Ideas for future build? What should i get?

[jamie6737]

Hiy

here is my rig as it is now.
amd phenom ii x4 955 - 3.2 GHz - running at 3.8GHz
6 GB or RAM - DDR3
gainward gtx 580 1.5gb
motherboard - ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 - AMD 880G - Socket AM3
PSU - 950 wat

I was thining about getting rid of the motherboard and the CPU and getting a core i7 with a new motherboard since the mobo i have now does not support a core i7 CPU right? I can get rid of those 2 things and keep everything else. But i dont know what motherboard to get.

I'm not a hardcore gamer so i dont think i will need a high end core i7 cpu. maybe the core i7 920 2.66 GHz Processor.

What do you think?

[stroyal]

For gaming you don't need an i7, you don't even need an i5.
AFAIK, no game can choke the top AMD CPUs, so far.

For Flight SimX, you would need an i7, for high settings.

If you want to improve gaming, a better graphics card, is all you need.

You have a pretty powerful system already.

There are other programs, like encoding that can benefit from a faster processor, just not gaming.

If you are going with an i5, or an i7, you want a socket 1155, with a Z68 chip set, if you want the top board for Sandy bridge.

[jamie6737]

For gaming you don't need an i7, you don't even need an i5.
AFAIK, no game can choke the top AMD CPUs, so far.

For Flight SimX, you would need an i7, for high settings.

If you want to improve gaming, a better graphics card, is all you need.

You have a pretty powerful system already.

There are other programs, like encoding that can benefit from a faster processor, just not gaming.

If you are going with an i5, or an i7, you want a socket 1155, with a Z68 chip set, if you want the top board for Sandy bridge.

So whats the best AMD CPU i can get? With the motherboard i have?
And how much more better will it be when compared to the CPU i have now?


can you tell me more about encoding please?

[RicheemxX]

What are you trying to achieve or better yet what is it that this system isn't doing well enough for you that you think you need an upgrade?

Are there specific apps that you want to run better?
Specific games? or what?

Stroyal is referring to video encoding

[stroyal]

Unless it can be flashed to an AM2+, it is an AM2

Not sure why you need it yet but the fastest is the 980black X4 @3.7

The fastest 6core is 1100T x6 @3.3

The good news or bad, depending on your point of view, the top AM2+ processors, are not any faster.

[stroyal]

I would guess that the 980,before overclocking, will be the same speed as your overclocked 955

Edit
strange benchmarks, they are pretty close, and not worth upgrading,IMO.
AnandTech - Bench - CPU

[jamie6737]

What are you trying to achieve or better yet what is it that this system isn't doing well enough for you that you think you need an upgrade?

Are there specific apps that you want to run better?
Specific games? or what?

Stroyal is referring to video encoding

The CPU seems a bit sluggish to me. I have always wanted a core i7.


i was curious to know how much it would cost to upgrade.

[ShyguyXPC]

Unless it can be flashed to an AM2+, it is an AM2

Not sure why you need it yet but the fastest is the 980black X4 @3.7

The fastest 6core is 1100T x6 @3.3

The good news or bad, depending on your point of view, the top AM2+ processors, are not any faster.

Got the numbers/designation wrong....

AM3+ and AM3, not AM2+ and AM2.


Also, as stated there is now AM3+ support, I just looked at latest bios with CPU updated support is for Phenom II series CPU's, otherwise prior to that it only supported Athlon II and Sempron CPU's.

So no AMD FX series Updates for you.



Then again, their not all that much better than the Phenom II you already have.

[RicheemxX]

Ok - sluggish how? In what applications? The reason I ask this is because there shouldn't be a reason for it to feel slow unless you are really taxing the system. There might be something else that is causing the slow downs making an upgrade pointless. If it just "feel slow" while browsing the web with nothing open then you are having other issues. If its feeling slow while gaming or running high end apps then it might help to upgrade. But a perceived slowness is usually related to other areas.

