Upgrade?

[TCates90]

Hi guys,

So I've been thinking of upgrading my MB&CPU for a while. I want to stick with AMD, but I'm not sure if I should wait a while till DDR4 boards come down in price, or go with one that does DDR3 (they should be cheaper now that DDR4 is out, right?).

I know Intel performs better at similar spec, but AMD is cheaper.
My combined budget is about £300. Bear in mind I have a 16GB (4x4GB, DDR3-1866MHz) set of Corsair Vengeance just itching to be used.

So, suggestions for a decent combo for light-medium gaming?

Thanks in advance

 

[Wraith]

Honestly you'll be hard pressed to beat AMD at this stage, in fact waiting until Q4 2016 for Zen is going to be even worse. My advice is to go H or Z97 with an i5 4440 or 4460 you can easy achieve this for £240, I'd love to go AMD again but nothing has been "good" since the old Phenom days.

Do you already have a GPU? Or are you thinking about integrated gpu too.. For gaming if you already have a graphics card I'd 100% go for an i5, if however you don't then the A6 7400k is a good start.

 

[TCates90]

Honestly you'll be hard pressed to beat AMD at this stage, in fact waiting until Q4 2016 for Zen is going to be even worse. My advice is to go H or Z97 with an i5 4440 or 4460 you can easy achieve this for £240, I'd love to go AMD again but nothing has been "good" since the old Phenom days.

Do you already have a GPU? Or are you thinking about integrated gpu too.. For gaming if you already have a graphics card I'd 100% go for an i5, if however you don't then the A6 7400k is a good start.

I already have an old (2yrs-ish) HD7850.
How future-proof is i5-4460 + Z97? Also any recommendations for a decent Z97 board?

Follow-up question: is 750W enough for the proposed setup?

 

[Kilbane]

With a budget of around £300 you can quite easily move to Intel. Even AMD's top FX processors will require spending the same sort of money for little or no benefit other than acting like a space heater with a TDP of 220w for the FX-9590.
So ultimately if cost is the issue, keeping your upgrade below £300 I would suggest :

Asus Z170-P D3 ... £80 (supports DDR3)
Core i5 6500 ... £160

£240 for a good Intel setup. I have solely based this upgrade path on cost and you saying that it is for light/medium gaming which suggests you don't need all out top speed and overclocking ability. Plus any board upgrade to DDR4 would require purchase of DDR4 RAM meaning the build cost would escalate.

 

[TCates90]

With a budget of around £300 you can quite easily move to Intel. Even AMD's top FX processors will require spending the same sort of money for little or no benefit other than acting like a space heater with a TDP of 220w for the FX-9590.
So ultimately if cost is the issue, keeping your upgrade below £300 I would suggest :

Asus Z170-P D3 ... £80 (supports DDR3)
Core i5 6500 ... £160

£240 for a good Intel setup. I have solely based this upgrade path on cost and you saying that it is for light/medium gaming which suggests you don't need all out top speed and overclocking ability. Plus any board upgrade to DDR4 would require purchase of DDR4 RAM meaning the build cost would escalate.

Space heater? I was under the impression that Intel ran hotter than AMD, unless things have changed over the past few years?

I do admit, Intel seems to have come down in price since I built my PC. Not sure why though...
Ok, I'm sold on Intel. To me there doesn't seem to be much of a difference in price nowadays.

Next question: Given that I have DDR3-1866 RAM lying around, would I be better off going for Haswell or Skylake?

 

[AlienALX]

You can buy Skylake boards that take DDR3 dude. So Skylake IMO.

 

[Wraith]

You can buy Skylake boards that take DDR3 dude. So Skylake IMO.

Errm nah! DDR3L wound depend on the RAM he already has :huh: which is Vengeance 1866 and that runs at 1.5v, DDR3L (Low voltage) runs at 1.35v and the Ultra low voltage runs at 1.2v so what you're advising is that he waste his memory and cripple its performance.

I'd personally go with either an AMD 750K or Stick to Haswell and Z97, it'll be fine for the next 2 - 3 years, 4 cores above 3.0GHz is more than enough to cope with any game IMHO, for extended future proofing an Intel K series for those glorious Overclocking features is always the way to go but with a £300 budget it's quite difficult especially if you're only wanting new parts.

