Hello! Current setup is getting me by, however I'm wanting to get into the 1440p scene for gaming. Below are current rig specs, as well as considered upgrades. My concern is I'm not getting the FPS I expected @ 1080 p with this setup. 1440p would really tax this machine I think. Most played currently - World of warcraft - 90 ish fps out and about, 50-60 fps in stress zones Rift - 75 ish fps , 40-50 in stress zones Guild Wars 2 - 130ish fps, 60-80 when stressed Could someone knowledgable please advise the best route to go? Current Setup: Asus P8p67 Pro motherboard I5 2500K @ 4.5ghz (overclocked via turbo boost settings in bios) Corsair Vengeance 8 gigabytes 850W psu (Bronze Cert) Gtx 780 Western Digital (black) 1 Terabyte HDD Considering going to: New motherboard (not sure if necessary or any gains will occur) 2nd GTX 780 in SLI ( biggest gains I imagine ) New processor? ( not sure if necessary) More ram, upgrade to 16g / 32g Solid state drive ( not sure if this will affect peformance) Just got into the gaming scene on PC, and advice would be much appreciated! Cheers! -Womz
get a nice ssd with enough room for your windows and some games. if you want more get a i5 4690k or i7 4790k with a z97 mobo and at least 2133 ram. don't get another 780 one is plenty.
I wouldn't say it's worth upgrading your CPU or your Mobo right now, if you want decent frames at good settings while running 1440p a second GPU is your best bet. That said, you seem to be an avid MMO player, and those games tend to be more CPU orientated than GPU, so adding a second GPU might not get amazing results in those games specifically. Double check reviews to be sure. If you really want to upgrade your CPU/Mobo/Ram wait until Skylake is out, it really isn't worth it prior. An SSD would be a nice improvement, big open world games tend to be smoother and more enjoyable on an SSD. You wont gain frames but the games should be smoother, less texture popping and the like. Also take a look at upgrading your audio equipment. the RAM you have is just fine. No need to buy more of that, or replacing it with faster.
2 false info in one line : 1. There have never been a solid proof on more performance (real-life performance) from a "fast ram" at least faster than 1600 or 1866 2. SLI would give 60-70% more GPU power. I would just SLI the 780 for solid improvement if I was in OP's place.
Worst advice ever... If he wants to go 1440p, then a 2nd gpu would be THE best upgrade he could make. An Ssd would make close to zero difference in game performance, aside of load times.
"My concern is I'm not getting the FPS I expected @ 1080 p with this setup. 1440p would really tax this machine I think." sometimes the problem is not hardware, but software: bad coding or optimizing, driver issues, setting crazy AA levels. I bet, games you play would not take a huge hit on 2560x1440. If you want that rez, go get your new monitor and see from there if its enough fps for you. If not first thing to do lower AA settings and performance goes up. If that doesn't satisfies second 780 will be best solution. Keep that cpu for few more years. Keep the ram. c1:
SLI would be the biggest step up in performance. That should be your primary focus. Given the fact that you play MMOs, a CPU upgrade would also be beneficial, but its nowhere near as important as your GPU. That said, after you SLI your system, keep an eye out for reviews of Broadwell CPUs. If the performance over Sandy Bridge is small, wait until Skylake to upgrade your CPU.
I have Haswell 4.7ghz and in Rift its still similar min 50-60ish fps, engine is crappy..now im mostly gpu bottlenecked @ SSAA. Dunno if you know there is a cfg tweak for core selection, change it from 3 to 1 or vice versa and it could speed up a bit... [CLIENT] ThreadAffinityMain = 1 But overall you will need faster per core performance if you want better min fps @ 1080p. Try a simple test with your LCD 1080p, use downsample - this way you can see it quickly if you still get the same minimum fps, downsample from 2560x1440.
Btw turbo should be disabled when overclocking. That could be partly why your fps is lower than expected. what cooler do u have? sent from my ...who gives a crap?
His three year old CPU has nothing wrong with it, going from a decently clocked Sandy to a Haswell is not a good upgrade for the vast majority of people. You could have been gaming at higher frames while maintaining higher settings if you'd kept the CPU/Mobo/RAM you'd been using and bought better GPU's instead of a pair of 760's tbh. He'd see better gains upgrading his GPU's. The fact that 3gb manages just fine at 1080p - 1440p has been proven time and again.
idk perf. scales properly here 46x vs 47x. I OC with turbo mode.. 3dmark Firestrike physics or Cinebench15 shows the difference every time
Yeah but are u oc by turbo alone or with base multi as well? Cuz I doubt op is 4.5 base with stock cooling..... sent from my phone.
What im trying to tell op is overclocking just by turbo isnt really overclocking. I don't mean turbo should be disabled fullstop evn tho I did say that.
Yeah basically the OP just OC his turbo boost instead of disabling it. Which is a very different form of OCing.
another 780 would be by far the best upgrade you can do for your particular setup. Is your current gpu reference design? Thats the setup I use on my very similar m/b. I dont believe there is enough room for 2 custom 780 coolers.
What? Just WHAT? If he gets proper fps on 1080p, how is he supposed to need better CPU to keep same fps on 1440p? @womz: You need 2nd GTX780. - SSD is very good upgrade for system responsiveness and loading times for mmo games, helps with micro-freezes on some games too. -> SSD write speed is secondary attribute, you write data once and source of those data provides them at very slow rate anyway, so do not spend extra to get 550/550MBps Read/Write and get instead bigger SSD with 500MBps+ read and even 250MBps write is ok. - Additional 8GB ram, I am not even sure if I needed ever more than 8GB while gaming. Likely needed only if you often forget to exit Photoshop or similar memory eater. Last gaming PC I built was on tight budget, purely for gaming and targeted for 3 games. It has only 8GB ram but that is enough, 240GB SSD and no additional drive. Never spend on things which you will not use. OT: It has standard Fast Boot and new MSI Fast Boot. It got me off guard at 1st reboot after installation of OS. As it took 4 seconds from time I issued reboot command till time I saw desktop again.
Don't bother with the ram, 8GB is perfect for games. Most are still coded in 32bit so don't use more than 4GB. I'd try it out at 1440p first, and then think about upgrading the GPU to suit. How much Vram have you got on the GTX780 by the way?
A second 780 and maybe a ssd. I went for a small ssd as the system disc and a large (and faster) one with all the games on them. Can't be beaten in terms of felt performance in between true gaming sequences, and combined with more gpu beef you should be fine with a base clock oc (disable turbo).
I just set sync all cores to ie 47x and kept both turbo, eist on. It will drop freq. in idle to ~ 4100-4500mhz but only if i enable C1E, otherwise its at pinned 47x multi all the time with windows high perf. power plan. My base is still 3.5ghz, but when I enter windows its 4.7ghz if @ windows HPPP I tried to disable turbo one time, saw Phazedelta1 saying he OC's without it and I couldnt use these multis - sync all cores ratios anymore, so idk how to OC without turbo