You always wanted one - ok, well its your money. To me its just a matter of weighing the pro's vs con's. If I'm seeing significant gains then its worth it. If not then not so much. But again its your money if you want to spend it thats on you.

Cost - the cheapest i7 you can buy right now is the i7-950 at $270 but you'd be better off spending the $300 to get the i7-2600. Add to that a decent board and you are looking at almost $400.

[ShyguyXPC]

and the i7 950 is on the "dead" Socket 1366 Platform to boot, making it even more pointless.

i5 Quad or i7 Quad on Socket 1155 would be more worthwhile.

Even Socket 2011 with a Quad would be a better route.

[RicheemxX]

Yeah the only reason I even mentioned it was because the OP mentioned the 920. I guess you can get that for $250 at TD. The down side is the motherboards are more expensive and it's older tech.

The 1155 platform would be better and as Shy said the 2011 platform would be best. But sense you mention not needing a high end cpu you'd likely want to stay away from that because of the high end pricing that goes with it.

edit: the new socket 2011 Quad core Core i7 3820 is supposed to be out in Feb and will be $285. So that would be worth waiting on if you feel its a must to upgrade.

[jamie6737]

Ok - sluggish how? In what applications? The reason I ask this is because there shouldn't be a reason for it to feel slow unless you are really taxing the system. There might be something else that is causing the slow downs making an upgrade pointless. If it just "feel slow" while browsing the web with nothing open then you are having other issues. If its feeling slow while gaming or running high end apps then it might help to upgrade. But a perceived slowness is usually related to other areas.

You always wanted one - ok, well its your money. To me its just a matter of weighing the pro's vs con's. If I'm seeing significant gains then its worth it. If not then not so much. But again its your money if you want to spend it thats on you.

Cost - the cheapest i7 you can buy right now is the i7-950 at $270 but you'd be better off spending the $300 to get the i7-2600. Add to that a decent board and you are looking at almost $400.

I mean i feel as if i get slow FPS when playing games. I create worlds for the sims 3. Worlds that are huge so it seems my CPU is struggling with the game. And i dont think the game was designed for CPUs with more then 4 cores.

Is $400 american? Im in England so i guess it might be cheaper?


Does that usage seem normal for the sims 3?

[jamie6737]

Yeah the only reason I even mentioned it was because the OP mentioned the 920. I guess you can get that for $250 at TD. The down side is the motherboards are more expensive and it's older tech.

The 1155 platform would be better and as Shy said the 2011 platform would be best. But sense you mention not needing a high end cpu you'd likely want to stay away from that because of the high end pricing that goes with it.

edit: the new socket 2011 Quad core Core i7 3820 is supposed to be out in Feb and will be $285. So that would be worth waiting on if you feel its a must to upgrade.

What about motherbaord? CAnt go above £400 GBP

[RicheemxX]

I'm not much on gaming so I don't know much about the SIMS and how well it should run. But looking at the specs you shouldn't see any issues with the game and your rig. Do you have it fully patched? latest drivers for your video card ect?

Do you see slow downs anywhere else?

Are those numbers with your system only running Sims 3? You are using a ton of resources there. Not just CPU but a ton of ram. The requirements on that game aren't that high so I'm surprised that it alone would tax it that much.

At current pricing to stay under or around £400 GBP you'd be looking at a core i7 2600 with a decent board. The core i7 3820 would probably be around the same price but there aren't many boards out there now and the ones that are would likely push pricing over your budget.

[ShyguyXPC]

yeah, $300 ish for the i7 3820, and probably $150-200-ish at least for a good Socket 2011 board, along with a Quad Channel RAM kit, would run probably another $50 or so.

$215 at least for Socket 2011 Boards: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Motherboards, Intel Motherboards, LGA 2011

$45 at least for 8GB Quad Channel RAM kit: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Memory, Desktop Memory, 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM, 8GB (4 x 2GB)

already at $260 for the mobo and RAM. Add in the $300 Quad core price tag and your over $500 USD.

