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e8400 4870 upgrade?

M

MatttyB

n00b
Joined
Sep 16, 2010
Messages
8
Hi everyone,

What would you guys do, upgrading an e8400 with a 4870 to something that'll play games maxed out for the next 12 months? Personally I'm considering building an i5 though as I do want to give my current PC to my sis as a chrissy present because her PC is a total piece of shit lol. Not sure how much my current PC would be worth now though?

Still, I'm curious to see what everyone thinks here if I decide to change my mind while I save over the next few months. (Still want to get my sis a decent budget gaming build tho)

Throw some options at me for consideration.

Here is my current system
e8400
Asus p5k pro motherboard (PCIe v1.1 - non SLI, only crossfire, and crossfire is too slow on this mobo)
4 gigs ddr2 ram
ATI 4870
Coolermaster 650W Power Supply
27" Asus Monitor

Could get a 2nd hand 4870x2 perhaps? I'd love a 470 or 480 but I've heard a lot of problems regarding temps, noise and power usage from those cards so only a 460 in SLI would appeal to me at this stage. 5970 not worth it (apparently it bottlenecks on my system)

Perhaps an ATI 6000 series card when it comes out? could upgrade the e8400 to a quad processor? however for the price brand new I could buy a brand new amd mobo + processor. I also prefer intel these days.

Throw some ideas around.. most people say I should just do a full upgrade considering i really want 460 in sli. I was considering getting a socket 775 sli capable motherboard to replace this one and get 2x 460's but everyone said it would bottleneck :/

Your thoughts..
 
I've got a mildly overclocked 480GTX at 850/1200 and an E8400 at 3.6. I noticed an absolutely massive difference from moving off my GTX280. More than double the frames in the majority of my games. Heat and noise aren't an issue for me since I also got the Accelero Extreme Plus to cool my card (now even volted to 1.125v it doesn't go above 65C, it's also dead silent at 100%).

If my CPU is bottlenecking my card, I sure as hell ain't noticing it.

Personally if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't piss away the money on getting an SLI 775 motherboard. I'd probably just grab a 470GTX (they can sometimes go for $250) and a decent aftermarket cooler for it (if temps and noise are really an issue for you). Or just grab a single 460GTX and OC the hell out of it. No point in "upgrading" to an obsolete mobo. The 460 should tide you over until Kepler.
 
Which Coolermaster 650W PSU do you have? Coolermaster PSUs range from good quality to "holy shit that PC is still running?" quality.
 
Vagrant Zero, will consider it :) It's good to know that the 480 made a huge difference for you!!
 
MatttyB said:
Vagrant Zero, will consider it :) It's good to know that the 480 made a huge difference for you!!
Click to expand...
personally I think he is exaggerating quite a bit about doubling performance going from agtx280 to the gtx480 with his E8400 at 3.6. I only have an old 192sp gtx260 and my E8500 at 3.8 and in some games I had nearly zero improvement going to a gtx470. in fact some games were slower in DX11 with the gtx470 then they were in DX10 on the slower gtx260. I had to force DX10 in BC2 and even then it had zero improvement over the gtx260. GTA 4 and Far Cry 2 offered zero improvement. even Crysis only changed by a few fps and the minimum was nearly identical. Red Faction Guerrilla also kept the same exact minimum framerate so playability did not improve even though max and average framerate went up. of course there are numerous other games such as Prototype, Dragon Age, ANNO 1404 that wont budge a bit because they are cpu limited with an E8500 and gtx260 much less his gtx280.

now in games like Metro2033, Clear Sky, and Just Cause 2 there is certainly a large noticeable increase. again though his claim of more than doubling performance is not likely true for the vast majorty of games. even with an i7 the gtx480 is not more than twice as fast as the as the gtx280 in 90% of cases anyway. in fact its not even 50% faster in some cases so his 100%+ claim on his dual core is likely no where near true in most case. in this review the gtx280 offers 65% of the performance of a gtx280 so that means it is far from twice as fast in most cases even with an i7. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/32.html
 
