Upgrade Current System or Build New?

Acention

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Jul 17, 2014
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I am in the market to either upgrade my system or build new. Building new I would run a budget of about $2,000-2500. My question is how big of a difference will I see with a new system and is the cost/performance ratio better on upgrading what I currently have. I use my computer mostly for gaming on a 1920x1080 screen.

Current Build:
Processor: Intel I7 2600k (currently stock clock)
Mobo: ASrock Z68 Extreme 7 Gen 3
Ram: Gskill Ripjaw X 8gb DDR3 1866
Video Cards: EVGA Superclock GTX570 x2
PSU: 950W PC Power and Cooling

What I am considering doing with my current build if it ends up being worth it is to wait for the new Nvidia Cards and upgrade to a GTX x70 or x80 version of that card. Add 8gb more ram. OC my processor, plus a few other misc upgrades that wouldn't really effect performance in games.

If I build a whole new system should I jump on the Haswell-E train even though components are more expensive right now; or go with a 4790k?

Any help would be great as I keep talking myself into and then out of both of these options.
 
Solution
You should also take into consideration that the upcoming GTX 980 will perform slightly better than a 780 Ti, but will have the same price tag as the 780. You should consider upgrading to two of those.

Acention

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Thanks for the reply, planning on waiting for the next generation Nvidia cards as I am not in a huge rush to upgrade when Nvidia (hopefully) is on the cusp of releasing new cards.

This is kind of what I was thinking and hoping for a bit, squeeze out some more life out of my current system. I do have a question regarding SLI configuration on my current board when upgrading to new cards. I am guessing I will do the same thing as I did with my current setup and go with one card until feeling that I need some more power and then find a cheap second card. Will only having pcie 8x/8x make a big difference with the new generation cards?
 

Karadjgne

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Even a 780ti is hard pressed to come even close to filling the bandwidth of x8, so sli with 2x 780s you'll be more than good. Fortunately your board is capable of x8/x8 and not stuck with x16/x4 or you'd need a new mobo, a card the size of a 780 will easily max x4, rendering that 2nd card semi useless.
 

Acention

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I thought about doing this as the R9-295x2 is currently down to about $1k. Have been running Nvidia GPU's for a long time now though and have been really happy, so a little hesitant to switch. Appreciate the input, I think the plan is to stick with my current setup and upgrade it as suggested by everyone. Think I will wait and see what the new 900 series from Nvidia has to offer and then make my decision based on that.
 

farmfowls

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Jul 23, 2014
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I personally have the 4790k and its a great CPU. Gives you a little bit of future proofing as well as overclocking capabilities. But it doesn't look like its compatible with your mobo. I could be wrong so don't quote me on that. But you will need a better video card in my opinion. I have the 780ti non-reference card from Asus. Although alot of people would say go for something cheaper (and trust me, they told me), I honestly love the card and am happy with my decision. On full load its only reached 76C. For me, that's pretty good. Its also compatible with your mobo. So if you do go with the 4790k you would have to get a new mobo, or you could upgrade a little with the CPU and still get the 780ti. I'm not sure if you'll be getting a bottleneck though.
 

farmfowls

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It depends on your cooling setup I guess as well as your other components. But I've seen the R9-295x2 get hot. Maybe it doesn't in your experience but if everything was the same for everyone, all of this would be much easier.
 
He has no need to upgrade his CPU at all. That i7 will easily run any modern game at max settings with a proper GPU. It is by no means old at all. In real game performance, all at at stock clocks, it is MAYBE 5-8% worse than your new i7. With a high end GPU, you will NEVER see that at all. No modern GPU will bottleneck on this CPU AT ALL. Don;t even worry about that.
 


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-295x2-review-benchmark-performance,3799-17.html

65c in an open test bench (HOTTER than inside a case due to no airflow). IT should run at that temp or BETTER if you properly install it in a case.
 

farmfowls

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He just mentioned the 4790k. Was just letting him know my experience with it.
 

farmfowls

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Test-benched or not, all setups are different and there are many other factors to take into account when looking at temps. I'm not arguing here, I'm sharing what I have seen. If you've seen different, then you've seen different. As simple as that.
 

farmfowls

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Alot of people see these benchmarks and graphs and what not, and take that as what they'll be seeing. And then complain when they don't see the same temps or performance on their systems. It all varies from person to person.
 

farmfowls

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Yes, but there seems to be varying opinions regarding to Skyrim with mods on 3gb or 4gb. Yes at 1080p you should be good with 3gb at min to be safe. At min is not to say that you should go to 4gb or more. Not at all. Once you really get up there with cards that have alot of vram, performance starts to decrease. And I prefer performance over an unneeded amount of vram.
 

farmfowls

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Fair enough.
 

farmfowls

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Was just putting it out there lol.
 

Karadjgne

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I run skyrim, heavily modded, currently 53 but more than a few are at 2k resolution including maps, characters/bodies, faces, flora/fauna, towns etc, fxaa, every other setting at max, on a 660ti 2Gb Asus TOP, and it's smooth as a babies ass. No glitches, no stuttering, no pauses, no fps (never bothered hah) all on a i5 3570k with a cheap Asus mobo.

You don't need 3Gb, although I'm sure it looks nice, and you definitely don't need an upgraded? (huh wtf?) cpu.

You are looking at $600-$700 for a decent 780ti, $650 for SLi Evga 770's. The SLi will eat a 780ti for lunch and spit the seeds back at you. You're also good with current psu for that sli. For 780's or 780ti's, I'd be more comfortable with a reputable psu 1000w+