Confirming Gaming PC hardware compatibility, bottleneck problems and asking for upgrade options

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Drull

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Nov 28, 2013
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Hi guys.

Its been almost over 4 years since i upgraded my pc so i decided to give myself a treat.
To be completely blunt, this pc will be mostly used for gaming, the work stuff is on another pc :).

I plan on upgrading the CPU, motherboard, graphics card and also RAM.

I've been thinking of this:

CPU: i7 3770k 3500 mhz. socket 1155 (please comment on this. its been a while since i tracked hardware performances so i'm kind of out of the loop as to what to look for and why)

Motherboard: msi Z77A-G43, socket HS(1155) (seems a nice relatively cheap and fast MB to use with my CPU)

Memory: Patriot 8gb (2x4gb) viper3, 2133 hz, dimm 706 (maybe 2x for a total of 16GB, bit of advice here please as well)

Graphics card: msi nvidia gtx770 or 760 (they both score pretty high on the benchmark tests while being pretty cheap. am i missing something?)


Are there any bottleneck problems here?
Also, is there another product i'm overlooking and that would give me more bang for the buck?

Also the budget is not 100% set, so if you would propose something a bit more expensive (or cheaper!), it wouldnt necessarily be a problem.

Thanks for the help everyone!
 
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The ASRock recommendation is because ASRock is a brand spun off by Asus into its own company that makes pretty darn good motherboards for the price. IIRC, the Extreme3 is probably one of the best values in Z97 boards right now.

If you're absolutely dead-set on an i7, then yes...
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terroralpha

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8GB of RAM is plenty unless you are running a motherboard with 3 or 4 memory channels. you will only be running 2 channels. so forget the second set of RAM.

the parts look good, there won't be anything bottle necking your GPU


EDIT: oh poo, just noticed the CPU you chose. no, you don't want that one. get the i5 4690k and ASRock Z97 Extreme3 as your mobo. you should be good then
 
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viewtyjoe

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Jul 28, 2014
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The big question is, do you overclock? If so, get an i5-4690k or equivalent. Otherwise, get the non-K version. You'll need a Z97 (H97 non-OC) motherboard, which is socket LGA 1150. Obviously, this is going to cost you more, but LGA 1150 is more current than LGA 1155 and you may as well take advantage of the performance increase in Haswell. An i7 is really unnecessary for gaming since most games can't take advantage of the hyper-threading.

Most people here don't really care much for OC'd RAM, and the general suggestion is just to get a 2x4GB kit of DDR3-1600. 8GB is plenty for most games, if you want 16 for some reason go 2x8GB.

The 770 is a fine mid-high end card, but the 800/900 series (whichever they decide on) is coming by end of month, supposedly, so you can either go in on the new line or wait for price cuts on the 700s. Nothing should bottleneck.

Just make sure you get a good cooler for the CPU and go to town.
 
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Rationale

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A few things...

The i7-3770K and LGA 1155 socket are older. The slightly faster and more efficient new versions are the i7-4790K and LGA 1150 socket with a Z97 motherboard. Although the i7-3770K still beats 99% of other CPUs for gaming, and is still excellent, I just though I should mention that.

Games can actually use hyper threading quite well, but only in games that use more than 4 threads, which are very rare still. Because of that, i5s such as the i5-4690K are much more efficient for the price, capable of ~95% of an i7's performance for only ~60-70% of the price. The only significant performance difference is that an i7 will last longer once games start using 8 threads more, since that's the only time the i7's main advantage (hyper threading) is activated. Outside of HT you're just paying more for a bit more cache.

The RAM is fine... 2133Mhz RAM isn't supported by many motherboards or CPUs yet though, so although it'd still work, if you got 1866Mhz RAM with a lower Cas Latency it'd actually be faster.

The GTX 770 and GTX 760 are both great cards. Ofc the GTX 770 is going to be faster. AMD cards are an option, for example, the R9 280X performs just a bit slower than the GTX 770 for a significantly lower cost. However, then it'd be hotter, more power hungry, and you'd lose certain effects like PhysX (advanced Cuda-accelerated physics and particles only supported on Nvidia video cards) in certain games.

Or, if you can wait a couple months, Nvidia will be releasing the new GTX 800 series of video cards soon (though they'll be renamed the GTX 900 series since they were delayed and no longer correspond to the laptop GPUs).
 
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Drull

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Nov 28, 2013
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Thanks everyone for the quick answers.

Mind if i ask a bit more detail into why you're suggesting i5-4690k so heavily?

I just have to point out that i didnt overcloak anything in like 7 years, so i dont believe i'd trust myself at it right about now.

As far as RAM is concerned, I'm sold now on 2x4GB 1600 or 1866 RAM, thank you for that suggestion.
The graphics card will be gtx770 as well, you confirmed everything i thought about her (and her alternatives) in your answers, thank you for that as well.

Now just the CPU/mobo combo, could you expand a bit more on that please?

Randomly googling around for those 2, they both generally get high marks, and the i5 is definitely more of a best buy option because of its price, but from what i see on http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-4690+%40+3.50GHz&id=2236 , the i7 IS after all better, and contains the tehnology that should ("should") get used more in the future.
That said, my search also saw a couple of claims where the i5 beat out the i7 performance wise, and thats why i'm asking those with more experience than me to correct my way of thinking :)
 
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This is relatively easy to explain, once you know how it works.

The i7s are basically just i5s with a bit more cache (memory) and hyper-threading enabled. Both the i5 and i7 have 4 cores and can therefore run 4 threads. However, the i7s have hyper threading, which increase the threads of the i7 up to 2 per core, for a total of 8 threads. This is useless in the majority of games that use 4 threads, since the extra 4 threads just sit idle, thus making an i7's only advantage small cache increases in most modern games.

Every game is automatically compatible with hyper threading, as long as it uses 5+ threads. In artificial benchmarks like Passmark, the i7 is ahead of the i5 because Passmark uses 8 threads, but games typically do not. In fact, hyper threading takes a bit of processing power to enable, so in certain cases hyper threading can actually hurt an i7's performance, putting it marginally below an i5. In the future however, games will use more threads more often, and i7s will actually get a performance boost. The i3s right now have HT enabled as well, and they always benefit heavily from it since they need it more. In a few years, i7s should benefit from HT in gaming as well.

Right now, the i5-4690 offers practically the same performance as an i7-4790 for less money, and it's the strongest and most refined i5, which is why it's heavily recommended.
In the years to come, the i7's extra threads will come into play, thus making it's gaming performance outstrip the i5's significantly.

TLDR Really short summarized answer:
An i5 uses 4 threads.
An i7 uses 8 threads.
Games only use 4 threads right now, so the i7 is the same as the i5 for gaming except more expensive.
In the future more games will use 8 threads, making the i7 better in the years to come.
 
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Drull

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Nov 28, 2013
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Actually that was a great and simplified answer thanks!

Now one more question, if I were to go with the i5, I see that the first poster recommended I go with the ASRock Z97 Extreme3 motherboard. Is there a special reason for that specific motherboard like there is with the i5-4690k, or is that just a personal preference?

Also, would going with i7-4790K with the before mentioned ASRock Z97 Extreme3 simply be the superior choice to all mentioned before?
 
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viewtyjoe

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The ASRock recommendation is because ASRock is a brand spun off by Asus into its own company that makes pretty darn good motherboards for the price. IIRC, the Extreme3 is probably one of the best values in Z97 boards right now.

If you're absolutely dead-set on an i7, then yes, the 4790K is what you want, and that'll work just fine with the Extreme3, since that's still LGA 1150.
 
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