 

[AlienALX]

Errm nah! DDR3L wound depend on the RAM he already has :huh: which is Vengeance 1866 and that runs at 1.5v, DDR3L (Low voltage) runs at 1.35v and the Ultra low voltage runs at 1.2v so what you're advising is that he waste his memory and cripple its performance.

I'd personally go with either an AMD 750K or Stick to Haswell and Z97, it'll be fine for the next 2 - 3 years, 4 cores above 3.0GHz is more than enough to cope with any game IMHO, for extended future proofing an Intel K series for those glorious Overclocking features is always the way to go but with a £300 budget it's quite difficult especially if you're only wanting new parts.

Erm, yeah, actually.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/B150M Combo-G/?cat=Specifications

According to Asrock - - 2 x DDR3/DDR3L DIMM Slots
- Supports DDR3/DDR3L 1866(OC)/1600/1333/1066 non-ECC, un-buffered memory

So it supports DDR3L and DDR3.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asro...p9581SWFftjeRSkGCyzYqpQD4ufFrybmBEaAu1S8P8HAQ

Good price too and it's available.

 

[Wraith]

He has a 4x4GB kit!

 

[AlienALX]

He has a 4x4GB kit!

That's not why you said he shouldn't go Skylake and DDR3. You said -

Errm nah! DDR3L wound depend on the RAM he already has :huh: which is Vengeance 1866 and that runs at 1.5v, DDR3L (Low voltage) runs at 1.35v and the Ultra low voltage runs at 1.2v so what you're advising is that he waste his memory and cripple its performance.

But any way, aside from you being wrong on that I would personally ditch 8gb of the ram and still go Skylake. It's far faster in gaming than Haswell clock per clock. In fact, Crysis 3 is actually 30 FPS faster on Skylake.

 

[Wraith]

So your going to quote me on one small part of this thread, great.

Advising someone to buy something of which they can't use the hardware they already have is just bad play, and then to have them run that hardware at lower volts and clocks, as the Asrock board you suggest will require RAM overclocking to get the vengeance to work at the right frequency, they might not want to be fiddling around in the Bios.

He could run at 8GB for a while, buy a DDR4 set then recoup the loss through selling the DDR3 kit later, but that is not the OP question. I'm not going to argue the toss with you over who has the largest member.

The new forum member wants advice and I'll give that.

 

[AlienALX]

So your going to quote me on one small part of this thread, great.

No, I quoted you on the part you were quite clearly wrong about. The bit where you got all smart and said -

Errm nah!

If you're going to behave in such a manner I would make sure you are unequivocally right in future.

Advising someone to buy something of which they can't use the hardware they already have is just bad play, and then to have them run that hardware at lower volts and clocks, as the Asrock board you suggest will require RAM overclocking to get the vengeance to work at the right frequency, they might not want to be fiddling around in the Bios.

I am sure with a thread opened here asking around he could easily sort out the ram speed, if it were an issue.

He could run at 8GB for a while, buy a DDR4 set then recoup the loss through selling the DDR3 kit later, but that is not the OP question. I'm not going to argue the toss with you over who has the largest member.

The new forum member wants advice and I'll give that.

The I3 6100 absolutely destroys any mid range AMD CPU, especially the 750k. It's also a much more modern and superior chipset.

Skylake is pretty "meh" over Haswell for pretty much everything but gaming, where it seems to streak ahead by miles obliterating the last gen of I3s. Not only that but the Skylake system will be infinitely more upgradeable than the AMD one, which AMD will ditch very soon.

Over all it's completely up to him of course. I suggest that he read between the lines and spend plenty of time reading up on which would be better for him.

 

[barnsley]

The I3 6100 absolutely destroys an
y mid range AMD CPU, especially the 750k. It's also a much more modern and superior chipset.

The i3 is also £30 more, needs ~£40 of DDR4 to shine at the least. Not to mention that the i3 only really will pull ahead with fast DDR4 (and thats only in games that use texture streaming in the same way Cryengine does) , so there goes the idea of using a budget motherboard. That i3 is easily the best bang for buck i3 since the i3 5xx but you still need to drop a pretty penny in order to get the fps difference that actually makes spending the extra over... an i5 4460 and a h97 board worth it.

If the OP wants to get an i5/i7 in a few months time (and doesn't mind the extra cost of whatever intel decides to put the CPU up to) then yes, no competition. IF however they don't play exclusively Cryengine games or games that depend on strong single core performance then I would go ahead and buy a more expensive GPU with the money saved by going down the 860k route or ideally go with an i5 4440/4460.

