Hi! I recently bought a gigabyte gtx 980 g1 and a Acer xb270hu. Just love the combination. But as always, I get the need to upgrade more. Together with the 980 ti, I have a 3570k @ 4.5GHz (air), 8GB 1600MHz ram, Asus p8z77-v. My problem is that I worry that the gpu isn't able to use all Its strength. In some games, especially witcher 3, I sometimes get frame rates down to 50, averages around 65-70 at 1440p. This is typically in areas I would guess are cpu-heavy, like weather effects on vegetation etc. Do you think these frame rate drops are caused by my cpu? I want my computer to be quite future proof, and would like for my gpus power to be maximized. Do you think it's being held back by the cpu? Im taking 3d marks messages with a pinch of salt, but I got one saying : "your gpu is ready to rumble, but your cpu doesn't wanna play". I get around 8500 in physics store, in standard fire strike. If I should upgrade, should I go for skylake or Haswell-E? Do you think Haswell-E is more future proof because of Its six cores? I know the update isnt urgent, but Im guessing I' ll have to swap my cpu at some point. Or would you wait for next generation Intel, or perhaps AMD zen? The purpose of my pc is gaming.
Check your CPU usage when you get low framerate. If your CPU constantly hitting 100% on frame drop AND it caused by game, yes you could consider a new CPU. However, according to benchmarks there no much different on Intel site: http://www.techspot.com/review/1006-the-witcher-3-benchmarks/page5.html CPUs are not suffering from higher resolution, GPU does. And there no much pressure on CPU these days, really. Witcher is very GPU pressing game, even high-end cards have frame drops. So yeah, figure out what cause frame drop 1st.
For gaming there is really no benefit of going Skylake, at least to the point of quantifying the expense. It wouldn't really be worth going 6-core either, the term 'futureproof' is misleading, at best you could say 'future-ready'. CPU's have only been 'futureproof' recently because there wasn't a huge jump between Ivy and Skylake, although this is likely to change next year if AMD Zen brings competition to the table. The only benefit of Skylake would be if you do video encoding using an encoder that heavily uses AVX2 and is getting further AVX2 improvements (like x265). Probably the only upgrade that may be worth it in certain games, especially considering maybe another year or so, is RAM. Having 16 GB of DDR3-2133 RAM wouldn't hurt if you can get it for a decent price (especially if you sell off your existing RAM). Sure, it may only be beneficial for a year or so, but by then an upgrade to a new CPU would be worth it, and DDR4 prices will likely be not only lower, but more matured in terms of what latencies you can get with them, as well as cost per-RAM speed.
Thanks for your replies. It's just so easy to get carry away with new releases, especially when your hw is 3+ years old (!) I was actally looking for some new RAM last week, but I couldn't find a DDR3-2133 RAM match for my MB. Will try to analyze my CPU-usage during gaming, and see if there is a connection to the frame drops.
The RAM list on the support page isn't the only RAM to buy. Realistically, if you have your bios updated, any decent 2x8 GB DDR3-2133 modules should be fine.
Alright, I'll check it out. At first glance it seems like alot of the local stores no longer have DDR3 2133MHz in stock, only higher speeds, or 1600MHz. I now tried Witcher 3, and entered an area where my frames drops to 50. Here my CPU load is 100% on all cores. The GPU core load is 98-99%, GPU memory load is 31% and total GPU power is between 72% - 85% (% av TDP). Is my GPU getting enough juice because the core load is 99%? Or should the GPU total power be higher than 72%?
DDR3-2133 is probably sold out because it is the sweet point on Ivy and Haswell. You could go 2400 etc as well, just the benefit over 2133 isn't the same as 2133 over 1866 or 1600. The CPU use is so high probably because of bad programming and DirectX 11 overhead. Skylake will probably give you essentially zero benefit. With DirectX 12 and Vulkan you will probably be future ready, at least for a little while. You could possibly tweak bios a bit more.
But overall, the performance difference across most games doesn't warrant the expense of the CPU, RAM, motherboard etc. Hilbert's review of the i5-6600K is indicative of this. From memory I think it was actually Hilbert who said that going from a CPU like 3570K to Skylake isn't cost effective.
