What is limiting my performance?

wrathofcow · Feb 7, 2014

So I have an old I7 920, overclocked to 3.2 ghz. My ram is 12 gb of triple channel ddr3 at 1600 mhz. Graphics card is an xfx 6870 with a GPU clock at 950 mhz and memory clock at 1200 mhz.

I am beginning to run into issues with games not running smoothly, especially when I play Neverwinter. My question is this, should I throw the baby out with the bath water and upgrade to a z87 board and a 4670k processor, or would updating my GPU be sufficient to get max performance in games? It should be noted that my mobo only has PCI-e 2.0.

The GPU's I'm considering are the gtx 760 and gtx 770.

Thanks!

Chitownkid · Feb 7, 2014

whats your budget?

woltej1 · Feb 7, 2014

I'm running bf4 maxed out at 1080p on an i5 750, your CPU is fine. It's your GPU that's holding you back. Either of those cards will give you great performance at 1080p, but obviously the 770 is that much faster. Plus asus has their card for $300 which is a really good deal if you buy it before the sale is done. What is your PSU?

wrathofcow · Feb 7, 2014

I have a 1300 W gold certified modular cooler master PSU. Will my lack of a PCI 3.0 expansion slot limit me a great deal? Or will it be negligible.

Chitownkid · Feb 7, 2014

if i were you id get an evga, and use step up for an even better card but for now i can +GTX 760(i recommend gigabyte windforce)

NormH · Feb 7, 2014

your gpu is the choke point if anything

Elendrill · Feb 7, 2014

It all depends on what games you are playing. You should do some research and see if they are CPU or GPU intensive and depending on that- upgrade. If you upgrade the Graphics card, your CPU might bottleneck it in some games. If I were you, I would upgrade the GPU since all I play is BF4 which is really GPU intensive and there doesnt seem to be a big difference in FPS with old processors

ahnilated · Feb 7, 2014

wrathofcow :

What CPU cooler do you have? I have an i7 920 running at 3.8G on 1.2v. That would help on the CPU end and maybe give you a few more FPS. Other than that I would say you maybe GPU limited. Do you have hyper threading on or off? You can try turning that off so you have more processor to throw at the game.

wrathofcow · Feb 7, 2014

ahnilated :

wrathofcow :

What CPU cooler do you have? I have an i7 920 running at 3.8G on 1.2v. That would help on the CPU end and maybe give you a few more FPS. Other than that I would say you maybe GPU limited. Do you have hyper threading on or off? You can try turning that off so you have more processor to throw at the game.

Corsair H80. Unfortunately not all 920's were created equal, I seem to get unstable around 3.6.

ahnilated · Feb 7, 2014

Ok, well then you are best to stay under 3.5 I would say. I have another 920 that won't go over 3.2G so I know what you mean.

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What is limiting my performance?

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