My upgrade path..

[Bearcat]

Right now I am running a 939 socket AMD FX-60 with a NVGTX-265 and 4G of DDR400 RAM. I have been thinking of upgrading for a while and now that Mamabear's birthday is out of the way (got her a new laptop.. ) I am focusing in on me. I don't have a lot of $$ to play with and my plan is to keep my current GPU for a few months.. to just upgrade MOBO, CPU & RAM initially and then maybe in the fall to get a new GPU .. so what I am looking at (I am an AMD guy.. have been for the past decade +) is either an AMD FX-6100 orFX-8120 on one of these MOBOS : Gigabyte 990 Fx-A UD3 or ASUS M5A99X AM3+ 990X . I am leaning toward the Gigabyte as I had a very bad experience with an ASUS MOBO a while back as far as their customer service goes.. and I have a Gigabyte mobo now that has been absolutely flawless for the past 6 years.. but part of me is also looking at the bottom line as well and at the MC site the ASUS has a better price.. .. Still not sure of the RAM yet (PC3-10600 DDR3 1333,PC3-12800 DDR3 1600 or PC3-14900 DDR3 1866.. leaning toward the 12800 though ) but I know I would want to go with 8G sets.. No sense to me in getting say 4 4G sets .. or 2 4G sets .. since the MOBOs support up to 32G with a max of 8G per slot in my mind I am thinking even if I settle with 16G .. I'd be better off with 2 8s as opposed to 4 4s.. I did that back in the day with the 256K & 512K bit.. I will be running this on W7U 64 which will handle the extra RAM..

 

So what do you guys think.. and I know the Intel stuff is looking good etc.. but I am an AMD guy.. and as I said I am limited on funds so don't take me there.. just give me your honest opinions

Edited July 10, 2012 by Bearcat

[Cali]

I would wait til you saved up enough money to buy a completely new system. If you are getting decent FPS in the games you play now....wait. That's what I did, but the process was sped up by my old computer taking a dirt nap. Although I could have revived it by doing a reinstall, it was time to get a new system anyway, been waiting for years.

[Pyroflash]

As far as setups go, as Cali has said, a completely new box (except for the drives maybe), would be your best bet. I would go with 16 GB of RAM (really 8 is not enough anymore), a good ASUS board (Unless you are really on a budget, then Gigabyte is fine), a GTX 680 (685 should be coming out shortly if you want to wait), a pair of SSDs, and a reliable, efficient PSU.

 

I can give you specific suggestions on what to buy if you want, but I do not think that you would be happy with buying any of what you suggested.

 

I will say this again though, I do not recommend keeping much of anything in your current system if you decide to upgrade. You are at a stage where continued piecemeal support of your aging setup will not yield you desired results (too many things on it will need to be replaced in order to give you the results you are looking for, and upgrading only a piece of it will not do what you think it will).

 

The GPU, CPU, Mobo, PSU, drives, (possibly the case), and memory will all have to go in favor of new gear if you want to have good performance, especially with DCS.

Edited July 10, 2012 by Pyroflash

[Bearcat]

As far as setups go, as Cali has said, a completely new box (except for the drives maybe), would be your best bet. I would go with 16 GB of RAM (really 8 is not enough anymore), a good ASUS board (Unless you are really on a budget, then Gigabyte is fine), a GTX 680 (685 should be coming out shortly if you want to wait), a pair of SSDs, and a reliable, efficient PSU.

 

I can give you specific suggestions on what to buy if you want, but I do not think that you would be happy with buying any of what you suggested.

 

I will say this again though, I do not recommend keeping much of anything in your current system if you decide to upgrade. You are at a stage where continued piecemeal support of your aging setup will not yield you desired results (too many things on it will need to be replaced in order to give you the results you are looking for, and upgrading only a piece of it will not do what you think it will).

 

The GPU, CPU, Mobo, PSU, drives, (possibly the case), and memory will all have to go in favor of new gear if you want to have good performance, especially with DCS.

 

I intend to keep the PS which is an 800W BFG .. pretty stable .. the case.. which is excellent, lots of fans .. pretty quiet.. and airy.... and the APU which is a Xi-Fi Xtreme Gamer (the PCI one) ... it is a few years old but it is decent enough and better than onboard although I will probably upgrade that to a PCIe card eventually as well.. .. I already have a 1TB HD and a copy of W7U. I do intend to upgrade the GPU not too long after the initial upgrade.. but for now all I was looking at was the CPU, MOBO & RAM.. (with the new OS & HD of course) .. I have no intention of adding anything to this current setup and when get a new GPU I will put this one back in this rig in another box.. I am thinking of waiting till the 2nd gen Bulldozers come out ... The most intense thing I do PC wise is simming..