I'd say it was pretty pointless, the only 'worthwhile' upgrade would be a 5820K as you're at least getting an extra couple of cores, but it comes down to whether or not you'll make use of them. Better off keeping what you've got and waiting a couple of generations before looking at a new CPU.
I found that witcher 3 isnt my biggest concern, its gta 5 and bf hardline. Cant shake the feeling that my i5 will suffer in the upcoming online fps games, like star wars bf2. 5820 upgrade will in total cost my 900usd (lousy exchange rates atm) and I got someone willing to give 300usd for my current gear. Need to do some hard considering!
The only way an upgrade to Skylake even remotely makes sense is if you're going from an i5 3570K to an i7 6700K. If you're going to stick with an i5, there's no real point in upgrading. The only reason I'm running Skylake is because my previous build suffered a hardware failure. I was running an i7 2600K@4.5ghz.
Well said, only from 3570k to 6700k we can say its somewhat an upgrade. Do you even feel the difference? I bet 6600k even with 4threads is quite faster 2600k, especially in gaming.
It would depend on the game. Even if it is a bit faster in some games, the cost of changeover doesn't warrant it. Once DirectX 12/Vulkan become mainstream the different will probably be even much lest. The i7-6700K would be an upgrade, but the i7-6700K isn't really worth the excessive extra cost they add to it. It's purely a market segment placement pricing strategy. If you made a i5-6700K with the same cache as the i5-6600K, it would probably in reality cost not much more to manufacture. It would be interesting to see what Intel will do when the AMD Zen comes out, since they are all hyperthread equivalent. Proper hyperthread that is, like the i7-6700K. I suspect you may see a drop of the single thread line for Cannonlake, but oh wow surprise! Not the massive price increase that exists between the i5-6600K and i7-6700K. If you have to change due to hardware failure it would be a good move, otherwise I think it will suffice until a real changeover contender comes around.
For some things it's faster. For other things it's slower. Of course, this is based on user experience only and nothing actually measurable outside of 3DMark Firestrike bench. In Firestrike, it's a bit slower due to it's lack of HT. Overall, I'm happy with it but I would have been happy to stay with my 2600K as well.
Thank you guys, I will not be upgrading my CPU, better of waiting. Glad I dodged that bullet I have to admit, after reading this through some post at overclock.net, I do want some faster RAM in my rig. Some some benchmarks comparing 1600 to 2133 ram in gaming, and it was significally better, especially at minimun FPS. So you think G.Skill "DDR3 8GB PC17000 CL9 KIT (2x4GB) 8GBXM RipjawsX" will fit in my Asus p8z77-v? Or Corsair Vengeance Pro Series - DDR3 - 8 GB : 2 x 4 GB - DIMM 240-pin CL9 (9, 11, 11, 31) (2133Mhz)
Honestly man...I think you would just come away with barely any gain at all for the hundreds of dollars to upgrade to a new motherboard and cpu. The rate of performance gain from yearly intel cpu releases has screeched to a halt since sandy bridge.
Exactly. AMD Zen is the next CPU to look for. There's life in the old Z77's+Ivy yet. The only downside is for certain workloads that benefit from AVX2, like video encoding using encoders with proper AVX2 support (like the latest x265). Interestingly enough there's a beta bios for my motherboard now (Asrock Z77 Extreme6) that adds full NVME support. I wasn't expecting that since it's effectively 3 generations old now (Z77 --> Z87 --> Z97 --> Z170). If only PCI-E SSD's were a similar price to SATA SSD's... I guess we're in a transition period at the moment.
The only real gains to be had, are for those going from a SB or IV i5 to an i7 at this point. Going i5 to i5 or i7 to i7 makes no sense.
So, both GPU and CPU are loaded. Power seem to fair, 100% TDP is rare and only achievable on crazy burning benchmarks. Now, try to lower resolution and see if your frames get stable. (By lowering resolution, you put less pressure on GPU.) 1) If frames do get stable and GPU usage is lower than 60%, problem in GPU. CPU 100% load won't necessary mean FPS drop in this case. 2) If frames don't get stable with lower GPU usage (60% or lower), CPU max usage could cause frame drop.