I mean, if you don't use games that have a dependency on fast RAM the low end i5 makes more sense from a cash perspective. This is a game where the i3 is on par with it. IMO its not worth the extra. Especially if the GPU isn't a flagship model.

 

[tinytomlogan]

If you can start with Intel and be happy knowing you have a f.fast cpu and an upgrade path.

The i3's for gaming are chuffing amazing

 

[AlienALX]

Barnsley - if DDR4 makes a difference then the upgrade path is there. Same goes for the CPU too, there are lots of upgrade paths.

Go with anything AMD now and you are shafted, because AMD are pretty much ditching all of their current sockets and going for a unified AM4 which should run all of their next gen CPUs and APUs.

It's literally been Skylake gaming performance that has pretty much stopped AMD CPUs and APUs from making any sense.

Their APUs used to be OK for gaming but since the initial APUs where games like Left 4 Dead were playable we have had much more high tech visuals given to us and even the newest APUs can not cope with newer games at all, making the need for a dedicated GPU pretty much mandatory and one costing in the very least a hundred quid just to get things running at minimum to medium settings @ 1080p.

So for me? The CPU party is finally over for AMD and I sincerely can't recommend anything they make.

 

[JR23]

If you're going to behave in such a manner I would make sure you are unequivocally right in future.

I mean he was. While standard voltage DDR3 is compatible with skylake it is by no means recommended hence the DDR3L requirement by most motherboard manufacturers and the fact even the most extremely fast DDR4 is only 1.35V.


If a decent Z97 board at a good price is still available, then keeping your DDR3 and getting an i5-4440 makes the most price/performance sense for gaming short-term and it certainly won't be obsolete overnight. Until Skylake prices actually settle down to normal levels and DDR4 prices continue to fall it's all a bit silly right now. Overclocking locked multiplier CPU's hasn't massively helped the entire picture of value either, only helping to sustain the new inflated prices without making massive performance difference.

JR

 

[AlienALX]

You don't really need to overclock the I3 6100 it's very fast at stock.

As for the other part? He specifically said that you can only use DDR3L at X voltage. As usual though, Asrock offer a board where this isn't the case so he obviously hadn't checked his facts correctly.

Given that Z97 is pretty much a dead socket now I would avoid it unless it were a K series CPU that is much cheaper than the Skylake counterpart.

 

[barnsley]

So for me? The CPU party is finally over for AMD and I sincerely can't recommend anything they make.

DDR4 is only worth it for certain games. If you've got 16gb DDR3 lying around (and lets face it, you'll never make any money from it by selling) then you might as well use it. Heck, you'll even get a cheap upgrade a year or two down the line when people sell their 4790ks. Certainly cheaper than whatever the 6700k goes for.

And I didn't really end up recommending the AMD cpu in the end (although I probably should have made it clearer as I was rambling). Its just that the i5 4460 isn't going to be around for much longer and the price is only going to go up (I should know, I've had 30 ordered in for work..). I mean, I'm presuming this upgrade is going to happen soon and not in 6-8 months time when DDR4 will be cheaper. As previously stated, this CPU is only able to edge ahead when you slam it on a high end board with fast DDR4. The i5 44xx is still a cheaper alternative to the i3 without loosing the frame rate. It'll also beat it in games that can't use hyper threading, such as (IIRC) Rust, Day Z (s) and ARMA.

Then again my whole plan hinges on people not gouging out the prices of h97/z97 motherboards. Which, if left long enough, they will do.

 

[JR23]

As for the other part? He specifically said that you can only use DDR3L at X voltage. As usual though, Asrock offer a board where this isn't the case so he obviously hadn't checked his facts correctly.

The memory must meet the specification of the motherboard and the CPU. All Skylake CPU's specify support for DDR4 or DDR3L @1.35V. Anything beyond that would be an overclock and while it's supported by the ASRock board that doesn't make it safe short term or long term.

JR

 

[AlienALX]

It's probably solved by the board. IE run the memory at the needed voltage but use some sort of resistor for the CPU's memory controller.

Asrock have been doing cool stuff like this for years. Boards with AGP and PCIE, boards that support DDR2 and DDR3 and so on. None have been in any way dangerous or a risk to your CPU. I'm quite sure they know what they're doing any way.