I would build a new system....gut what you can from your current pc....power supply...if its decent....hard drive..cd rom..etc...and then get a z68 board an sandy bridge...or p67 if you dont care about quick sync. Use the 560 ti until you find it is no longer adequate. Its a relatively fast card....especially when you overclock it.
2500k and a Z68 board. Probably will set you back a little under $400..and you need some DDR3 memory but that's cheap!
I have an asus p5q deluxe it accepts all 45nm quads. not really worth it because of the price of the cpu`s
I can afford to build a new rig. I'm also thinking about swaping the mobo, cpu and consequently the ram. But I want to be very careful about getting these components becoz I don't want to do another upgrade later. Since both of you recoomend Z68, I suppose it must have some very good credentials in itself. But then there are more than a few Z68 mobo out there, would ASUS P8Z68-V PRO be a choice worth considering? angmar, you said using the 560 ti until it is no longer adequate, do you actually mean that it is just a transient solution? Other choices like 570 is faster? All I want is to improve the frame rate of the flight simulation games I am playing. They are Rise of Flights Iron Cross, DCS A-10C Warthog and a few. I also play Battlefield 3 which is coming soon as well as Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. I want to achieve 60 FPS at 1680X1050 reoslution for these games. Many of you recommend 2500K is it sort of a main stream choice in the market like the Q6600 back in to those days? Also why no body recommends i7, is it because of its expensive price tag or i5 being more overclockable? Sorry for the long reply and many questions at once...thanks!!
In games the i5 2500K is pretty much as fast as the i7 2600K because nothing uses HT and the extra 2mb cache doesn't do much at all.
I have 2 options in mind: 1) Overclock this card further 2) Add some more money and get a GTX 570 Which is the best option? About overclocking, is NVIDIA forceware capable of overclocking? If not which utility should I use to overclock it?
I just use msi afterburner and it's completely up to you if you want a faster card or not but i would suggest waiting till you have your new cpu etc before deciding.
I have been thinking the i5 2500K since it seems that is the main stream choice, and everyone is recommending it though I know very little about how good it is, compared to the i3 and i7. Now that I have decided i5 2500K, which motherboard I should go for? I heard that there is a new chipset Z68, it has the capabilities of switching between fast and slow graphics am I understand it correctly? Should I go for this chipset or some other chipset? Also, what mobo nowadays support DDR5 memory? Sorry for these stupid questions, last time I put together a system has to be dated back to Dec 2008!
DDR3 is newest ram right now. z68 or p67 chipsets are fine depending on what features you want, ssd caching is the main diff considering you wont use integrated graphics. i5 2500k is considered best because its easily clocked to 4.5GHz+ and gives VERY good performance, there are no lower model CPUs that support overclocking in this generation and getting last gen tech is pointless.
Thank you for the pointer killer_939. When you go out buying RAM from retail shops, how do you tell the timming of the modules that you're buying? And what timming are the best for overclocking? Also, do most of the motherboards support dual channel? Excuse me, what do you mean saying that I won't use integrated graphics? Doesn't the mobo come with integrated graphics chipset? Please clarify a bit more thanks So i5 2500K is the lowest model in the i5 series do I get you right? If say I do not overclock as I do to my Q6600 because I want it to last longer by keeping it below 49C most of the time, is i5 2500K still the best choice for me, as far as gaming PC is concerned? THANKS!
Ram normally has a sticker on it with the speed and timings. You want ram for overclocking yet you aren't going to overclock? Am i getting that right? Any decent brand ram 1333-1600MHz should be fine really. The i5 2500k allows overclocking, the i5 2300, 2400 and 2500 don't. If you 100% don't want to overclock don't get the k model but it is kind of silly not to especially with these newer sandy bridge CPU's overclocking so much and so easily. As long as your voltage and temps are within what Intel state is "safe" you should get 5-10 years out of pretty much any chip at the very least but your choice. As for the integrated graphics thing, modern Intel CPU's come with it inside them, p67 can't use it but z68 can but still it's pretty much pointless since in a gaming rig you have a graphics card. If you plan on using ssd caching then go z68 (google what it is) but if you don't then it doesn't really matter what chipset you get. If you don't plan on overclocking even a h67 would do you.
killer_939 I do not mean I will not overclock ever. Once in a while, like testing something out, I still overclock like I did last night to my Q6600 just to see if it raises the frame rate counter using the new GTX 560 Ti. But I will not have it overclocked constantly because when I do that it means the CPU will be going into a final stage before a replacement on its way like now I can overclock the Q6600 and keep it running before I get the i5 2500K next week or so. Let me understand it right again, so the i5 2500 with a "K" means it is the unlocked version, right? What is the next model up? And by the way how much is the 2500K?
K is unlocked yeah, the next one up is i7 2600K i5 2500k is $215 here and i7 2600k is $315. I don't know in USD
I can afford $315 actually, and will be glad to have a i7 in my new system. The question is now that all I am doing is to prove that my Q6600 is bottle-necking the 560 Ti. But then will this new CPU upgrade help proving the 560 Ti is faster than the 4870 I am having? What if I put the 4870 in to the new machine with i5 or i7 and find that it is also doing the same as the 560 Ti? See what I mean? Uploaded with ImageShack.us
killer_939 I have just overclocked it to 950/2050, and I don't gain any frames !! Does it prove that my CPU is limiting the card?
Folks Now I finally managed to o/c my Q6600 to just now 3330.3 (9 * 370)! Before I changed my gfx card from 4870 to 560 Ti, I couldn't o/c this little babe to anything beyond 2.9, the system was very unstable. I guess it was the 4870 blocking my overclock then. A 38% increase in CPU speed, but the flight simulation game that I used to play only increased by 6 to 7 frames and is hanging around 18 ~ 19 FPS. Now is the CPU really holding back the GTX 560 Ti?
The CPU is definitely holding you back. Unless you overclock that q6600 to atleast 3.6-3.8Ghz you won't see a significant improvement. The 560Ti or 4870 has nothing to do with the cpu overclocking potential. i5 2500k is mainstream and not the lowest. K denotes it has an unlocked multiplier allowing the ability to overclock in future provided you have a P67/Z68 board. Integrated graphics are not on the motherboard but on the CPU itself. Whether you can use them or not depends upon the motherboard chipset. Z68 can, P67 can't. Overclocking potential for both boards is identical.