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cannondale06 said:
personally I think he is exaggerating quite a bit about doubling performance going from agtx280 to the gtx480 with his E8400 at 3.6. I only have an old 192sp gtx260 and my E8500 at 3.8 and in some games I had nearly zero improvement going to a gtx470. in fact some games were slower in DX11 with the gtx470 then they were in DX10 on the slower gtx260. I had to force DX10 in BC2 and even then it had zero improvement over the gtx260. GTA 4 and Far Cry 2 offered zero improvement. even Crysis only changed by a few fps and the minimum was nearly identical. Red Faction Guerrilla also kept the same exact minimum framerate so playability did not improve even though max and average framerate went up. of course there are numerous other games such as Prototype, Dragon Age, ANNO 1404 that wont budge a bit because they are cpu limited with an E8500 and gtx260 much less his gtx280.

now in games like Metro2033, Clear Sky, and Just Cause 2 there is certainly a large noticeable increase. again though his claim of more than doubling performance is not likely true for the vast majorty of games. even with an i7 the gtx480 is not more than twice as fast as the as the gtx280 in 90% of cases anyway. in fact its not even 50% faster in some cases so his 100%+ claim on his dual core is likely no where near true in most case. in this review the gtx280 offers 65% of the performance of a gtx280 so that means it is far from twice as fast in most cases even with an i7. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/32.html
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*Shrugs* You can scream and rant all you want, all I know is that a whole slew of MMOs that weren't playable at 1920x1200 at what I consider acceptable settings just became playable at 32xAA and 4xSGSS (8x isn't playable, though I suspect that's more the GPUs failing then the CPUs).

And the dragon age thing is complete bullshit. Not only have I noticed a huge difference moving to my 480GTX (I can now enable 32xAA and 4xSGSS and get silky smooth gameplay), I noticed a huge difference when moving off my GTX280 to a 5870 (which is now currently on ebay). Sounds like there's some failing in your computer at some level if you're not noticing a difference from a 260 to a 470. I seriously doubt anyone is going to come in here and corroborate that. Maybe you should do a complete reformat, because you absolutely aren't getting the frames you're supposed to.

If you're a gamer, just OC your E8400 and you're fine for a while. The I5/I7s aren't worth it purely for gaming. You'd have to buy the cpu, the motherboard, and new ram most likely, all for what a 5/10% fps increase? That's just stupid beyond all belief. OC your vid card (mines at 850/2000) if you're that desperate for some extra frames.

Now 2 cores vs 4 cores is a bit of a different story, but that's neither here nor there.
 
Vagrant_Zero said:
*Shrugs* You can scream and rant all you want, all I know is that a whole slew of MMOs that weren't playable at 1920x1200 at what I consider acceptable settings just became playable at 32xAA and 4xSGSS (8x isn't playable, though I suspect that's more the GPUs failing then the CPUs).

And the dragon age thing is complete bullshit. Not only have I noticed a huge difference moving to my 480GTX (I can now enable 32xAA and 4xSGSS and get silky smooth gameplay), I noticed a huge difference when moving off my GTX280 to a 5870 (which is now currently on ebay). Sounds like there's some failing in your computer at some level if you're not noticing a difference from a 260 to a 470. I seriously doubt anyone is going to come in here and corroborate that. Maybe you should do a complete reformat, because you absolutely aren't getting the frames you're supposed to.

If you're a gamer, just OC your E8400 and you're fine for a while. The I5/I7s aren't worth it purely for gaming. You'd have to buy the cpu, the motherboard, and new ram most likely, all for what a 5/10% fps increase? That's just stupid beyond all belief. OC your vid card (mines at 850/2000) if you're that desperate for some extra frames.

Now 2 cores vs 4 cores is a bit of a different story, but that's neither here nor there.
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I was not ranting at all but you are clearly exaggerating a bit. of course you were able to add tons of AA and I don't doubt that but some of the games would have been little to no faster though and that was my point. there is not a thing wrong with my pc and the benchmarks line up perfectly for what it is. I can post benchmarks from sites all day long showing the i5/i7 quads beating our Core 2 duos in some games by 20-50% or more when using a high end gpu but what good would that do? now I am not saying you need to upgrade but if you were to sell your old stuff then it would hardly cost any more to upgrade to an i5 setup then it would to just add a Core 2 quad like a Q9550.

