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JustAnEngineer wrote:

What games are you playing that the Radeon HD7950 isn't handling satisfactorily?  Would you consider blowing $400 instead of $200 on a graphics card upgrade?

If you overclock your Sandy Bridge CPU from its default of 3.4 GHz (3.8 turbo) to 4+ GHz, it'll keep up with newer generations of CPUs.  Need USB3.1?  Done.

Doctor Venture wrote:

Well, right now No Man's Sky (but that game's a poorly optimized hunk of junk anyway), but in other games like MGS V, Black Ops 3, and Witcher 3, I'll notice frame-rate dives depending on what's happening onscreen. I'm used to running games at 1080p with most settings on medium or high these days, depending on the game.  
My main concern was that the Sandy Bridge is basically halving the the theoretical throughput from my existing card, and was just curious if even just making a small upgrade would even be worth it.

CScottG wrote:

Doctor Venture wrote:

Well, right now No Man's Sky (but that game's a poorly optimized hunk of junk anyway), but in other games like MGS V, Black Ops 3, and Witcher 3, I'll notice frame-rate dives depending on what's happening onscreen. I'm used to running games at 1080p with most settings on medium or high these days, depending on the game.  
My main concern was that the Sandy Bridge is basically halving the the theoretical throughput from my existing card, and was just curious if even just making a small upgrade would even be worth it.

I'd stick to games that can be played (they way you like to play them settings-wise) and wait on the others..



That's the current plan. I didn't really feel like spending $200-$300 on a card that might not even smooth out the frame-rates in my existing games, given the artificial limitation. If it does, then I might spring for a nice RX-480, just for the short-term.  Since my motherboard uses an LGA 1155 socket, the best I could do upgrading the CPU would be to go up to an Ivy Bridge, and that's not really worth it for the $400 I just saw on Newegg.  

If I had the money today, I'd build a system with an i7-6950X, as much DDR4 as I can cram into it, along with a pair of high end graphics cards, and as many multi-TB SSDs and 10K RPM HDDs as I could fit into it, but it'll take me a while to save up the money to do this right, so I can end up with a fully balanced system that'll last 5-6 years.  This thing will have to pull double duty as a workstation and a gaming rig, so I need to really do my homework, to get this build done right. Right now, I'm not in a major hurry, so I can afford to sit and wait to see how things play out, and watch what new tech is coming down the pipe.  The only thing that has me in a slight panic mode is getting spares for my CPU and motherboard, since finding non-refurbished versions of those are getting harder to come by.

Firestarter wrote:

is it overclocked to any degree? I know it's your workstation so you probably aren't really interested in it, but both the CPU and the GPU you have are very overclockable. I have a similar system with an i5-2500K and a HD7950, with the CPU at 4.3 GHz which is pretty conservative and my GPU at 1000 MHz (still a 25% OC). Especially your GPU might be worth overclocking as you probably don't use it for your workstation duties and the initial clockspeed of the HD7950's was very low to differentiate it from the HD7970

The cpu and hd 7950 are at standard clocks.  While I could overclock them, like I said, I spend at least 75% of my time running multiple VMs in VMware Workstation, and it's more the amount of h/w threads and memory I can devote to each one, than raw speed. A lot of the VMs are Ubuntu 14.04.4 servers that I'm using for various things, like Openflow/SDN controllers, Ansible, SaltStack, and OpenStack, so they run rather well with the system as-is.   My main concern about the gaming aspect is that the Sandy Bridge I have only supports PCI-E 2.0, while if I wasted $400 on an Ivy Bridge, it'll support PCI-E 3.0, so I should theoretically get better performance right off the bat, graphics-wise. One of the main reasons I was curious if it was even worth trying to get a Polaris or lower end GTX 10x0 card, was for the extra RAM on the boards, and was concerned since they'd be limited to PCI-E 2.0 as well, that I would effectively just wasting cash that I could put towards sourcing spares for the current rig, and saving up for a future rig.  I'm still torn between either getting something like an i7-6950X or a dual Xeon setup, since I really do need as many cores/threads as possible for what I use the workstation for. 

