Looking to upgrade to a 290x but need advice on my current rig

S

Sedriss

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 18, 2004
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Hey guys. Was hoping you could lend some insight to me on how I should proceed. Specs of my current rig are in my sig. I was hoping to do a gpu upgrade for BF4. I currently only play games at 1900x1200. Not planning on gaming any higher. I want something that would last me a couple years (2-3 if lucky). Thing is, I know my other hardware is a lil dated but was hoping to get by without having to do a major overhaul.

If I just picked up a 290x by itself, do you think that my i5 could bottleneck it at all? What about my MB not being PCI-E 3.0? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 
A stock 2500K will bottleneck a 290X. You should pick up a used Z68 motherboard and get the CPU up to 4.5GHz, wait for 290 benchmarks to be released, then wait for aftermarket coolers for the 290 or 290X.
 
So maybe pick up a corsair h60 and try bumping it up a tad? If I go for a used board I might as well buy new and get a new CPU while I'm at it.
 
Y the hell would he need to get a z68 board to overclock his cpu. 2500k doesnt support pcie 3.0 at all even on z68 or z77 for that matter and his board is very capable of overclocking.
http://www.legitreviews.com/msi-p67a-gd65-intel-socket-1155-motherboard-performance-review_1495/13
An h60 should get you to 4.5-4.6ghz pretty easy. May bottleneck a bit in 64 player bf4 conquest but you'll still be ok with a decent overclock. I doubt pcie 2.0 will hold you back with a single gpu at all. I highly doubt you'll see below 60fps in bf4 99% of the time.
 
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OC if you want on your current motherboard if you need, but why not play the game and then do it if you need?
 
More likely will go with as you mentioned Flopper. I just figured with my rig getting up there in age I might tip toe around beefing it up a little with the GPU. Figured I would notice the biggest improvement from that.
 
Fooshnik said:
You should pick up a used Z68 motherboard and get the CPU up to 4.5GHz, wait for 290 benchmarks to be released, then wait for aftermarket coolers for the 290 or 290X.
Click to expand...


bad advice!

How would a Z68 motherboard (and overclocking) help him get more performance out of the videocard versus overclocking with his current motherboard?
 
Fooshnik said:
A stock 2500K will bottleneck a 290X. You should pick up a used Z68 motherboard and get the CPU up to 4.5GHz, wait for 290 benchmarks to be released, then wait for aftermarket coolers for the 290 or 290X.
Click to expand...

CPU performance was atrocious when the beta first came out. The 2nd or 3rd patch significantly improved performance on quad core (and six core) CPUs. I have a i5-2500k, and it ran the BF4 beta like crap initially. I even overclocked it to 4.5 ghz, which didn't make things much better. After the patch, performance was close to BF3 performance.

Basically, just wait until the full game comes out. I have a feeling a i5-2500k will be more than adequate, especially if you overclock it (you can hit 4.3-4.5 ghz with virtually no effort). I also have a very tough time believing PCI-E 3.0 vs. PCI-E 2.0 16x will make any difference.
 
I have a similar system to you, OP - and a R9 290X. I even have an MSI P67A-GD53 in my rig...the little bro of your board. :)

All is good man - OC that CPU to over 4 GHz and you will be just fine. I was getting around 90-100 FPS while playing BF3 MP on Win 8.1 x64 with Ultra settings (FOV 90):


(click to enlarge)
 
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