 

Usually CPU , ram and motherboard are upgraded together, I would wait

until you have enough cash to do all three at once.

What make and size is your current power supply?

You could probably keep it if power supply if it good enough , case and hard drives also could be kept most likely.

Asus boards are not bad providing you have no problems with it .. if you do

then god help you trying to get decent sesrvice for them , Asrock or Gigabyte are a good choice.

 

That's the plan.. and yeah I feel the same way about ASUS that's why I am leaning to the Gigabyte.. Their CS is terrible (ASUS)

Edited July 10, 2012 by Bearcat

[Pyroflash]

I intend to keep the PS which is an 800W BFG .. pretty stable .. the case.. which is excellent, lots of fans .. pretty quiet.. and airy....

 

This is fine, I sort of pictured a small case with two fans in the front and back. Ideally you would want either an ATX full or mid tower case with proper airflow (see Lian Li, or Antec). However if your current case is adequate, I see no reason that you should change it. The PSU however, ideally should be changed to a better one. Too many people skimp on good power supplies because they see them as a function of wattage versus price, when in fact, the more expensive ones are more expensive because of the increased stability and especially protection that they include. The power supply is second probably only to your motherboard, and since your CPU and mobo are that old, you should probably replace the PSU as well.

 

Examples of good PSUs:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153161

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341044

 

Though I can't really say for sure that your power supply is terrible, and wattage wise will accept everything that you can throw at it aside from a multiple spinning rust/graphics card setup, however I have read some reviews about flaky amperage (not the same as voltage or wattage) coming from the PSU. It is also important to note that fully modular PSUs are extremely nice to have, which yours is not, because it isn't even semi-modular, which is an issue. Also the added stability and protection that top tier PSU manufacturers provide cannot be understated in any way, shape or form.

 

and the APU which is a Xi-Fi Xtreme Gamer (the PCI one) ... it is a few years old but it is decent enough and better than onboard although I will probably upgrade that to a PCIe card eventually as well.. ..

Heavens no, there is no reason that you would need to upgrade your sound card for any reason other than it broke or burst into flames. Sound cards are the one component that will literally last you a decade.

 

I already have a 1TB HD and a copy of W7U.

If you are going to be simming, I would recommend a single or pair of SSD's with the support of your 1TB spinning rust. It will help immensely with access times and seek times(what seek times?), which are what will hinder you the greatest when loading up maps, or fetching textures and data. However I do realize that SSDs are the most expensive and least justifiable part of a setup for most people, so if you are on a tight budget then it is fully up to you.

 

I do intend to upgrade the GPU not too long after the initial upgrade..

Your GPU is three generations behind current standards, and not an enthusiast model. If you do not upgrade this, it will bottleneck your setup, and your system will NOT perform to your expectations in the slightest(i.e. FPS will be terrible regardless of the CPU or RAM).

 

but for now all I was looking at was the CPU, MOBO & RAM.. (with the new OS & HD of course)

I know fully well how tempting it is just to upgrade a portion of your computer in an attempt to gain some speed out of it, however your current system is so far behind the curve that NOTHING LESS than a complete replacement of almost all current hardware (the disks and sound card can remain as is) will produce any results even close to what you are expecting. All this will accomplish is you waiting, yelling and screaming in agony :P while you wait for a new graphics card and PSU (Your current one very good. Wattage and perceived stability don't mean anything).

 

I am thinking of waiting till the 2nd gen Bulldozers come out ... The most intense thing I do PC wise is simming..

If you are insisting on sticking with AMD for whatever reason, when the second generation of bulldozers come out, you will see the performance gap between AMD and Intel drop even further.

 

I will post a couple of informative threads to help you understand (comparing both the current Intel and AMD tippy top processors, the AMD FX-8150 and Intel I7-3820).

 

 

The first two are simply price pictures to show how much each costs. The I7-3820 is worth almost exactly 50% more than the FX-8150. Also, you can read up on the specific details of each on these pages.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115229

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103960

 

This next one is a performance review using each of the processors (when comparing the Intel one, ignore the one that says I7-3820 @ 4300. This is an overclocked processor and should not be used for comparison) in a series of tests covering things like power consumption, memory access rates, stability, and performance in certain benchmarks and games.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-3820-processor-review/7

 

(comparison starts on P.7, just in case the link doesn't take you straight there)

 

Keep in mind that the Intel I7-3820 used in this test is hyperthreaded, which doubles the effective number of cores. This is because most of the applications that were tested were properly optimized for multithreading. DCS at the moment cannot fully utilize four cores let alone eight, and that will leave the FX-8150 (eight core) fully unable to handle loads like the I7-3820 (four core(eight with hyperthreading enabled))will. I expect the frame rates in DCS to drastically favor the Intel processor over the AMD one, especially since the Intel one, once you disable hyperthreading, will be able to fully utilize all of its power (when hyperthreading is enabled, you can expect a loss of 5%-15% FPS when playing games simply because most games cannot utilize all eight cores), while the FX-8150 will only be using a portion of its available power simply because DCS is not optimized for that many cores. This will result in drastically reduced FPS compared to the I7-3820 (Especially since even with hyperthreading enabled, the I7-3820 still smokes the FX-8150).