Voldenuit wrote:

Target resolution? I have a hard time believing the 7950 can't keep up with most games at 1080p60 with moderate settings (NMS is just a mess, it's slow and stuttery on my 4670K + 1070, nothing will fix that).
However, if you want to turn settings up, the 480 would be a nice upgrade, and I don't think the CPU will hold you back (the CPU becomes less of a bottleneck the higher you dial the quality settings).
For what it's worth, though, nvidia cards do better with older/slower CPUs, so unless you are sticking to amd out of principle, a 1060 sounds like a better fit for you (DX11, OpenGL, older CPU).
 
Well, like I've been saying, it's less that the Sandy Bridge isn't fast enough, it's more that it's limited to PCI-E 2.0, while my current card supports PCI-E 3.0, so I'm already artificially limiting the theoretical throughput. The motherboard and 7950 can run PCI-E 3, but that SB doesn't support it..

If I spent money replacing the Sandy Bridge with the best Ivy Bridge I can get, it'll support PCI-E 3.0, so It'll be less of an issue about getting an RX-480 or a GTX 1070 (or even just sticking with the 7950), but I mainly was just eyeballing those other cards for the extra RAM available on them, and being able to smooth out the frame-rates in some games, without having to drop the settings down to medium.  I'm not looking to set everything to Ultra or anything, but just eeking out a little more life out of this machine would be nice, but not really required.

Like I mentioned in a different reply, the Sandy Bridge I have is perfectly fine for 75% of what I use the machine for (VMware VMs that're mostly Ubuntu Trusty servers, and some other network VMs), but I was just concerned I would be wasting money on getting a new graphics cards, since it'll be limited to PCI-E 2.0 as well.  I really don't feel like spending the $300-$400 on the best Ivy Bridge I can get, since the 8 h/w threads on the Sandy Bridge are sufficient for what I do for work.  I'd really rather spend money on sourcing spare parts for the current rig (since it'll stick around offline as a retro rig), and then either get something akin to an i7-6950X or maybe a dual Xeon machine, since I really do need as many cores/threads as possible, and as much DDR4 as I can cram in there, so I can run even more VMs concurrently. I know a lot of games won't support that many cores/threads yet, but they'll come in very handy when using the new rig for work.  I'll still get at least the best GFX card available at the time, a Platinum or Titanium level PSU, as many of the best SSDs available then (doubt I could afford the enterprise-grade ones). several 7200 or 10K RPM HDDs, and then a large NAS.

Doctor Venture wrote:

The cpu and hd 7950 are at standard clocks.  While I could overclock them, like I said, I spend at least 75% of my time running multiple VMs in VMware Workstation, and it's more the amount of h/w threads and memory I can devote to each one, than raw speed. A lot of the VMs are Ubuntu 14.04.4 servers that I'm using for various things, like Openflow/SDN controllers, Ansible, SaltStack, and OpenStack, so they run rather well with the system as-is.   My main concern about the gaming aspect is that the Sandy Bridge I have only supports PCI-E 2.0, while if I wasted $400 on an Ivy Bridge, it'll support PCI-E 3.0, so I should theoretically get better performance right off the bat, graphics-wise. One of the main reasons I was curious if it was even worth trying to get a Polaris or lower end GTX 10x0 card, was for the extra RAM on the boards, and was concerned since they'd be limited to PCI-E 2.0 as well, that I would effectively just wasting cash that I could put towards sourcing spares for the current rig, and saving up for a future rig.  I'm still torn between either getting something like an i7-6950X or a dual Xeon setup, since I really do need as many cores/threads as possible for what I use the workstation for. 

Firestarter wrote:

I think you should stop worrying about PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Firestarter wrote:

I think you should stop worrying about PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0.

QFT.
This isn't going to have a noticeable effect on your gaming experience.

