Go with new upgrade or wait?

QKSILVR73

QKSILVR73

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 15, 2006
Messages
402
I mainly game with my Desktop. Currently having the upgrade itch. :D
Anyways I play BF3, BO2, Dishonered, DayZ, ARMA2.

My current setup
EVGA 780i board with 780FTW bios
Q9550 @ 3.54
4gb DDR2 SLI ram
2x 460 GTX SLI stock clocks 1920x1080
128gb M4 SSD
256gb OCZ Agilty4
300gb Velociraptor
150gb Velociraptor
Xfi PCI Fatality
bluray Drive/writer

Looking at 3570K with appropriate board or wait for haswell etc..

Thanks
 
Get some more RAM in that system, and you'll be good for a little while longer.
 
NiHiL8 said:
Get some more RAM in that system, and you'll be good for a little while longer.
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Thing is, not really worth buying DDR2 now, unless he can find someone to practically give him some. I do agree that 8GB RAM is a good upgrade though.
 
looks good, Ram will help. From what i understand haswell isn't much better then what we already have, just another small step forward. I could be wrong though
 
pliskin679 said:
looks good, Ram will help. From what i understand haswell isn't much better then what we already have, just another small step forward. I could be wrong though
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It's a better step from Core 2, though. A few ~10% CPU improvements compunded plus a bit more clockspeed will be a decent increase, but the Q9550 is already quite fast so it won't be major in most cases even for him. Should be noticeable though. Upgrading other stuff such as RAM at the same time will be helpful. He doesn't seem to game at high resolution so his video cards aren't too bad. Actually I still use a single GTX 460 for 1080p gaming, and it's still good to me.
 
Get at least 8gb, and see if you can increase your overclock. I am upgrading to a 3820 because of some massive sales over the holidays, otherwise I'm happy with my system, which is similar to yours - except for the ram. Upgrading an existing system is always cheaper than building new of course, in your case the extra will help so pick up a second 4gig set for now, and see what the rest of the year brings us.
 
I wouldnt bother buying DDR2.

If you have the upgrade itch, the 3570K would rock, OC it and your set. Unless haswell is going to be a showstoppper compared to the 3570K, then you might wait.
 
I wouldn't dump any money into your current setup like RAM or whatnot since you're asking about a full blown overhaul to either IB or HWL...unless it's for a newer gen GPU like GTX 670 or 680 that can a worthwhile transition to the new system.

i5-3570K
Z77
8-16GB DR3-1600
GTX 670 or 680

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/701?vs=50

Or wait for Haswell, as it should hopefully be at least another 10% overall gain compared to IB.
 
DejaWiz said:
I wouldn't dump any money into your current setup like RAM or whatnot since you're asking about a full blown overhaul to either IB or HWL...unless it's for a newer gen GPU like GTX 670 or 680 that can a worthwhile transition to the new system.

i5-3570K
Z77
8-16GB DR3-1600
GTX 670 or 680

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/701?vs=50

Or wait for Haswell, as it should hopefully be at least another 10% overall gain compared to IB.
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If its only 10% then that really isnt much.

if the OP has the upgrade bug, then the parts you listed would rock, why wait for 10%!
 
If you put more RAM in that machine be careful about using 4 modules. Those boards do not like that. I'm not saying you can't do it but it requires tweaking and tuning to make it work.
 
dandragonrage said:
Thing is, not really worth buying DDR2 now, unless he can find someone to practically give him some. I do agree that 8GB RAM is a good upgrade though.
Click to expand...

Yep, thought about it, not really worth the improvement for the price.
 
Your system will be fine for another 2-3 years fact is nothing out there pushing computers nowdays and waste of money.
 
Basically your system is about on par performance wise with a Phenom II x4.

I would get a I5-3570k/mobo/ram.

Keep the rest.
 
yelsewshane said:
Your system will be fine for another 2-3 years fact is nothing out there pushing computers nowdays and waste of money.
Click to expand...

I guess you never played Farcry 3? Or the new Hitman? Or BF3? What about Metro 2033?

Comments like this make me laugh.
 
Dan_D said:
If you put more RAM in that machine be careful about using 4 modules. Those boards do not like that. I'm not saying you can't do it but it requires tweaking and tuning to make it work.
Click to expand...

