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Advice on components

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  • Mushkin
  • MSI
  • Intel i5
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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February 8, 2014 8:09:54 PM

My current specs are
MSI Z77A-G45
i5 2500K - 4.2 GHZ
MUSHKIN 2X4GB (9-9-9-24) PC3-12800
MUSHKIN 240GB SSD
CORSAIR HX750
EVGA GTX 780TI SC
27" benq
Gelid air cooler

Are any of these components a bottleneck?

I use this pc for gaming and animation (blender, photoshop, zbrush and a few more programs)

Thanks!



More about : advice components

February 8, 2014 8:33:59 PM

Increase your RAM because you would like to disable pagefile/swap on an SSD. Nice otherwise.
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February 8, 2014 9:25:40 PM

Yes your i5 is a problem, being a old 2xxx series, as well as that it has less cores/threads then say a i7 with the SAME EXACT configuration, and thus will bottleneck the higher end video card like your 780. The RAM seems a bit on the slow side for the timing, but that is probably because of the i5 requirements to match up the timing and not cause instability in timing of data sequences. Having the whole system on only a single 250GB SSD is VERY bad IMHO. As you hit over 50% (120GB) of data on a SSD the SSD incurs heavier hits to performance and 'slows down dramatically. Given that Windows + Office Suite takes 40GB alone, add on say just a few STEAM games and bam your system is being impacted heavily.

Putting games on the SSD won't improve them enough to justify the loss in space or excess cost per GB a SSD costs. Norma practice is just to have a 7200RPM 1TB drive as the data drive for Games, Pics, music, etc. and keep core or large scale (AutoCAD, Maya, etc.) programs only on the SSD. Since ALL programs need Windows to run, maximizing Windows responsiveness by being on a SSD helps to improve the programs responsiveness not waiting on Windows to say "The Font looks like this, oh that is a keyboard, yes the C drive is here... etc."

That said numerous SSD Tips and Tricks (google it) are out there to improve performance such as turning off page swap among many other things. I would HIGHLY recommend you use those setting out there no matter what other decision you make.

FYI, you can score a Haswell i7 for only $599 (http://slickdeals.net/f/6657778-lenovo-h530-desktop-pc-...) move your PSU, GPU and SSD over (use Windows Easy Transfer to a external drive to backup then restore your 'data' as you swap OSes around and such), resulting in a damn fine gaming machine IMHO
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February 9, 2014 8:34:12 PM

Thanks for the replies!

Would upgrading (Adding) RAM reduce the bottleneck till I save up for an i7 CPU?

If yes, What timings would you suggest? (for the i5)
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February 10, 2014 5:06:03 PM

No it wouldn't help with bottlenecks. As I noted were the issues is the hardware I would suggest.
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February 10, 2014 7:22:05 PM

rokstah said:
Thanks for the replies!

Would upgrading (Adding) RAM reduce the bottleneck till I save up for an i7 CPU?

If yes, What timings would you suggest? (for the i5)


There IS NO bottleneck. Even today a Sandy Bridge processor runs neck to neck with Ivy Bridge or Haswell especially when overclocked. There is not so much IPC improvement that can make up for the lost overclockability. What only matters is higher power consumption on Sandy Bridge than Ivy Bridge or Haswell. Adding RAM will help you turn pagefile off. 16GB 1600 MHz RAM with 9-9-9 timing is good. Faster RAM doesn't provide such better performance as to justify increase in cost. Either save the money or spend it in a better/3D monitor.
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February 10, 2014 10:27:56 PM

Dmmbbs: Uhm what are you basing this on? Older games or you talking BF4, WatchDogs, etc. like I am? Because your right for OLDER games, but current and going forward titles your dead wrong. Look here: http://www.bf4blog.com/battlefield-4-retail-gpu-cpu-ben... Scroll down to CPU testing, and take your statement and match it against those numbers: It don't Jive. A i7 930 does 66/88 but a 2600 does 74/98 while a 3970 does 99/128, all with the SAME exact system, the difference being the generation of CPU. Now look at the i52500 (as the OP has) as compared to a 4670, 62/86 vs 72/95, but again compare that to the i7 numbers, because again ONLY difference is the CPU, same board, same PSU, Same GPU, etc.

Now before you start spewing "but anything over 60FPS is lost anyway visually" (yes I agree) the point here is that while today's 930 does 66/80 on BF4, by the time BF5 or BF6 or whatever else comes down the pipe, those numbers cut in half and lower, because the demands are higher and higher with each change (would you try using a 9800 card to play today? Why not it was awesome so many years ago on THOSE games it was built for, because the same answer).

Further @ 2:50 VeryTraumatic does the same testing and found the same results https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cj8RP4kEGo because games are using CPU PLUS GPU. It isn't just "how much GPU makes all the difference", no with the new Physics processing and other 'under the hood' differences that has NOTHING to do with 'Rendering Graphics' but about calculating differences between a LAW shot on a Wall damage as compared to a M60 shooting the support beam, does the wall's "weight" cause the wall to come down? This isn't 'prescripted' just shoot here and it does this routine anymore, these are dynamic to the interactions of the players, and the choices impact the calculations for outcome. Again nothing to do with GPU rendering, all CPU based, which when you look at the first link and scroll one more chart down, you can easily see how a i7 2600 has to work HARDER to do the SAME work load as a i7 3970, and when comparing (as in the video) to a i5 with less core/threads the workload for each core/thread increases greatly, causing the CPU to 'bottleneck' while the high end video cards (Titan, R9 etc.) twiddle thumbs because the CPU is still 'thinking' about what to do with the data, not enough 'agents' are running because your running less core / threads in comparison (more core threads better workload management, lower CPU consumption).

