.

I dont have a 4k monitor and the only game I have that runs at 4K is Grand Theft Auto 5, which does its own scaling. I tried scaling my desktop once through the Nvida software and the icons were so small i couldnt see them. It looks just fine and doesnt frame.

You don't run the desktop at 4k dude. That will look awful and probably look terrible and flicker even. It's nasty running a desktop at anything but the native (standard) resolution of your monitor.

I was just about to do you a quick tutorial, then I realised I am not at home with my Nvidia set up and am on an AMD rig so that kinda screws that idea. However, all you do is go into the Nvidia control panel and enable DSR factors and set the smoothness. You don't change your desktop resolution. You then enter the game and change the resolution of the game to 4k or whatever you desire. DSR factors are basically multiples of your resolution, so you can go as high as they will let you per X.

If you still get stuck LMK and I will do a tutorial when I get home and am back on my Nvidia rig. It's very easy.

OK look let me basically explain this. You can have the fastest CPU in the world, right? but at low resolutions like 1080p if you have a low end graphics card then the CPU won't matter. You can only run the game as fast as the graphics card will allow you to. If you paired the fastest "gaming" CPU on earth with a crap graphics card the CPU won't help you. It only helps if you have a stupid fast GPU, and then the CPU would not be able to keep up and would become the limiting factor.

CPUs are not made for gaming. That is what the graphics card does. Every time you increase the resolution not only does it look better but it also makes the graphics card work harder taking the strain off of the CPU. Does that make sense? If not read this part here -

This is an actual occurrence that happened to me. I once had a rig with a 3970x (6 core 12 thread version of what you have unlocked multi). I had it clocked on all cores to 4.9ghz. I had two Nvidia Titan Black cards running in SLi. I also had a native 4k monitor.

I used to get around 39 FPS average in GTAV. OK, so one day I am playing and I notice it doesn't feel quite the same. Felt a little bit sluggish. I fired up a FPS counter (FRAPS) and ran the benchmark. So basically I was right. I had lost 5 FPS and my minimums were 5 FPS slower. After much investigation it turned out my motherboard had basically taken a crap and the VRMs died, which was throttling my CPU to 1.1ghz. It couldn't take the strain of 6 cores running like that. I lost 5 FPS going from 4.9ghz to 1.1 ghz dude.

Why? because basically the CPU doesn't matter a crap when you are putting the load on the GPUs. The higher you push the resolution the more load goes onto the graphics card. This is what they are designed for.

For day to day gaming you really want to be running your games at 1440p. Either natively on a monitor, or, using DSR as explained earlier. This will then allow your CPU to let the GPU do the work.

So my advice, if money matters to you, is to pick up one of these. Look and see what they cost on Ebay before you do anything else.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...0-20m-cache-2-70-ghz-8-00-gt-s-intel-qpi.html

They are currently selling here in the UK for £70 or less. That will give you 8 cores and 16 threads.

Then, make sure you have 16gb ram. It helps, as some games will choke on 8gb at higher resolutions.

Then, buy a GPU. Give the guys your budget, find a decent one capable of 1440p at least.

Possibly buy an SSD, if you don't have one. Then install Windows 10, as Windows 7 does not handle massively cored CPUs very well. You end up having to park cores and so on in certain things, which is a pain.

If you have the money to spend and you want something new? by all means go for it, but for the most part expensive CPUs are not worth it. Mostly because for gaming and general duties they're really not very important, so long as you have something half decent. I bought my 14 core 2 years back now, and have no plans on replacing it any time soon. I keep romanticising about buying a new one, then I see that an "upgrade" would cost me at least a thousand pounds and in real world terms? yeah, I wouldn't even notice it. CPUs are far less appealing than a good old beast of a graphics card dude.

 

[Bang]

In Australia, AMD graphics cards go RX580, RX590, 5700XT. The 580 would be a downgrade, the 590 would be an almost imperceptbly small upgrade, which makes it not worth the money, and the 5700 costs more than I would want to spend. Could it be that my whole problem is that I'm on Windows 10 and not getting the benefits of DirectX 12?

I also tried to reset the scaling to 4k, but cant remember how I did it before. Maybe it's the newer drivers don't allow it. I'm lost.

 

[Bang]

Wow, that's a heck of a story and very informative. Thank you. Deep down I knew you were right before you said all that, but the way you explained it, with the example, really drove it home. So I suppose the first step is to get Windows 10 and install it. Next, I'll set the DSR factors to 1.2x (native resolution) and hope that equals 1440p. Trial and error I guess, unless you know the conversions by heart, though I wouldnt mind trying some games at 4k, whatever the conversion for that is.

Thank you very much. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Edit: 1.78x native for 1440p

 

[AlienALX]

I will knock up a tutorial on Weds when I'm back home. It's very easy. Yes, get rid of Windows 7. Seriously it's really very old.

I doubt a 1060 will push 1440p very well, let alone 4k. Buying a better CPU won't improve that much. All you'll do then is tap out the GPU but games most definitely will not be three times faster. A 3D render would, but that's nothing to do with gaming.

I'd start with the change to Win 10. Don't upgrade, do a clean install. The CPU I linked you to will improve things. Especially in multi tasking. It will also be better for DX12.