I was going to suggest more ram until this post and looking at the board he has. nVidia chipsets where the achilles heel for Core 2 Quads. If this was a P35 chipset or something, I'd say an upgrade to 8GB of ram is well worth it, but on that board, even if you do get the 4 sticks to work, you'll likely have to lower your FSB, which in the grand scheme of things, probably means you've just spent money and you're going backwards instead of forward. Add to that SATA controllers and on-board NIC's that aren't as good and/or can be very flaky and yeah... Time for a new build.
 
it's a stupid post when someone asks about non-existent needs. saying you play BF3 isn't a requirement because your computer and every new one you might get will ALL play BF3.

so how does anyone know if you need an upgrade? is it slow at something? are you out of hard drive space?? how is anyone to know if your BF3 runs well or not??!?!?! YOU DIDNT SAY WHAT IS WRONG!!!

ridiculous
 
bAMtan2 said:
it's a stupid post when someone asks about non-existent needs. saying you play BF3 isn't a requirement because your computer and every new one you might get will ALL play BF3.

so how does anyone know if you need an upgrade? is it slow at something? are you out of hard drive space?? how is anyone to know if your BF3 runs well or not??!?!?! YOU DIDNT SAY WHAT IS WRONG!!!

ridiculous
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That entire post is ridiculous. You obviously didn't read my post. if I was having issues, i would have said so. I said I have the upgrade itch. My system is over 4 yrs old and want to upgrade so I can sell my old stuff before it dies on me.

people like you crack me up. go run along now and complain on another so called dumb post.

Btw, thanks to the rest that actually posted something useful...:rolleyes:
 
QKSILVR73 said:
I mainly game with my Desktop. Currently having the upgrade itch. :D
Anyways I play BF3, BO2, Dishonered, DayZ, ARMA2.

My current setup
EVGA 780i board with 780FTW bios
Q9550 @ 3.54
4gb DDR2 SLI ram
2x 460 GTX SLI stock clocks 1920x1080
128gb M4 SSD
256gb OCZ Agilty4
300gb Velociraptor
150gb Velociraptor
Xfi PCI Fatality
bluray Drive/writer

Looking at 3570K with appropriate board or wait for haswell etc..

Thanks
Click to expand...

I have a CPU that should be roughly similar to yours. Don't know how GTX 460 SLI compares to a GTX 680, but after upgrading from a single 5770 to the GTX 680, I can comfortably wait for Haswell. For MY usage it is currently more than adequate. However, that being said, I have not played BF3 and from what I've read, it seems to be very CPU-intensive.
 
You also have 8Gb of ram vs his 4 which could be the main bottleneck in some of today's games, particularly if his idle ram usage is much over 1gb
 
I say go for it. DDR3 is crazy cheap right now and you'll gain SATA III as well. That alone is worth is IMHO. That 3570k OC'd a little is going to be a nice upgrade from Core 2 Quad as well.
 
If you had a 1366 socket id say definitely hold on cause x58 still is a tank in every word , now as for 775 yea it great for a regular daily and a tame desktop, but it just doesn't have the muscle to do harder task like heavy encoding gaming , sure you'll game but you will take a bit of a hit . Hit the sales section , lots of newer stuff there people letting go of . Haswell still long way off and who knows if the first stuff out will have bugs like the Intel P67 had
 
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grausch said:
I have a CPU that should be roughly similar to yours. Don't know how GTX 460 SLI compares to a GTX 680, but after upgrading from a single 5770 to the GTX 680, I can comfortably wait for Haswell. For MY usage it is currently more than adequate. However, that being said, I have not played BF3 and from what I've read, it seems to be very CPU-intensive.
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After reading your post, I'd like to elaborate a bit more on my own earlier post. Since a full overhaul is on the horizon be it either IB or HWL, I'm inclined to recommend just a GPU upgrade now with the current system, see how that fares, then make the determination if it is acceptable enough to hold out for HWL or to jump to an IB right away.
 
Won't Socket 1155 be EOL once Haswell comes out? If you reckon you'll always have to upgrade mobo and RAM every time you upgrade your CPU anyway then no problem getting on 1155 right now, but otherwise I think there's a lot to be said for waiting for Haswell and Socket 1150.

I'd say definitely don't buy RAM. While 8GB would be nice, DDR2 is stupid expensive and a dead end upgrade.

Personally I'm in a similar boat with an old Core 2 Quad and 775 mobo, thinking about an upgrade to 3570K. I haven't decided either whether to upgrade or wait for Haswell.
 
DejaWiz said:
After reading your post, I'd like to elaborate a bit more on my own earlier post. Since a full overhaul is on the horizon be it either IB or HWL, I'm inclined to recommend just a GPU upgrade now with the current system, see how that fares, then make the determination if it is acceptable enough to hold out for HWL or to jump to an IB right away.
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I did some logs today and BF3 at high settings HBAo on motion blur off, 50-60 fps with occasional hiccup dip to 23-25fps for a sec. GPU only at 70-80% load. CPUs never got over 80%. Didn't check Ram usage :/
 
QKSILVR73 said:
I did some logs today and BF3 at high settings HBAo on motion blur off, 50-60 fps with occasional hiccup dip to 23-25fps for a sec. GPU only at 70-80% load. CPUs never got over 80%. Didn't check Ram usage :/
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That's pretty damn decent, IMO. If ithose results are acceptable to you, then I'd recommend just holding off until Haswell comes around. Keep in mind that you'll still be able to get IB and Z77 for a bit of time after it is released, so you can weigh them both and see what the better price : performance is after hammering through all the trustworthy comparison reviews. In other words, perhaps the ~10% gain that HWL may have over IB would be justified depending on the price point, or it may not be worth it, thus leaving IB as the better buy based on price tags at the time.
 