EDIT: I will leave one benchmark for you since you claim what I said about Dragon Age was bullshit. on max details and 4x AA it gets 44 fps with an E8400 at 3.6 while getting 90 fps with a 3.5 i7. yes its only at 1680x1050 but they are also using a slower 5870 instead of a gtx480. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/
 
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cannondale06 said:
I was not ranting at all but you are clearly exaggerating a bit. of course you were able to add tons of AA and I don't doubt that but some of the games would have been little to no faster though and that was my point. there is not a thing wrong with my pc and the benchmarks line up perfectly for what it is. I can post benchmarks from sites all day long showing the i5/i7 quads beating our Core 2 duos in some games by 20-50% or more when using a high end gpu but what good would that do? now I am not saying you need to upgrade but if you were to sell your old stuff then it would hardly cost any more to upgrade to an i5 setup then it would to just add a Core 2 quad like a Q9550.

EDIT: I will leave one benchmark for you since you claim what I said about Dragon Age was bullshit. on max details and 4x AA it gets 44 fps with an E8400 at 3.6 while getting 90 fps with a 3.5 i7. yes its only at 1680x1050 but they are also using a slower 5870 instead of a gtx480. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/
Click to expand...

You should maybe read the benchmarks that you're linking before posting them as gospel?

The I7 isn't stomping the E8400 because it's an I7, it's stomping the E8400 because it's 2 cores vs 4 cores.

Secondly, that benchmark is taken in the single most intensive section of the entire game. The vast majority of my time is not spent there, and everywhere else I'm mainly being limited by my LCDs 60hz (I like vysnc).

Lastly the OCed E8400 is still pulling in perfectly fine frame rates...so again, there's no point in upgrading for say dragon Age. Besides, I seriously doubt the gap is that large at 1920x1200 with as much AA as the GPU can handle.

So ya...you're cherry picking benchmarks at this point.

And no, if you never noticed a difference from your 260 to 470 there is something seriously wrong with your pc.

But hey if you want to play the benchmarking game: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1552813

Pretty much an entire thread of people saying the "myth of the CPU bottleneck" is just that...a myth.
 
Vagrant_Zero said:
You should maybe read the benchmarks that you're linking before posting them as gospel?

The I7 isn't stomping the E8400 because it's an I7, it's stomping the E8400 because it's 2 cores vs 4 cores.

Secondly, that benchmark is taken in the single most intensive section of the entire game. The vast majority of my time is not spent there, and everywhere else I'm mainly being limited by my LCDs 60hz (I like vysnc).

Lastly the OCed E8400 is still pulling in perfectly fine frame rates...so again, there's no point in upgrading for say dragon Age. Besides, I seriously doubt the gap is that large at 1920x1200 with as much AA as the GPU can handle.

So ya...you're cherry picking benchmarks at this point.

And no, if you never noticed a difference from your 260 to 470 there is something seriously wrong with your pc.

But hey if you want to play the benchmarking game: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1552813

Pretty much an entire thread of people saying the "myth of the CPU bottleneck" is just that...a myth.
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of course its about having more than 2 cores in many games and no where did I say the i7 was the cause of the performance increase. the i5/i7 are just simply the best overall quads so that is what tech sites use when testing gpus. there are some case such as GTA 4 though that an i5/i7 is clearly superior over other quads.

and I said SOME games saw little no improvement and that was true. I even listed a few that of course did improve greatly. I don't buy a new gpu just to turn on more AA, I get one to improve overall performance in ALL my games. with my dual core cpu plenty of games did not improve much especially in minimum framerate. IMO I just dont think buying a $500 gpu is worth it with any dual core.
 
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Hey MattyB,

I had/have a similar setup to yours, actually an E6850 @ 3.2Ghz and a Vapor-X 5870. I had a 4870 which I gave to my buddy who now runs it in crossfire. The upgrade of the video card was enough to breathe enough life into my games for minimally another year, so that'll make 2 from the time of purchase.

What I would do right now -- is wait till next week and see how the new AMD cards looks. Whatever the 5770's upgrade is, the 6850 or 6870 (its confusing i know, so look by price) -- will be running between current 5850 & 5870 performance levels. For the right price, those would be the cards to consider.

Alternately, if nVidia drops some prices you could go for a 470, or 480, but that requires a pretty big price drop.

Don't consider a 4870x2, you won't find one for a good price anyway unless you get it through a forum.

For 1920x1080 all I can tell you is that the 5870 is superb.
 
g-money said:
Hey MattyB,

I had/have a similar setup to yours, actually an E6850 @ 3.2Ghz and a Vapor-X 5870. I had a 4870 which I gave to my buddy who now runs it in crossfire. The upgrade of the video card was enough to breathe enough life into my games for minimally another year, so that'll make 2 from the time of purchase.

