Upgrade Recommendation?

[tobalt]

All,

 

Been playing DCS for a while, and am now looking to upgrade my rig for better performance. My current rig is:

 

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition 3.2GHz

ASUS M4A79XTD EVO

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850 1GB

4GB RAM

 

I am looking at spending $500-650 on upgrading my rig. I've been an AMD fan for a while, but have no issues with going the Intel route as long as the price is right. I'm considering either the AMD FX-8350 or the i7 3770k. I know the i7-3770k outperforms the 8350, but is it work the $129 price diff? I could use that to buy some MFDs (already have a TM Warthog, TrackIR 5, and pro rudder pedals). Will most likely upgrade the RAM up to 8 (unless you think 16 is safer). The video card is a little old, but I believe my current bottleneck is my CPU.

 

Thanks for any recommendations!

[EtherealN]

Quick question: would the $129 difference be inclusive of all other changes that are necessary - for example, does your present motherboard support the FX-8350?

 

I am definitely not a fan of the FX processors, but if the choice is one where you can either just "drop in" the FX, or in the other case rebuild with new mobo as well as (possibly) new RAM (which exact RAM does your current machine have?), I feel the FX chip will probably serve you well considering the savings. If you do not have an SSD, I would even consider that something you could use the saved moneys on. This is doubly advantageous since, if you have an OEM license for Windows, replacing the motherboard would potentially force you to re-purchase Windows.

[tobalt]

Nope, the $129 difference is just between the two CPUs; I'd have to buy a new mobo either way, since my current AM3 mobo doesn't support an AM3+.

 

My RAM is G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800).

 

I didn't even think about getting an SSD...interesting...

 

I always custom build my comps, so having to reinstall Windows7 64-bit is no big deal.

[agrasyuk]

With that budget I'd go for i5 platform. any way you look at it the "I" is ahead of amd stuff at the moment. At least as far DCS is concerned. And not too expencive either: Got 3570K + board for less then 400. Rest can go towards more RAM +SSD or vidcard.

Good luck

[Quirkitized]

i5-3570k - $220

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

 

cooler to overclock the i5 to 4.2-4.6ghz - $80

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608018

 

z77 socket board with good amount of features - $128 (this one is asrock, pick your fav. brand, all around $125-160 ish for a decent atx one)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293

 

ram 8GB - quite possibly the greatest overclocking ram ever made - $40 (out of stock atm)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147096

 

Crucial m4 128GB SSD - $99 (128gb big enough for OS and dcs world + some more games) if you need more space use your current HDD for extra storage/backup/games.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148442

 

total - $567, in the middle of your budget. If you don't plan on pushing the overclock very far, then you don't have to get the noctua cooler, as the stock cooler can be good enough for 3.7-4ghz usually.

 

Once you get an SSD you'll never want to go back to a normal HDD.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Quirkitized

[agrasyuk]

Better yet 3570 is 180$ in micro center and there is 40$ discount on select boards if purchased together (not sure if the offer is still current though)

[tobalt]

Thanks for the advice guys. Right now I have this in mind:

 

 

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz $329.99

 

ASUS P8Z77-V LK Motherboard $139.99

 

CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM $47.99

 

Crucial M4 128GB SSD $99.99

 

Total Damage is $617.96, which within my budget. Any final thoughts?

[Quirkitized]

I say you save $100+ and get an i5-3570k over the i7-3770k. In games you will be hard pressed to see a difference but if do mass high MP photo editing, video production, rendering, stuff like that it's worth it.

 

Take the money you save from that and put it towards a new vid card :)

[Rhinox]

I say you save $100+ and get an i5-3570k over the i7-3770k.:)

Agree. HT brings nothing in DCS, actually only 2 cores are used. And instead of m4 I'd personally recommend 840/pro (higher R/W, IOPS, MTBF, 256b-AES, 5 years warranty, for ~same price).

[agrasyuk]

I say you save $100+ and get an i5-3570k over the i7-3770k. In games you will be hard pressed to see a difference but if do mass high MP photo editing, video production, rendering, stuff like that it's worth it.

 

Take the money you save from that and put it towards a new vid card :)

 

Another agree here.

 

Unless cost is not an issue.

[Bodo]

Yup agree with the advice about the i5. Maybe up the board slightly to get a better OC platform for the future. Not sure what to recommend, see my sig for what I use. I'll chime back with a board recommendation in an hour or two.

 

Crucial or Samsung would be best choices for SSD. My Samsung 830 is class and it is a must.

RAM, yeh get the samsung stuff if ya can. Only heard good things about em. Quirk put together a nice build, unsure of the mobo but again, many people seem to say it's a gret board. I prefer ASUS atm and for audio work, chose the Pro Z77 as it's got a good stable platoform for OCing and has a low DPC latency which helps me for low latency recording.

 

I think Hyper Threading isn't really worth the extra money considerin g an i53570K isn't far off real terms performance. Benchmarking you might find a difference and may well see a few seconds knocked off rendering times, depends on software and even then, the i5 CPUs pack enough punch for audio/video work, let alone something like DCS or other games.

[Dave317]

You have a black edition cpu so you can overclock it. I did mine the other week from 3.2 to 3.9 ghz, it made quite a good increase and best of all it cost nothing. I have a better heatsink and fan but it didn't make any difference to the temperature at all.

[tobalt]

I thought about overclocking the 1090T, but considering the funds I had I figured I'd get a better boost in upgrading (and I felt it was time for one anyway; will probably replace my parent's old Celeron computer with my AMD CPU/Mobo).

 

Thanks for the continuing suggestions guys. Right now I'm settling on the i5 3570K, and getting the ASUS P8Z77-V PRO (I'm an ASUS fan), and 'upgrading' to the Samsung 840/Pro. My video card "should" suffice, and will probably wait until later in the year to upgrade to a better one once a great deal comes by. For now, I think the combination of the new CPU and the SSD should make for a dramatic enough improvement.

[Quirkitized]

SSD is the significant purchase. You could purchase nothing else but the SSD and feel like you just leaped into the future :D. The downside to using an SSD is it will be difficult to use a PC without one thereafter :D

 

Enjoy!

[Erforce]

Ofc SSD is something you will never drop once you've tried it.

As for i5/i7, it's a common discussion on this forum.

For DCS titles, sure the i5 is sufficient.

 

I've chosen the i7 not because i'm a vid editor and i make some encoding (on mac anyway), but because i've been suggested here that i7= more futureproof. Haswell don't freaks me anymore.

I've ran some games using 4 cores@100% with my Xeons recently. In those cases, running anything else was FPS killer. Don't think about using FRAPS with that.

Don't be wrong, Intel stopped the Ghz Expansion. Now it's the Core's race. More and more devs teams take that in account.

In sims world, unfortunately it's a different story. As far as i can see, either you have a beautiful graphics engine, and pretty nothing else (dumb AI, arcade style...)

Or you have a decent, even little overpowered AI like DCS or ArmA 2, as long as some nice stuff, like ballistic, anti-collision... But very poorly multithreaded.

Again it's different for erveryone. I had choice too 4month ago. I did not regret a single millisecond my i7 3770k.