i5 2500 from i7 950 worth the time

[timoty]

I try not to bug the community too much for advice or opinion, but given my lack of time these days, I will for this issue.

 

I have two PC's at home both used for gaming....one built recently...the other about two years ago. The first PC is my gaming system, the second my son is using.

 

I want to know if it would be worth my time; if I would see enough of a gain, to justify moving the best components from both PC's into two different ones. My son does not need nearly the processing or graphics power that he has already.

 

I have a Core i7 950 on an Asus P6TD Deluxe, liquid cooled, with 12 GB of Corsair 1600MHz memory, two 6990 2GB cards in crossfire, two SSD drives for my operating system and main games, two WD Black 512s in Raid 0 for my other games and apps. The rest of the specs won't matter as much.

 

My son has a Core i5 2500k on a basic Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 motherboard with 8 GB of Patriot 1600MHz memory. The rest doesn't matter.

 

I would be taking his motherboard proc and memory (dual vs tri channel), and moving my two 6990's and liquid cooling over. I would take all of my drives along as well. I would lose some speed on the second PCIe channel for video and 2 GB of RAM until I can afford another eight to bring it up to 16. However, I would gain some slight speed with the Core i5.

 

However, when it is all said and done, if they were both OC'd to 4 GHz (just for comparison's sake) would I actually achieve any noticable difference in gaming frame rates in games like BF3? I mean noticeable. I don't care want some pie chart might say if I can't notice it with my naked eye.

 

I would appreciate any and all opinions as it not only requires the swapping of parts but a total reload of Windows 7 on both systems as well as all of the games on each PC.

 

Tim

[El_Capitan]

You'll notice a difference in MIN FPS for gaming. If I were you, I'd do it, you'd be able to get that overclocked to 4.8GHz pretty easily with a good air cooler, or something like a corsair H80.

[aaron6581230]

When it's said and done, you won't really notice any changes in frame rate, especially with such beefy GPUs. What you'll probably notice is less heat produced by the CPU and lower power consumption

[wevsspot]

Timoty - having myself done a very similar "upgrade?" I can definitely say that it's not worth the hassle. When I parted out my x58 system I thought I was going to get a great upgrade going to Z68 with an i7 2700k running at 4.6Ghz, But in real world usage it didn't turn out to be such a huge upgrade. In fact, if I compare certain video benchmarking scores between the socket 1366 rigs and this relatively new Z68 rig (using the exact same video hardware - (2) GTX 570 cards in SLi) my benchmark scores were actually slightly better on the x58 platform. I don't know whether it's because of x8 PCIe lane limitation, or dropping back to dual channel memory instead of triple channel memory or even this Gigabyte Z68-UD4 board, but any way I slice it the video benchmarks are slightly lower.

 

On the other hand, my encoding jobs, zipping files and most other productivity type work have sped up noticeably.

[timoty]

Wow...it seems like the jury is really out on this one. I expect that zipping files etc. would go faster but unless I am going to zip up a terabyte of data, we are talking milliseconds. Gaming is the only thing that I do that pushes my system. I don't render video any more or anything like that, and even if I were to, I usually hit the execute button and then walk away for a while anyway. I may do the upgrade, but it would be to gain Sata 6 and USB 3. What I don't want to happen is video framerates that are slower. And like was mentioned, that may occurr because of the lower memory bandwidth or because of the slower second PCIe slot.

[timoty]

I guess my biggest concern is this. Given that games rely more on GPU than CPU, and assuming that my CPU is NOT bottleknecking my two 6990's, going from 2 X 16 PCIe slots to 2 X 4 PCIe slots will actually slow my gaming performance.

[Shurman292]

I guess my biggest concern is this. Given that games rely more on GPU than CPU, and assuming that my CPU is NOT bottleknecking my two 6990's, going from 2 X 16 PCIe slots to 2 X 4 PCIe slots will actually slow my gaming performance.

+1 I would not switch. Definitely not worth the hassle, and in the end your games will not benefit noticeably.

[Tjj226_Angel]

I guess my biggest concern is this. Given that games rely more on GPU than CPU, and assuming that my CPU is NOT bottleknecking my two 6990's, going from 2 X 16 PCIe slots to 2 X 4 PCIe slots will actually slow my gaming performance.

 

You are fine.

[timoty]

While doing more research I found the following article: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-meets-pci-express,1761-3.html

 

My guess is that with my faster cards, the hit would be even more pronounced. Just thought I would add it in case anyone down the road comes across this thread looking for answers. In a nut shell, it showed that you take a hit dropping from 2 X 16X lanes to 2 X 8X lanes. In my case I would be dropping to 2 X 4X lanes so I expect I would take a huge hit. I'm not even sure I would want to go to 2 X 8X lanes. So, I will likely wait and get a new board that will do 2 X 16X on both PCIe lanes and then swap out the rest.

Edited August 2, 2012 by timoty

[Black64]

I try not to bug the community too much for advice or opinion, but given my lack of time these days, I will for this issue.

 

I have a Core i7 950 on an Asus P6TD Deluxe, liquid cooled, with 12 GB of Corsair 1600MHz memory, two 6990 2GB cards in crossfire, two SSD drives for my operating system and main games, two WD Black 512s in Raid 0 for my other games and apps. The rest of the specs won't matter as much.

Tim

 

Most of here ask for advice all the time, so your totally fine. Also that is a pretty beast system!

 

As for your question, just keep the CPU you have now, not a huge difference. I just went from a 1090T @ 4.020GHz to a i7-970 and the difference was noticeable, but not to much in games.

[timoty]

Thanks for all the advice and input. I may look at a new board that does 2 X 16X but frankly it will start snowballing and before I know it I will be spending another grand on a new board and CPU. I'll just wait for a bit. Likely time to start OC'ing the snot out of my system because if it blows up my hand will be forced.

 

I have gone from 3.07 to 4Ghz and it doesn't really increase my game framerates by much. I am guessing that any performance that I have at this point are topped out by the GPU's and that the CPU is making little difference (provided that it is at least desent).

 

If I get stupid and get a new board with 2 X 16X PCIes in it, I will be sure to do some benchmarks before and after the switch. Then I can report back with actual increases based solely on the new board and CPU.

[potatochobit]

total waste of money and time

the reason going from 3.07 to 4Ghz doesn't increase your framerates much is because most people dont understand how a processor works

 

if you are taking a math test with '10 questions' on the test, regardless of if you finish in 5 minutes, 10minutes, or one hour - there will always only be '10 questions' on your test

if your processor is taking an hour to answer the questions - that is when you need a new processor

sure, there are other factors but people throw around the word bottleneck far too much and most don't even really know what it means