Upgrading and motherboard questions

Which Socket Type Motherboard You Wanted ?

and what's you budget to buy a mobo

here are some mother boards you can buy any one of them
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_4?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=990fx&sprefix=990f%2Celectronics%2C484#/ref=sr_st?keywords=990fx&qid=1377094081&rh=n%3A172282%2Cn%3A541966%2Cn%3A193870011%2Cn%3A1048424%2Ck%3A990fx&sort=popularity-rank

i will Reccomend You Always Buy Intel Chipsets With Intel Cpus
Because Intel Have A Better in Quility And Tech. as compared to amd
AMD Is alwasys For Low Pc Budgeters Or Other Who doen't want to spend more on Computer and
Mainly Amd Doesn't Make Newer Chipsets With Better Tech. like Intel myself also Confused When i want to buy New gaming Rig I always researching Aboud I5 3570k vs Amd FX8350 But it seems that Intel Always Best With Ever Company @ Anytime {found that Fx 8350 o.c to 4.8GHz = I5 3570k o.c to 4.20ghz ]
:- In Graphics I will recommend You to Buy Amd Gpus because Amd Has Readion Way Too much Bettar than any Nvidia gpus it has Awsome p/p ratio

PCIe Gen3 ain't all that.

The Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2 AM3+ will work just dandy.

Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2 AM3+ is not release in Uk yet So !
let him decide

Well.. let's get this clear. There is never anything like that one company is better than the other and anyone who just recommends products of just one company just because he had a good experience with it and without trying the other one is called a fanboy.

Intel vs AMD

Intel

+ Good Single Threaded Performance
+ Low Power Consumption
+ Low Heat Output
+ Supports PCI Express 3.0
+ The top end CPU's (3930K, 3960K, etc) are much more powerful than AMD's flagship 8350 but they are priced ridiculously high.

- Most CPU's cannot be overclocked (only i5 and i7 'K' version CPU and X79 based CPUs can be overclocked)
- Price is generally higher than AMD
- For good features in a motherboard the price generally rises even more for the board with similar features when compared to AMD
- The frequently change socket and support to upto only 2-3 generations and no backwards compatibilty

AMD

+ Always has the price advantage over Intel
+ Almost all CPUs can be overclocked
+ Motherboard with good features and overclocking are not that expensive
+ Best Multi Threaded Performance for the price (when compared to i5)
+ For low-med budget for about 80-170 dollars, for gaming AMD is much better with it's more cores wheras with Intel in that budget you can only get a dual core
+ They support a socket for much longer than Intel

- Power consumption is way higher than Intel
- Can heat quite more when compared to Intel but there are CPU Coolers to solve that.
- They cannot match the performance of i7, but that is 100 pounds above the AMD flagship. 8350 = 145 pounds, i7 4770k = 250 pounds


What it means for you?

# For performance : When comparing the 8350 and i5, we can conclude that :
--> 8350 has better Multi Threaded performance and i5 has better Single threaded performance which means the 8350 is better for Video Editing and the i5 is better for Gaming. But that trend is soon to change and the next gen games would use more than 4 cores would work significantly better with the 8350.

That being said neither the 8350 nor the i5 is bad for Gaming or Video Editing. They should perform near each other when it comes to performance in Gaming or Video Editing. That is the 8350 is still a very good CPU for gaming and the i5 is still a very good CPU for editing.

And when paired with a good graphics card (anything above a 760) the difference is so less that the human eye is unable to distinguish

The cheapest AMD board that is capable of overclocking costs about 80 dollars wheras the cheapest I would recommend for overclocking on Intel costs about 120 dollars. So there is 40 dollars difference there. Also the 8350 tends to be around 30 dollars cheaper than the Intel i5 4670k. So the price difference is quite significant between the two.

If you are having a fixed budget, so it would be better to get an AMD build and spend more and more money on the GPU because at the end it is what matters more for gaming.

So, as you can see no company is better than the other and I would recommend any one you prefer (in your case AMD)


PCI Express 2.0 vs PCI Express 3.0
For gaming there is really no difference between the PCI Express 2.0 and PCI Express 3.0 which is why AMD is still using the PCI Express 2.0 slot and no one complaints. The bandiwidth requirements are just not high enough for any graphics card so that it would need PCI Express 3.0 slot.

There is really no difference between the PCI Express 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0 with today's graphics card. The cards have just started bottlenecking the PCI express 1.0 slots. So the PCI Express 2.0 would be good enough for the next 3-4 years. No problem there. So PCI Express 2.0 is not a problem. Hence you should not decide based on PCI Express 3.0 availability alone as that is really not a factor for now and there are still years for that.