400 UK Pounds would be about $617 USD or so, so you COULD upgrade to that if needed once the i7 3820 is out.

But I'd make sure the Motherboard was a good one with some Good Overclocking support, Features, as well as one with 8 RAM slots instead of just 4, so you can add more down the road.

I'm not sure how much resources Sims 3 would take up, if your actually building maps and worlds for it, as this is different than playing the normal game, and depending on the size of the worlds could eat up a massive amount of resources... though usually most games are hard coded to use no more than 2 or 3GB of ram anyways.

and I don't think Sims 3 is optimized for Quad cores. So not sure how much better it would run.


I'd consider getting as high a clock speed Quad core as possible, which the i7 2600K would be a good choice.

It could also be, since the worlds are so large, that your Hard drive is just slow loading the data. I'd invest in an SSD drive, SATA 6Gb/s drive, and one of the Z68 Motherboards, either set up the SSD as the primary drive, or set it for Intels Smart Response feature that can use an SSD up to 40GB (or a partition of 40GB), as a HDD Cache for standard drives to speed up load times.

[jamie6737]

yeah, $300 ish for the i7 3820, and probably $150-200-ish at least for a good Socket 2011 board, along with a Quad Channel RAM kit, would run probably another $50 or so.

$215 at least for Socket 2011 Boards: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Motherboards, Intel Motherboards, LGA 2011

$45 at least for 8GB Quad Channel RAM kit: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Memory, Desktop Memory, 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM, 8GB (4 x 2GB)

already at $260 for the mobo and RAM. Add in the $300 Quad core price tag and your over $500 USD.

400 UK Pounds would be about $617 USD or so, so you COULD upgrade to that if needed once the i7 3820 is out.

But I'd make sure the Motherboard was a good one with some Good Overclocking support, Features, as well as one with 8 RAM slots instead of just 4, so you can add more down the road.

I'm not sure how much resources Sims 3 would take up, if your actually building maps and worlds for it, as this is different than playing the normal game, and depending on the size of the worlds could eat up a massive amount of resources... though usually most games are hard coded to use no more than 2 or 3GB of ram anyways.

and I don't think Sims 3 is optimized for Quad cores. So not sure how much better it would run.


I'd consider getting as high a clock speed Quad core as possible, which the i7 2600K would be a good choice.

It could also be, since the worlds are so large, that your Hard drive is just slow loading the data. I'd invest in an SSD drive, SATA 6Gb/s drive, and one of the Z68 Motherboards, either set up the SSD as the primary drive, or set it for Intels Smart Response feature that can use an SSD up to 40GB (or a partition of 40GB), as a HDD Cache for standard drives to speed up load times.

Umm i have a SSD already. so i dont think its the hard drive. I get slow FPS every 7 seconds. The game will run smooth for 7 seconds then i will see a big dip in FPS for 2 seconds and so on. It also does it when recording HD movies with fraps...The game can use up as much as it likes sice its modded to use more then 6 GIG.

Can you give a link for the mobo/CPU you recomend?

Also cant i just use the RAM i have now in the system? For the new build? I have 6 gig.

[jamie6737]

I'm not much on gaming so I don't know much about the SIMS and how well it should run. But looking at the specs you shouldn't see any issues with the game and your rig. Do you have it fully patched? latest drivers for your video card ect?

Do you see slow downs anywhere else?

Are those numbers with your system only running Sims 3? You are using a ton of resources there. Not just CPU but a ton of ram. The requirements on that game aren't that high so I'm surprised that it alone would tax it that much.

At current pricing to stay under or around £400 GBP you'd be looking at a core i7 2600 with a decent board. The core i7 3820 would probably be around the same price but there aren't many boards out there now and the ones that are would likely push pricing over your budget.

the usage you see on the image is from the sims 3...Of couse it has to do with the world not being a EA world but my own i made for the game..I think the CPU cant handle it so its laggging....

