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upgrade i7 940

D

devoit

n00b
Joined
Sep 10, 2013
Messages
7
Hi there! Long time lurker (of the GPU forum) first time poster here. I'm hoping you guys could help with a question I've had over the past few months.

I'm currently running two Radeon 6950's in crossfire, and they've been awesome over the past couple of years but looking at all the great games coming out soon(ish) I am beginning to think I need to upgrade. I've been keeping an eye on the 7990, and now that they've had a massive price reduction I am very tempted to pull the trigger. But that's not why I'm here (I've already read all about frame pacing, etc and AMD seems to finally be doing a good job of getting their crap together!). My question is in regards to my CPU that I've had ever since I built my machine back in 2009 - my i7 940. I do not OC (though I know I should!), but I'm wondering how big of a bottleneck it will be if I do end up picking up a 7990. My mobo is the P6T X58, so I don't even think (please tell me if I'm wrong!!) that I can upgrade to the newest iteration of i7s, and I really do not want to upgrade my motherboard too.

So yeah, TLDR: is the i7 940 super outdated now? Will it severely bottleneck a 7990? Could I even upgrade it to a newer i7 or am I SOL because of my mobo (P6T X58)?

Thanks!
 
You could get a used i7 970 6 core / 12 threaded processors for $300 or so. Other than that you will most likely need to sell your motherboard + CPU (and possibly ram) and get a haswell i5 or i7 system. After selling all these parts the price may be $400 or so.
 
Overclock that champion chip, and you will be fine without the need of Spend any buck on a new processor, lets say 3.6GHZ and you will be plenty of power to feed a HD 7990... i repeat what i said in a recently topic with a 920. those i7 have still enough power to consider they will bottleneck any relative new GPU. specially when OCd those i7 9XX scale very well with OC.
 
To answer your question about upgrading the processor to the newer i7 processors. It can't be done. Yours is socket 1366 and newer i7 processors use different sockets (1155, 2011, etc.) Tons of people are still running those Nehalem processors; they are beasts. I question my sanity for getting rid of my i7 960 sometimes. Not sure upgrading to the 6-core version would help a lot with gaming if that is your aim. As has been suggested, you should O/C the 940 and most bottlenecking would be still be in the GPU as regards gaming; not convinced the CPU is as big a factor in modern games as it once was. I am not an overclocker either so I understand your hesitancy to try it (why am I on this forum?).

This may be the thread that Araxie was referring to.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1778251

Get the new GPU and see what it does. If you aren't happy you could still use the GPU in a newer system. No reason to add any money to the 1366 socket and CPU at this point in time. Rather save the money for a system upgrade if the new GPU plus O/C isn't enough.
 
Thanks for the help guys. I managed to OC to 3.78 ghz with stability and temperatures in line. Is that enough of an OC to ensure there isn't too much (if any) bottleneck from the CPU over the next couple of years? Rather than continue to upgrade in parts, like I have since I put together my PC in 2009, I will most likely put together a new one in a couple of years and give this one to my wife as she currently games on a fairly crappy laptop.

As well, I did test out the one game that gave me the upgrade itch to begin with, and there wasn't any difference in FPS either in 1080p or 1440p on the highest graphics settings. Which leads me to believe the GPU is indeed the bottleneck at this point.
 
Why don't you look up benchmarks of that game. You should be able to get a general idea of how your cards should hold up even if they aren't in the bench. This will tell you if your CPU is a problem.I didn't feel a big difference moving up from an i5-750 to an i5-2500k. Fortunately or unfortunately, the CPU is not evolving as quickly as it did in years past.
 
Unfortunately there aren't any benchmarks for this game (it is the Star Citizen hangar module... game won't come out in full for another year or so, but it is being released in modules every few months).

Tych - that's pretty impressive. I managed to get my 940 up to 3.9 ghz but prime95 was crashing it and the temp readings were well over 70 and into the 80s (and on the cores into the 90s). I have a fairly big case that promotes airflow (HAF 932 full tower) but I think the cooler I have is just not very good (Noctua NH-U12P).
 
devoit said:
Thanks for the help guys. I managed to OC to 3.78 ghz with stability and temperatures in line. Is that enough of an OC to ensure there isn't too much (if any) bottleneck from the CPU over the next couple of years? Rather than continue to upgrade in parts, like I have since I put together my PC in 2009, I will most likely put together a new one in a couple of years and give this one to my wife as she currently games on a fairly crappy laptop.

As well, I did test out the one game that gave me the upgrade itch to begin with, and there wasn't any difference in FPS either in 1080p or 1440p on the highest graphics settings. Which leads me to believe the GPU is indeed the bottleneck at this point.
Click to expand...

sometimes not matter how good system you have, sometimes the problem its the game itself.. this remember to the game RIFT, a game coded for Single Core any ocation of massive players in screen was able to strugle any machine, including Sandy-E Chips.. i have not tested star citizen but i now some other games are poorly coded that forces to disable HyperThreading or disable SLI to play fine it.

how bad are your FPS to think in a upgrade?.
 
The FPS isn't bad, it's 60+ in 1080p but only about 30-40 in 1440p. The game is gorgeous so when it does finally come out I would like to be able to play it in 1440p without any drops at a constant 60 FPS, so that's the reason I've started thinking about upgrading.
 
devoit said:
The FPS isn't bad, it's 60+ in 1080p but only about 30-40 in 1440p. The game is gorgeous so when it does finally come out I would like to be able to play it in 1440p without any drops at a constant 60 FPS, so that's the reason I've started thinking about upgrading.
Click to expand...

at 1440P the CPU its a less important factor for gaming much less important than 1080P... in your case are the GPU who are holding back the performance... si if you planing to upgrade to play at 1440P. then upgrade your GPU nor CPU. ATM HD 7950 are insanely cheap.. you could sell your cards and move on to 7950s. or wait a bit even more to see what will AMD show in their 9000 series in october, so the less you can expect its at least a even greater price drop in the 7900 Series and move to 2x7970GHZ or see how good will perform the 9000 series and move to a powerfull single GPU solution.
 
Yeah I'm thinking I may wait until the 9k series. I've been very tempted by the 7990, especially after the price cut. And now with the new catalyst drivers, I've already noticed a huge difference since frame pacing continues to be improved. Thanks for the help!
 
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