I7 920 and two GTX 970 or one GTX 970 and new CPU?

Hello Guru3d

First a sorry for my English. Not my strongest part.

I had been so Lucky to win two Zotac gtx 970, but my cpu is an old i7 920 oc to 3.8 GHz (it can do 4.1 GHz but holding at 3.8 GHz for noise/heat).

What i wanted to ask is how bad is my old CPU a bottleneck to my two new GTX 970 Cards and would i be better of whit selling one of the gtx 970 and get a new CPU and motherboard?

System Spec:

i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz
ASUS Rampage II Extreme ROG
Corsair 12 GB DDR3 triple channel (6x2 GB Sticks)
2 x zotac gtx 970 in sli.

 

I would get a new CPU and MB before going SLI

 

So i shut sell one of the gtx 970 and get a new cpu/mohterboard. Thanks for your respond.

Do others agreed?

 

You will get nowhere near the same performance with a new cpu and m/b with single GTX970 as you will get with your existing cpu and GTX 970's in SLI.

I would recommend that you o/c your cpu some more.

For info and comparison purposes my 3DMark Firestrike score is 11090.

 

Oh I misread your first post. I thought you only had 1 970 and wanted to buy another. Just keep the two cards then and save up for a new MB and CPU.

 

Get a Xeon x5650 or better for around $70 and overclock it easily to 4.4+GHz and you'll be fine SLIing those cards

Cheap upgrade, overclocks a lot higher than a 920, temps are lower and uses less power.

 

So i shut keep my Cards and save up.

My score in 3dmark firestrike is whit two Cards and some overclock on GPU and cpu at 3.8 GHz gets me 14281.

 

Thats allright.

 

Can xeon run on my motherboard?

As an altertive i cut try find a i7 970/980. Not a bad idea. I will keep that in mind.

 

Yes, it'll run, the xeons are a fantastic upgrade for us on old x58 platform and they're cheap. I score over 11000 in fire strike with my 780ti. On mobile so can't post the exact score

 

Read this thread and you will find out: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18618052

I agree that keep you GPUs and CPU or you can try to get Xeon and OC it.
Depends what games you play do you need CPU upgrade or not.

 

Yes a 980 or a Xeon sounds like a good idea,

 

Sweet. 6 cores upgrade for cheap Money. I like that. I think this will be the bedst to do then here and now. Thanks.

 

Great. thansk for that link. Just what i need.

I play demanding games and not so demanding. Crysis 3, metro last light, dying light, evolve, BF4. Just a few i play right now.

 

no problem, thats what we're here for
6 cores rox , all Frostbite 2.0 engines support more than 4 cores so your FPS will improve in BF4 and DA:I if you play that.

My Firestrike score is - 11497
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3645410

As the xeons overclock better your minimum FPS will increase quite a bit and it has more L1/L2 cache compared to the 920

These are the 2 best threads on the subject:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1461359/...w-discussion-and-xeon-l5639-benchmarks-inside
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1820772

Just to be realistic, single thread performance isint going to be the same as the latest and greatest intel, but you can overclock like a mofo and its cheap. It will definately ease any dual card burden and ports to PC will be better with more cores at less fequency( bar the 970 vram issue ).

If you want me to run a benchmark let me know.

 

Not bad gpu/cpu score :nerd:

 

lol, cheers man, but i know youre dying to tell me that your uber 780 performs a lot better? so go on , lets see the 780 score

 

I have been checking to get Xeon too so plz give as much benchmarks as possible.

 

Actually no was just a compliment, mostly on physics score


btw I can't match that
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5978263

 

let me know what you would like to see specifically. I have some old 920 results and the same results on a xeon. The min FPS is well up, max not so much. But games that take advantage of multicore are well up on everything.

Anyway its a cheap upgrade and prob costs $40 selling your 920

Thanks man, appreciated and sorry man, wasnt trying to be an ass, i know from other threads you have a great 780 so i was just coming from that. Still a very nice score, Firestrike takes advantage of extra cores so its not really a fair comparison but i do reckon you could push that card harder

Its not that much extra compared to my old 920, but i pushed it to the absolute max for this score compared to the xeon just being regular
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/2743275
The Turbo clock is wrong, was up over 4Ghz on base clock but hitting 90C+ lol.