My recommendation would be AMD for their good features for a good performance/price ratio. So if you like AMD then definitely go for the AMD. I have no problem recommending that.

Update : Oops.. forgot to mention the Cons of AMD. That is now fixed before someone starts screaming on me.. LOL

There is currently no Graphics card on the market which would give problem with PCI Express 2.0. Even the best card, that is Titan or 7990 which is actually a 7970 can run off a PCI Express 2.0 without showing any problem at all.

So still there is quite a lot of time left for PCI Express 2.0 to turn old. And anyways that motherboard you have M5A99X EVO is a great board and would not have problem with any graphics card.

The guys at hardocp.com thoroughly tested the graphics card and concluded this :

The Bottom Line
We have put forth a great effort to get to the bottom of the PCIe 2.0 versus PCIe 3.0 debate. We put a lot of time into testing performance and verifying that our data is accurate. Except for a couple of specific scenarios, most of the performance advantage had under PCIe 3.0 was well under 10%. This actually falls in-line with the kind of performance advantages one might expect using n Ivy Bridge CPU clock-for-clock compared to a Sandy Bridge CPU. The IPC can affect performance by as much as 4-7% in favor of Ivy Bridge easily. As you noticed, most of our data when we experienced an improvement on the Ivy Bridge system was in this range of improvements. There were a few specific cases of 11% in The Witcher 2 in one test, and 19% in Batman (for part of the game only) and 14% when we cranked up the settings to unplayable levels in Max Payne 3. For the most part, at the real-world highest playable settings we found playable, all performance advantages were under 10%.

With real-world gameplay performance advantages under 10% it doesn't change the actual gameplay experience. It in no way allows us to improve in-game quality settings nor does it give us any advantages over the PCIe 2.0 system. As we've stated previously in this evaluation, the technical performance advantages are "benchmarkable" but not relating to the gameplay experience.

It is also very clear from our testing that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 receives an overall higher percentage of improvements with Ivy Bridge than the Radeon HD 7970 does. It is possible that similar to our past CPU frequency testing, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 GPUs are simply more sensitive to CPU clock speed and IPC, especially when you scale these upwards. We've done testing in the past that also shows NVIDIA GPUs are more sensitive to CPU clock speed than AMD GPUs are as you scale those up to dual and triple-GPUs. Therefore, we are not shocked to find that one brand might benefit with a technology more than another. It is an interesting result that we didn't expect when we started testing.

So do not fret if you are on a Sandy Bridge PCI Express 2.0 system, you aren't missing out on a bunch of performance compared to an Ivy Bridge PCI Express 3.0 system. Most of our readers will likely benefit from higher CPU overclocks on Sandy Bridge anyway if you are truly pushing the CPU clock and this alone will likely negate any "advantages" from PCIe 3.0 or Ivy Bridge IPC when it comes to real-world gaming scenarios. PCIe 3.0 is a great evolution, one day it may actually support a better gameplay experience compared to PCIe 2.0, but that day is not today.

Click to expand...

You can real the whole review and see all the benchmarks at : http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/07/18/pci_express_20_vs_30_gpu_gaming_performance_review/#.UhThXKwW0Rg

Hence the conclusion is that by today's standards the PCI Express 2.0 performs as good as the PCI Express 3.0.

Anyways what things do you want to upgrade and what is your upgrade budget?

Anyways if you want to upgrade GPU then you would need to upgrade your CPU as well because with any good GPU there would be a bottleneck with your card and we do not like bottlenecks.

So better upgrade to a 8320, overclock it to around 4.6-4.7 Ghz and get a 760 (if possible). That would be best for gaming.

*Gen3* video cards work just dandy in *Gen2* slots.

Your current motherboard is fine. Your current CPU is not the highest of flyers but will push any video card you wish to put in your rig.

Believe me, that CPU would not push anything more than a 660. Anything above a 660 would create a bottleneck. I would rather recommend to upgrade to a 8350 if possible. That would be the best upgrade.

I don't believe you -- nor do most other reasonable folks.

He should spend that extra $200 (the cost of an FX8350) on his video card.

Who cares if his gaming frames are held back 10% when an HD 7970 (or GTX760) increases his FPS by 100% ??? ...

Well.. he did not told his upgrade budget, that would decide what is good to buy and what is not.

And yeah! I agree that upgrading graphics card is more important for gaming. So we need to know his upgrade budget first.

So OP. How much are you willing to spend for upgrade?