What I would do right now -- is wait till next week and see how the new AMD cards looks. Whatever the 5770's upgrade is, the 6850 or 6870 (its confusing i know, so look by price) -- will be running between current 5850 & 5870 performance levels. For the right price, those would be the cards to consider.

Alternately, if nVidia drops some prices you could go for a 470, or 480, but that requires a pretty big price drop.

Don't consider a 4870x2, you won't find one for a good price anyway unless you get it through a forum.

For 1920x1080 all I can tell you is that the 5870 is superb.
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nearly 400 bucks for a little more life in the pc? you could have bought a 5850 and gotten the identical performance with overclocking it while using your 6850. by that I mean a 5870 and 5850 are within 5% of each other when pushed to their respective maximums. your E6850 already bottlenecks a 5870 well more than 5% therefore you would have never noticed the difference with having an overclocked 5850.
 
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I went from a E8400 @ 4.0 to a i5 750 @ 3.8 and the difference in some games was at least 50%. Soon after that I got a 5870.

As much as I think you can benefit a lot from a better cpu/gpu, you should really wait right now. ATI's 6x00 series comes out next week, at the very least 5800 and 460 prices will go down. If you don't mind waiting til next year, Intel's new gen is coming soon and it looks really good with unlocked multipliers on a couple models.
 
cannondale06 said:
nearly 400 bucks for a little more life in the pc? you could have bought a 5850 and gotten the identical performance with overclocking it while using your 6850. by that I mean a 5870 and 5850 are within 5% of each other when pushed to their respective maximums. your E6850 already bottlenecks a 5870 well more than 5% therefore you would have never noticed the difference with having an overclocked 5850.
Click to expand...

I'll clarify, since my logic isn't necessarily everyone's logic.. It was an expensive upgrade, that is for sure. However, I pointed out that I bought it 1 year ago, and that it is good for one more, therefore in my current PC, the minimal life extension is 2 years. Since I sold my 4870, that saved some on the price, that lessens the blow.

I will not argue that there is potential bottlenecking with the CPU, however it is overclocked, has further headroom for more OC (which i have tested before and will start to run soon) and therefore that problem is minimalized. Having moved to 1920x1080 recently, the GPU now can actually exercise more of its power than at a lower more CPU dependent resolution.

That all being clarified, the last thing for me personally is that I don't really see much reason to upgrade an entire platform even in 1 year from now. With this build I'll be able to play games just as well as the last 2-3 years. If worst comes to worst, I loosen a few detail quality settings. And if more games start relying on multiple cores (beyond 2), then I STILL have an upgrade path with Core2 Quads, at least for a while (and i'm sure i could find someone selling one used later). Therefore, all kidding aside -- I think this system is good enough not only to last 1 more year, but 2 - 3, making the 5870's investment quite good for 4 years of use. Certainly not just 'a little more life'.
 
You wont find more performance/price packed in anywhere than a 4870x2 right now (typically found for $200 or less). There's a reason I'm still holding onto mine, nothing has given it any trouble yet. I'm about to buy Metro 2033 and see how that does, I know that's pretty much the most stressful game around.

Also e8400's are awesome, just OC it further. You can probably atleast get it to 4.0ghz if not higher with little trouble
 
Vagrant_Zero said:
I've got a mildly overclocked 480GTX at 850/1200 and an E8400 at 3.6. I noticed an absolutely massive difference from moving off my GTX280. More than double the frames in the majority of my games.

If my CPU is bottlenecking my card, I sure as hell ain't noticing it.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but this is very hard to believe. Your CPU is a good match for your GTX280, and might work well with a single GTX480, but getting double the fps is a farcry from what is actually happening. I get that you can use more AA and the same res with a 30% increase in fps, but double is ridiculous. The GTX480 is powerful, but not THAT powerful. Also, the E8400 OCed is great, but the fact that it has no HT and only two cores is going to bottleneck it badly with a GTX480. The Core i7's rock, not only for the fact that they are clock-for-clock faster than the Core 2's or that they have 4/6 cores, but for the fact that they have HT and can run multi-threaded apps and scale processes like a beast!

From my experience, going from 20fps to 30fps looks very good, and to a new person playing games, it might seem like double the fps, when in fact it is only a 50% gain.

For future credibility, you might want to run FRAPS when playing the game, it shows how many fps you're getting in real time. ;)
 
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