Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer
rahulahl wrote:Core i7-4790K is slightly faster than Core i7-4770K.Intel Core i7-860
Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3
Corsair 4x2 GiB XMP-1600 Memory
750 Watt Cooler Master PSU
Asus Republic of Gamers Swift PG278Q
AMD Radeon HD5870
I intend to buy a GeForce GTX980 when it releases next month.
The Egg wrote:I'm thinking that he'd notice a difference going from a 2.8 GHz Lynnfield to a 4.0 GHz Haswell.I don't know if it's worth upgrading.
JustAnEngineer wrote:The Egg wrote:I'm thinking that he'd notice a difference going from a 2.8 GHz Lynnfield to a 4.0 GHz Haswell.I don't know if it's worth upgrading.
rahulahl wrote:You could upgrade your graphics card first and then decide if you want to upgrade your processor and motherboard later. I believe that you've waited long enough that you would notice a performance improvement with a new processor. As you noted in your initial post, the just-released US$ 1050 Haswell-E is not the best gaming CPU. A U$ 340 Core i7-4790K or US$ 240 Core i5-4690K will continue to offer better gaming performance in most situations.I would rather just save money and not upgrade the rest of my system other than the GPU.
Hz so good wrote:My advice is buy way ahead of the curve.
rahulahl wrote:To be honest, I am still very confused on if I need to upgrade my desktop in the first place.
JustAnEngineer wrote:The Egg wrote:I'm thinking that he'd notice a difference going from a 2.8 GHz Lynnfield to a 4.0 GHz Haswell.I don't know if it's worth upgrading.
rahulahl wrote:You are correct, but certain GPU requirements go up proportionally with pixels, while CPU requirements go up more gradually. You are much more likely to reach a GPU bottleneck at the WQHD resolution of your monitor than you would be with half as many pixels at 1080p. A faster CPU will provide better gaming, but if you have to choose where to allocate your funds for gaming at 2560x1440, a good GPU is more important than the CPU. The new GeForce GTX980 that you have on your shopping list should provide a good gaming experience at your target resolution, so I expect that you would see a measurable performance gain with a good CPU. If you were looking at a weaker GPU, we'd probably suggest upgrading it before your CPU.Playing at 1440p requires more CPU power... surely higher resolution means you need more of both GPU and CPU.
rahulahl wrote:If you slap a good cooler like the rather tall AU$ 39 or AU$ 37 or AU$ 66 CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo or even a smaller mid-range cooler like the AU$ 58¼ Arctic Cooling Freezer i11 onto either one of these unlocked -K CPUs, you'll probably be able to overclock to 4.x GHz. The hyper-threading in the Core i7 doesn't help much in most games. If the clock speeds are equal, the Core i5 provides similar performance for AU$ 119 less. If your budget can stand the extra outlay then the faster 4.0 GHz CPU will perform better than the 3.5 GHz CPU at stock speed. Even if you don't overclock, a decent aftermarket cooler makes less noise than the stock Intel cooler does.If I do decide to upgrade my build, is it better to get i5-4690k with 3.5GHz or i7-4790k with 4GHz? It's about AU$ 120 difference, but I would have presumed that 500 MHz can be a big deal.
rahulahl wrote:Note that the Asus Z97M-Plus has only two PCIe slots. The other two are obsolete PCI slots.Aside from the brand, available slots and price, are there any other criteria I should be looking at when picking a motherboard?