[stroyal]

It is probably just like flight Simulator.
It is a Sim.
Isn't it CPU intensive?

Flight Sim X needs the fastest CPU possible.
I've been doing some research, and some people run an SSD for the operating system, and the program on a separate 10,000RPM Rapter.

Edit
Oh, thanks Shy, I'm an idiot!

[ShyguyXPC]

It is probably just like flight Simulator.
It is a Sim.
Isn't it CPU intensive?

Flight Sim X needs the fastest CPU possible.
I've been doing some research, and some people run an SSD for the operating system, and the program on a separate 10,000RPM Rapter.

Edit
Oh, thanks Shy, I'm an idiot!

No, AMD are the idiots instead of using AM2, AM3, AM4, AM5 for socket designations, instead they have to throw in a + for each successive generation, then toss in the next number...

[ShyguyXPC]

Umm i have a SSD already. so i dont think its the hard drive. I get slow FPS every 7 seconds. The game will run smooth for 7 seconds then i will see a big dip in FPS for 2 seconds and so on. It also does it when recording HD movies with fraps...The game can use up as much as it likes sice its modded to use more then 6 GIG.

Can you give a link for the mobo/CPU you recomend?

Also cant i just use the RAM i have now in the system? For the new build? I have 6 gig.

Well the SSD info was omitted from your original post, so didn't know you already have one.


as to the lag, thats typical with FRAPS too, some games it lags just running FRAPS, and even worse when recording.

as to the game being modded to use more than 6GB... is it still 32-bit or does it actually have a 64-bit executable? If only 32-bit, it won't use more than 4GB. if its actually got a 64-bit executable only then can it run more than 4GB.

reason most games are hard coded to only use 2 or 3 GB is so that there is still some memory left for the OS and other background resources, as well as most users are still 32-bit. though now days more and more power users and gamers are going 64-bit, and few games actually have a 64-bit Executable version to accommodate those users.

Just having a 64-bit OS, will not allow a game to run more than 4GB, as the game has to also have a 64-bit mode or executable to do so as well.


Not sure if your running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, but found this forum thread while searching to see if there is even an actual 64-bit executable out there... which I never did find.

The Sims 3 issue with 64bit systems. [Archive] - Steam Users' Forums


Also, this wiki comments on the Large Address Aware part of the 32-bit Executable, which I myself have had to modify with a different program, for Sig Meier's Railroads which will only work smoothly on 32-bit OS's, until its modified to use more than 2GB of RAM... though will still only use up to 3GB.

Sims 3:Large Address Aware - SimsWiki

But even this trick, or the successive patches for Sims 3, that enable it, will only use up to 4GB max. As the game is only 32-bit... though if your running 6 or 8GB, then you'll have 2 to 4 GB more available to the OS and whatever else is running.

Its possible to use the excess RAM to create a RAM Drive and move the OS's virtual memory onto it as well, and speed things up with Windows, and stuff in background, but usually not recommended to move the entire virtual memory onto the RAM.



as to your Current RAM in a Socket 2011 system, you could run that 6GB on it, but you'll lose Quad channel memory support and revert to Dual channel. Reason I said a Set of 4 Sticks, is Socket 2011 introduces TRUE quad channel memory support, just as Socket 1366 introduced Triple Channel.

Not sure if the kits actually have to be 4x 2GB or more to get Quad channel, or if you can throw in 2 Identical Dual Channel kits and get the same results or not, but if you can do the latter I'd look into a 2nd 4GB Kit identical to your first pair and do that... or just buy an 8GB Quad channel kit, since its cheap enough right now, and keep that 6GB with the existing system, or take 2GB out and keep on side for back up memory kit in case the new stuff goes bad.

and then weather you keep the old system or sell it, it has 4GB at least with it.