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I just switched from Phenom II 940BE @ 3.6ghz to i5 2500k. My best move from 2012. Just buy a 3570k and sell your combo, you'll not regret it
 
QKSILVR73 said:
My system is over 4 yrs old and want to upgrade so I can sell my old stuff before it dies on me.
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you didnt say that. now that you have, I can help you.

your system is worthless to sell. it will not break for years. so upgrade later, when you have a reason to.
 
QKSILVR73 said:
I mainly game with my Desktop. Currently having the upgrade itch. :D
Anyways I play BF3, BO2, Dishonered, DayZ, ARMA2.

My current setup
EVGA 780i board with 780FTW bios
Q9550 @ 3.54
4gb DDR2 SLI ram
2x 460 GTX SLI stock clocks 1920x1080
128gb M4 SSD
256gb OCZ Agilty4
300gb Velociraptor
150gb Velociraptor
Xfi PCI Fatality
bluray Drive/writer

Looking at 3570K with appropriate board or wait for haswell etc..

Thanks
Click to expand...

Haswell, that CPU is an actual upgrade if I was in your shoes. I am waiting for broadwell DDR4 edition myself. I just can't believe software hasn't caught up to my hardware. But granted I am still GPU limited :/
 
I would have to agree, ddr3 at this point is dirt cheap so why not? LOL after a while when ddr4 comes out thought ddr3 will then be expensive and ddr4 will be dirt cheap oh well. People will still want to buy ddr3 at that point haha
 
I'm in the same boat as the OP platform-wise, and have a MC 20 minutes away.
I don't play BF3 though and everything else seems to run just fine.
I play at 16x12 though, so I'm probably down on the GPU end as well as RAM.
(rig in sig)

It looks like q9550s still have decent resale here on the FS forum.
 
Thanks for all the help. Seems like the consensus is to stick with what I got, so that's what I am going to do. :D
 
Yeah, good choice. If you can play all game in full glory on your monitor, why upgrade? Im having a Q9450 and I am waiting for Haswell Xeon. :)
 
I went from a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz to a 2700k @ 4.6ghz and that was a pretty massive upgrade, I don't see the point of waiting.
 
Q9550 will OC higher, has SSE 4 and so will last longer than a Q6600. That said, I'm very excited to be upgrading to the i7-3820.
 
q6600 here, similar boat to the OP. I put in a GTX670 and will wait for Haswell to be released. As mentioned upstream, that'll let me see what HWL performs and prices at compared to the i3770k/z77 combo I'm looking at. I'll get to choose. Meanwhile, q6600 @3.2 w/8gb RAM is doing fine.
 
I was in a similar situation when the GTX680 & 670 were coming out and am VERY happy with my GTX670. I wish i had waited until prices dropped, but I picked up one of the 2650x1440 Korean IPS displays and my 560Ti wasn't going to cut it for gaming. I want more RAM, but DDR2 is expensive, laughably so compared to DDR3. Given the power of my processor, it's just not worth the money to upgrade to Ivy or Sandybridge, even at used prices. I'm going to wait until Haswell comes out, look at what the price/performance is, and then consider either buying into Haswell, or picking up some more recent, used, components.
 
Relativist said:
Q9550 will OC higher, has SSE 4 and so will last longer than a Q6600. That said, I'm very excited to be upgrading to the i7-3820.
Click to expand...

My 9550 was very finicky in trying to OC it. It may be the board I'm running, but I had to bump the voltage just a tad to get it to run stable at stock clocks. I messed with OCing it, but I want a completely stable machine and it was going to take too long to OC and stability test it and I don't have that sort of free time, particularly with my desktop being my primary machine.

I wish I could get an easy OC out of it so it would ease my upgrade itch.
 
one swell foop said:
I was in a similar situation when the GTX680 & 670 were coming out and am VERY happy with my GTX670. I wish i had waited until prices dropped, but I picked up one of the 2650x1440 Korean IPS displays and my 560Ti wasn't going to cut it for gaming. I want more RAM, but DDR2 is expensive, laughably so compared to DDR3. Given the power of my processor, it's just not worth the money to upgrade to Ivy or Sandybridge, even at used prices. I'm going to wait until Haswell comes out, look at what the price/performance is, and then consider either buying into Haswell, or picking up some more recent, used, components.
Click to expand...

I am also very happy with the GTX 680. Paid way too much for it since I got it on launch day.:rolleyes: The great thing about a desktop PC is that I can decide which bits to upgrade and then evaluate performance to see if another upgrade is needed. For me the 680 was very much worth it and delayed the Ivy Bridge update. Will see what Haswell bring to the table but I will most probably be upgrading then. Just not on launch day though...
 
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