 

You can see that the Intel outperforms AMD in actual performance, with the price per performance numbers matching up almost exactly (there is a couple of cents difference between the two chips, with AMD winning by an average of 0.3-30 cents per frame.

 

AMD has recently publicly stated that they will no longer attempt to compete with Intel over the high end consumer and enthusiast processor market. As such, when consulting actual performance figures and specifications for individual chips, I tend to agree with what they are saying. Not terrible chips by any means, but I would not recommend them to anyone whose intended use for them includes any intensive work.

Edited July 10, 2012 by Pyroflash

[Bearcat]

Thanks for the info.. I will consider the other option more seriously. My case is a great case.. I actually originally bought it to water cool.. but ran out of money at the time and when I dropped my A7N8X bd and went to a FX 939 socket my overheat issues disappeared .. The PS is

[Pyroflash]

Thanks for the info.. I will consider the other option more seriously. My case is a great case.. I actually originally bought it to water cool.. but ran out of money at the time and when I dropped my A7N8X bd and went to a FX 939 socket my overheat issues disappeared .. The PS is

 

Liquid cooling systems are only really needed if you are going to OC anything. If you are going to leave it at stock, then you won't really run into any heating issues.

[Bearcat]

Liquid cooling systems are only really needed if you are going to OC anything. If you are going to leave it at stock, then you won't really run into any heating issues.

 

Yeah that was my original intent.. but I decided to upgrade instead andf with my new build my overheat issues vanished.. There is something to be said for having a good sized case though.. this one is pretty big.. but because of that air flows through it very well..

[Bearcat]

After doing a lot more research I am thinking of biting the bullet and going with that Sabretooth ASUS bd. Here is what I am looking at:

 

Sabertooth Socket AM3+ 990FX ATX AMD Motherboard $180

 

FX 8120 Black Edition 3.1GHz Eight-Core Socket AM3+ Boxed Processor $140

 

I can get both of those bundled for $280 I decided to go with the 8120 because there was only a $40 difference between the 4100 & a $20 difference between the 6100 and I figure I won't be in a position to upgrade till the Piledrivers come down considerably anyway so I might as well drop the extra $40 now and upgrade in @ 2 years. That MOBO looks pretty interesting and with a 5 year warranty .. I read up on the Gigabyte Bds I was considering on X-Bit Labs and since that is the core of my system.. I decidd to give ASUS another shot.

 

Along with:

 

Crucial m4 256GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Marvell Controller $190

 

Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB DDR3-1600 CL9 Dual Channel Memory Kit (Two x 8GB) $110

 

and maybe..

 

Corsair Hydro Series H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler Kit $100

 

I plan top OC the CPU since I hear they OC so well.. I am gong to use my old GPU for now (a GTX 260 OCd.. yeah I know it is at least 3 gens out right.. ? ) I am well aware it will be a bottleneck but I figure I cant do it all at once.. I already have a 1TB HD .. so I want to put my OS and my favorite apps on the SSD drive.. everything else goes on the other one..

 

I do intend to upgrade to 32G of RAM eventually and a decent GPU .. I may go back to Radeon ... oops.. AMD .. full tilt.. but I have been on Nvidia since I got that 6800 back in 04 .. I am looking to spend $150-$275 ... and then I will call it a day.. I may pass on the water cooling too..

 

 

 

I think I will also hold out till October and see what happens with the Bulldozers when the Piledriver comes out since that is only basically 60 days away give or take.. and I don't have all my scratch saved up anyway..

[Bearcat]

AMD Fx-8150 - CoolerMaster Genini II S524 Cooler

ASUS M5A99X EVO MOBO

OCZ ZT 750W PS

Corsair Force 3 240G SSD

16G Corsair Vengance DDR3

Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200RPMHDD

XFX Double D FX-HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 GPU

SB Xi-Fi XtremeGamer APU

W7 Ultimate

 

Originally I was going to use the same PS & case.. but I decided to go all out.. The whole build was well under a G ... Once I get it all together I will post specs etc..

Edited August 31, 2012 by Bearcat