Firestarter wrote:

Doctor Venture wrote:

The cpu and hd 7950 are at standard clocks.  While I could overclock them, like I said, I spend at least 75% of my time running multiple VMs in VMware Workstation, and it's more the amount of h/w threads and memory I can devote to each one, than raw speed. A lot of the VMs are Ubuntu 14.04.4 servers that I'm using for various things, like Openflow/SDN controllers, Ansible, SaltStack, and OpenStack, so they run rather well with the system as-is.   My main concern about the gaming aspect is that the Sandy Bridge I have only supports PCI-E 2.0, while if I wasted $400 on an Ivy Bridge, it'll support PCI-E 3.0, so I should theoretically get better performance right off the bat, graphics-wise. One of the main reasons I was curious if it was even worth trying to get a Polaris or lower end GTX 10x0 card, was for the extra RAM on the boards, and was concerned since they'd be limited to PCI-E 2.0 as well, that I would effectively just wasting cash that I could put towards sourcing spares for the current rig, and saving up for a future rig.  I'm still torn between either getting something like an i7-6950X or a dual Xeon setup, since I really do need as many cores/threads as possible for what I use the workstation for. 

I think you should stop worrying about PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0, in gaming applications the difference between the 2 is limited to just a few percent. If you upgrade your CPU you'll probably get a bigger boost just from the extra CPU performance itself. There are plenty of people happily running PCI-E 3.0 cards at 2.0 with sandy bridge CPUs, especially those who overclocked their CPU. I would upgrade to a GTX1080 in a heartbeat if I thought my HD7950 wasn't fast enough anymore. I'd still probably look for a way to unload my i5-2500K to someone else so I could get into some hyperthreading goodness with the latest Skylakes, but that would definitely only be secondary and optional, and the PCI-E interface would be the least of my concerns.

Voldenuit wrote:

Target resolution? I have a hard time believing the 7950 can't keep up with most games at 1080p60 with moderate settings (NMS is just a mess, it's slow and stuttery on my 4670K + 1070, nothing will fix that).
However, if you want to turn settings up, the 480 would be a nice upgrade, and I don't think the CPU will hold you back (the CPU becomes less of a bottleneck the higher you dial the quality settings).
For what it's worth, though, nvidia cards do better with older/slower CPUs, so unless you are sticking to amd out of principle, a 1060 sounds like a better fit for you (DX11, OpenGL, older CPU).
 

Doctor Venture wrote:

Voldenuit wrote:

Target resolution? I have a hard time believing the 7950 can't keep up with most games at 1080p60 with moderate settings (NMS is just a mess, it's slow and stuttery on my 4670K + 1070, nothing will fix that).
However, if you want to turn settings up, the 480 would be a nice upgrade, and I don't think the CPU will hold you back (the CPU becomes less of a bottleneck the higher you dial the quality settings).
For what it's worth, though, nvidia cards do better with older/slower CPUs, so unless you are sticking to amd out of principle, a 1060 sounds like a better fit for you (DX11, OpenGL, older CPU).
 

I hear you there. With my system, I was one of the lucky few that's been able to run since launch day, at a relatively stable 30FPS (it drops to 20, when looking at water). There were folks with FAR superior rigs that would get 5FPS, if it would even run at all.  The patches have helped somewhat, but I just can't recommend that game to anyone at this point. The comments like "wide as the ocean, but deep as a puddle" and "an amazing tech demo in search of an actual game" are very appropriate.  Such a shame, too. It had potential, but I don't think content updates or mods can salvage this one.

K-L-Waster wrote:

To add to Chrispy's points, if you decide to pull the trigger on a full system upgrade within the next 12 months, neither the 1060 or the 480 would be a liability to move to the new system unless you simultaneously decided to start gaming at 4K. You could upgrade the main platform and stick with the GPU for several more months at least. 

Voldenuit wrote:

Yeah, it's an absolute mess of a game, stay away everyone.
It has more negative reviews on steam than it has concurrent players (~60k negative reviews, 2400 ppl playing yesterday, according to steamspy).