Your GPU upgrade path really should be a 5700. If you can't afford that then you're better off sticking with what you have for 1080p. The next logical upgrade is a 5700 Radeon or 2060 Super. That would allow smooth 1440p gaming.

Don't worry about losing money on the Xeon. Your motherboard is one of the best X79 boards and quite desirable due to the cheap 8 core Xeons.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Dx12 won't improve your performance much because it's almost entirely CPU focused plus few games support it.

Moving to windows 10 would give a small performance bump but nothing significant.

The new Navi based 5700 is the best bang for buck GPU. If it's to much for you then the next best cheapest is the 1660ti. It's faster than the 1060 by a pretty fair amount. Should even do native 1440p at 60fps.

 

[grec]

Yeah AUS prices can seem a lot different to here, I don't think you'd find new AMD Vega's there anymore but you might be able to find some good deals 2nd hand on eBay or craigslist or something if the 5700 is too steep, they're not as efficient but not too much slower while you might be able to find for ~GTX 1660Ti prices or something, you wouldn't need a PSU upgrade for it I don't think from your existing model or anything like that even with that Xeon(The 8c Xeon route is a pretty solid route, I used an old dual socket (2x4c Xeon) server for a while since you can sometimes find complete server systems for like <£100 if a company needs rid, I assume a lot of people buy these and then sell them in parts cheap). And yeah DX12 & Vulkan games will make better use of these high core count ~medium IPC CPUs, spreads the draw load out much better, makes them more consistent in like 64 player Battlefield and stuff like that. It's not a super long term solution as games will start to need more but it should still last a few years without it being an issue, and at the current rate of value improvements for CPUs you'll be finding 2nd hand new 8-cores for the price of this Xeon by then, if you want the biggest performance gains now.

 

[AlienALX]

Windows 10 will appreciate more cores. Its strength is in multi tasking, which even on my 2.3ghz 10 core is fantastic. It wasn't this good on a 4590.

As said by TG, DX12 also responds very well to more cores.

Bang - there's an Aussie guy on Youtube who loves these Xeons and is always using them in builds. Forget what he's called now, but have a look on there. Even the old 6 core Westmeres do very well (X58)

 

[Dawelio]

If you have the money to spend and you want something new? by all means go for it, but for the most part expensive CPUs are not worth it. Mostly because for gaming and general duties they're really not very important, so long as you have something half decent. I bought my 14 core 2 years back now, and have no plans on replacing it any time soon. I keep romanticising about buying a new one, then I see that an "upgrade" would cost me at least a thousand pounds and in real world terms? yeah, I wouldn't even notice it. CPUs are far less appealing than a good old beast of a graphics card dude.

God damn Alien, you keep on bringing it home dude! You're truly the "go-to-guy" for advice and most importantly, for getting one's head right. By very good explanations and hence a reason as wether to buy something or not. I can't even tell how many times I've come to you for advice regarding a purchase and you've not let down once. Even reading most of your posts in the forums, makes one wonder about their own choices and if it's a good one or not.

You simply pretty much always go out of your way to help and you see everything for what they truly are, if they do/will anything for one and hence are even worth considering to upgrade or not.

Lovin' it, keep up the good work my fella!

 

[Bang]

I found one shop that has a 8GB RX VEGA 64 Air Boost OC, and its $600.
I did what you said and set the DSP to 1.78x native res and have games running at 1440. Wow, what a difference! I wish I had known about that years ago. I ran Unigine Heaven with max detal and performance took a major hit, not even hitting 30fps most of the time, so I disabled AA and averaged 40 fps. With the higher resolution it still looked fine to me, even without AA.
Battlefield 1 runs at least 50pfs on Ultra, which doesnt seem too shabby to me.
I dont know about the DSR smoothing so I just left it at 33%.

TBC.

 

[AlienALX]

Yeah it does make a huge difference. AMD has it too, it's just called VSR instead.

Leave the smoothness alone dude. 33% is perfect...

Vega 64 is decent, I have one myself. It's sorta between the RX 5700 and the 5700XT. Runs hotter and louder though.

Still that's nothing a pair of headphones or a headset won't fix lol.

 

[realneil]

BTW, I'm still on Windows 7, not 10. I know I have to go to Win 10 at some point.

Help, again, is much appreciated.

It's a pain in the butt getting new hardware to run on Win-7. It wants Win-10 64Bit normally. (there are ways around it, but as I said, PITB time)

Plan on changing your OS if you get new hardware. You'll be glad that you did.

If I were you, I would consider changing to Win-10 ~and~ getting that GTX-1660Ti card first. Your bottleneck isn't the CPU so much as the GPU.
If that doesn't work, you haven't wasted any money on either one of them and you may be happy with what you get.


Just sayin'

Neil

 

[NeverBackDown]

I'm 99% sure you can still get a free Windows key by upgrading from 7 to 10. I have done it 3 times now, although about a year ago ago, but still far after the free upgrade expired.

Just use the media creation tool from MS and upgrade through that to do it.

Just make a copy of your window 7 disk and then when upgrading it should work out and if not you can always roll back.