Upgrade or stay?

A

asguitarplaya

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 19, 2012
Messages
177
I'm looking into upgrading my CPU, Mobo, and Ram, but still debating on whether to upgrade my graphics card. I'm currently using an EVGA Geforce GTX 660 TI (super clock). I also have a custom WC loop so I would have to purchase a new block if I upgrade.
Is my current card worth keeping for a while longer?
 
I think the best answer dealing with your graphics card is - is it performing how you want and need? I think you have to answer that yourself - plenty of reviews here to figure out best card for you and what you do.
 
asguitarplaya said:
I'm looking into upgrading my CPU, Mobo, and Ram, but still debating on whether to upgrade my graphics card. I'm currently using an EVGA Geforce GTX 660 TI (super clock). I also have a custom WC loop so I would have to purchase a new block if I upgrade.
Is my current card worth keeping for a while longer?
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Depends on what you're using it for. If you're playing one specific older game like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that runs well on a 660Ti, then you might as well hold off for a while. If you're looking at playing newer AAA titles, you'll probably want to upgrade.
 
Dis the 660Ti enough for what you need? What is your budget? Might want to wait for Black Friday to see what kind of deals you can get..
 
The card works great for what I'm currently using it for. I guess my question was mainly since I'm upgrading other components, would an older graphics card hold them back?
Idk, as you can tell I'm not entirely versed in this aspect.
 
Keep your rig.
Get an SSD
Enjoy

If you want better gaming performance, get either a 1050Ti or 1060.
 
I recently just purchased an SSD (Samsung EVO 860 256gb). With all these Black Friday/November deals going around it's hard to not want to upgrade! Thanks for the advice everyone.
 
get a xeon x5650/x5660 if its compatible and upgrade the video card to a cheap GTX 1070 or Hold for AMD Vega
 
Stoly said:
Keep your rig.
Get an SSD
Enjoy

If you want better gaming performance, get either a 1050Ti or 1060.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Those X58 setups were pretty fast, but we're now three or four generations past those. The difference in performance per clock is significant between that generation and Skylake or Broadwell-E, and depending what he's doing, we're probably at a point now where the old CPU would start being a limiting factor. Also, and this doesn't get talked about enough, there are advantages to newer CPUs that are secondary to the CPU itself, such as support for faster SSDs and USB3 or 3.1.

If the OP feels that now is the time to upgrade, I say he'd be right to do so.

Regarding the graphics card, especially if what he does is primarily gaming, I would want a current generation GPU to help me bring all that extra CPU horsepower to bear.
 
i see no reason to keep your current card unless money is a serious issue. you are upgrading your cpu, mobo, and ram... but you gonna keep the old ass video card too?
 
You all have good points, thanks for the advice. Looks like it's time to save some money for a GPU as well.
 
I'm still running X58, upgraded video cards a few times, CPU once. still doing all I need it to do, still not CPU bottlenecked in any of the games I play, I'm waiting till next year for Zen/Skylake X to *maybe* do a new build
 
Much as I love Nehalem/Westmere, it is probably time to say goodbye to it.

At least with Sandybridge, you get >= OCes as compared to the latest gens, so you're only 20-25% lower in absolute performance (comparing 4c/4t and 4c/8t parts respectively).
If you can only scrape a ~4GHz OC out of an X58, now we're talking about 50-55% lower absolute performance.

IMHO, a good solution is to use cheap Westmere / Sandy Xeons in a dual-socket config for compute intensive stuff (encodes, etc.) and have a 4c/8t from the latest consumer
platform generation as a gaming box.

Cost effective, and you don't have to put up with Intel f*cking you by selling you previous gen tech on HEDT.

Plus any day you get to play with dual-sockets is a good day. Better yet a Beowulf cluster of those! :D
 
RazorWind said:
I disagree. Those X58 setups were pretty fast, but we're now three or four generations past those. The difference in performance per clock is significant between that generation and Skylake or Broadwell-E, and depending what he's doing, we're probably at a point now where the old CPU would start being a limiting factor. Also, and this doesn't get talked about enough, there are advantages to newer CPUs that are secondary to the CPU itself, such as support for faster SSDs and USB3 or 3.1.

If the OP feels that now is the time to upgrade, I say he'd be right to do so.

Regarding the graphics card, especially if what he does is primarily gaming, I would want a current generation GPU to help me bring all that extra CPU horsepower to bear.
Click to expand...

It all depends on what you do and what are you willing to spend.


When considering an upgrade for gaming, GPU comes first and CPU/mobo comes last.

In OPs case he already has a good CPU, and plenty of memory. So a SSD and GPU make more sense.

Lets put it this way. If you install an SSD you'll feel the difference (Dramatic). If you upgrade the GPU you will notice the difference (depending on settings could be dramatic). But with a new cpu/mobo you may not notice it at all.
 
Stoly said:
It all depends on what you do and what are you willing to spend.


When considering an upgrade for gaming, GPU comes first and CPU/mobo comes last.

In OPs case he already has a good CPU, and plenty of memory. So a SSD and GPU make more sense.

Lets put it this way. If you install an SSD you'll feel the difference (Dramatic). If you upgrade the GPU you will notice the difference (depending on settings could be dramatic). But with a new cpu/mobo you may not notice it at all.
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My experience may be unique, but I've found that CPU horsepower matters a whole lot more than most people seem to think it does these days. For instances, the 2500K I had was unable to keep up with a GTX 970 in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, whereas a 3770 (adds hyperthreading and about 400MHz) was pretty well matched.

The improvement from generation to generation is relatively small in terms of IPC, but we're now four generations past the X58 era, and those improvements add up, especially when coupled with the modest incremental improvements in clock speed we see with each generation. So, while you're right that, if the OP can only upgrade one component, he should upgrade the graphics card, to get the most out of a current generation graphics card, he'd need to bring enough CPU, and "enough" is more than you'd think it is.
 
RazorWind said:
My experience may be unique, but I've found that CPU horsepower matters a whole lot more than most people seem to think it does these days. For instances, the 2500K I had was unable to keep up with a GTX 970 in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, whereas a 3770 (adds hyperthreading and about 400MHz) was pretty well matched.
Click to expand...
Key piece of info missing is how high was the 2500K OCed? I could see it stumbling significantly at stock,
but no way should it be that bad at say 4.5GHz, since that is about equivalent to a stock 6600K.

My spare gaming rigs are pretty much all OCed 2500K / 3570Ks - usually run with 6970s, 7950s and 780s, but I will occasionally stick in the 290Xs from the main rig (4770K @ 4.6GHz) and I don't notice too much of a difference.
 
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