My statements to the OP is not 'current' or 'settle for' concepts, it is giving honestly the today > forward answer for long term solution which is what the OP is asking about, what to decide to do NOW to invest going forward, so in 2015, 2016 he isn't in the position many AMD 4xxx or CoreDuo2 people are in these days.
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February 11, 2014 1:27:59 AM

Tom Tancredi said:
Dmmbbs: Uhm what are you basing this on? Older games or you talking BF4, WatchDogs, etc. like I am? Because your right for OLDER games, but current and going forward titles your dead wrong. Look here: http://www.bf4blog.com/battlefield-4-retail-gpu-cpu-ben... Scroll down to CPU testing, and take your statement and match it against those numbers: It don't Jive. A i7 930 does 66/88 but a 2600 does 74/98 while a 3970 does 99/128, all with the SAME exact system, the difference being the generation of CPU. Now look at the i52500 (as the OP has) as compared to a 4670, 62/86 vs 72/95, but again compare that to the i7 numbers, because again ONLY difference is the CPU, same board, same PSU, Same GPU, etc.

Now before you start spewing "but anything over 60FPS is lost anyway visually" (yes I agree) the point here is that while today's 930 does 66/80 on BF4, by the time BF5 or BF6 or whatever else comes down the pipe, those numbers cut in half and lower, because the demands are higher and higher with each change (would you try using a 9800 card to play today? Why not it was awesome so many years ago on THOSE games it was built for, because the same answer).

Further @ 2:50 VeryTraumatic does the same testing and found the same results https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cj8RP4kEGo because games are using CPU PLUS GPU. It isn't just "how much GPU makes all the difference", no with the new Physics processing and other 'under the hood' differences that has NOTHING to do with 'Rendering Graphics' but about calculating differences between a LAW shot on a Wall damage as compared to a M60 shooting the support beam, does the wall's "weight" cause the wall to come down? This isn't 'prescripted' just shoot here and it does this routine anymore, these are dynamic to the interactions of the players, and the choices impact the calculations for outcome. Again nothing to do with GPU rendering, all CPU based, which when you look at the first link and scroll one more chart down, you can easily see how a i7 2600 has to work HARDER to do the SAME work load as a i7 3970, and when comparing (as in the video) to a i5 with less core/threads the workload for each core/thread increases greatly, causing the CPU to 'bottleneck' while the high end video cards (Titan, R9 etc.) twiddle thumbs because the CPU is still 'thinking' about what to do with the data, not enough 'agents' are running because your running less core / threads in comparison (more core threads better workload management, lower CPU consumption).

My statements to the OP is not 'current' or 'settle for' concepts, it is giving honestly the today > forward answer for long term solution which is what the OP is asking about, what to decide to do NOW to invest going forward, so in 2015, 2016 he isn't in the position many AMD 4xxx or CoreDuo2 people are in these days.


Hmm, a long discussion on Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 4 only. Now let me say a few words if you will. I will use the same piece of evidence Tom Tancredi has cited(because I use AMD 4670 and don't have enough money to buy and benchmark 780Ti myself). Now let's go to "Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 no AA" at ultra quality and see what it has to offer. Since a very high-end CPU is used, we see the GPUs bottlenecking the system going downwards. Asus Ares II is a dual Radeon 7970. So lets go down to where a 780Ti should be. We do not find that but since it is midway between Titan and 690, we can suppose the data min/avg about 65/90ish. At this '780ti bottlenecking i7-3970X' juncture let's go to "CPU Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080" at very high quality and see what it has to offer. Now the 780Ti being the narrowest portion of the pipeline let's narrow down the CPU portion from i7-3970X down to i7-2600K. Ahh, so the 74/98 point which will get down to 65/90ish once quality is dialled up to ultra. So now none is bottlenecking the other at this video settings, and is a perfectly playable scenario since even minimum frame rate is >60. So i7-2600K is a good companion to 780Ti at this video settings. Now how does an i5-2500K @4.2GHz compare to an i7-2600K@3.4GHz? It's up to you. I think "There IS NO bottleneck".

Now Tom has said correctly that the CPU will become bottleneck in the future. But I am not a futureproof type of guy. I know that if I crank up the video resolution the GPU will become bottleneck earlier. I know that graphics may also improve in future alongwith physics, so the GPU may well be the bottleneck then. I know that spending a budget however large, expecting it to futureproof an unborn game engine isn't guaranteed. But not everyone would agree. So OP should follow Tom Tancredi's advice if futureproofing subsequent versions of Battlefield is a priority to him. All the best.
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February 15, 2014 11:05:56 PM

Thank you so much for your replies! Means a lot. The only game I do play is counterstrike go and dota 2. Work would take 75% of the time I spend on the pc.
I've tweaked my windows settings (SDD, Pagefile etc)

I'm still torn between saving up for new processor or bigger SSD.
Getting 8 more gigs of ram for now.

I'm not obsessed about futureproofing but something that would help me render faster or get better fps on the current games I play.

But again, thanks a lot for taking the time out of your busy lives to reply here.
Love the community.
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