Upgrading to a GTX 970: new card or new PC?

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CaptainDefault

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Oct 6, 2014
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I've got a 5 year old PC and some money to spare so I'm thinking about upgrading, but I'm not sure if my current PC will be able to keep up with the new card. I'm not an expert; I vaguely know what bottlenecking is and I've never overclocked anything.

Here's the details for my PC from when I bought it, discounting stuff like the DVD drive and the antivirus. I can provide more information if it would be helpful. If this seems hopelessly outdated, what sort of CPU/other components should I be looking at to keep up with the new GPU? I'm looking for a gaming PC, and I care a lot about quiet/silent running. If I was buying a new PC, I'd probably go back to Mesh and I wouldn't want to spend much more than £1000.

Intel® Core™ i5 750 Quad Core Processor (2.66GHz, 8MB Cache) - LGA1156
Windows 7 Home Premium Edition - 64bit English
NZXT HUSH Silent Brushed Aluminium ATX Midi Tower - Black + 700W PSU
ASUS P7P55D LE Mainboard - Intel Core™ i5 / i7 - LGA 1156 / ATX
8GB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM - ( 4x2GB )
1GB ATi HD4890 Graphics accelerator DVI, DirectX 10.1 PCI Express 2
24" Iiyama Prolite E2407HDS-B1 (1920x1080) Full HD Monitor

Any advice?
 
Solution
photonboy
New card.

The i5-750 is still a respectable CPU and most bottlenecks should be minor.

*Furthermore, future games are going to make better usage of your CPU in two ways:
1) More efficient coding (DX12), and
2) Use more of your CPU threads

My i7-860 is basically the same CPU but with hyperthreading (which most games don't use). I believe my average improvement was around 10% with maybe some games at 25% when paired with a GTX680 and upgrading to an i7-3770K. I can't be certain my info is accurate but it seemed that way.

The PASSMARK score is almost 2X better on an i5-3570K but that doesn't seem to translate into the same gaming performance difference.

Recommended cards:

1) MSI Twinfrozr
2) Gigabyte
3) Asus Strix

In that order. You...
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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New card.

The i5-750 is still a respectable CPU and most bottlenecks should be minor.

*Furthermore, future games are going to make better usage of your CPU in two ways:
1) More efficient coding (DX12), and
2) Use more of your CPU threads

My i7-860 is basically the same CPU but with hyperthreading (which most games don't use). I believe my average improvement was around 10% with maybe some games at 25% when paired with a GTX680 and upgrading to an i7-3770K. I can't be certain my info is accurate but it seemed that way.

The PASSMARK score is almost 2X better on an i5-3570K but that doesn't seem to translate into the same gaming performance difference.

Recommended cards:

1) MSI Twinfrozr
2) Gigabyte
3) Asus Strix

In that order. You can Google for more info but I can't think of a good reason to choose any other card than the MSI Twinfrozr V.
 
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Solution
rockie_

rockie_

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Sep 20, 2014
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£143.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£64.90 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£91.50 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.50 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX Video Card (£299.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case (£51.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£79.92 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£10.09 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.23 @ Aria PC)
Total: £849.06
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-06 15:05 BST+0100
 
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rockie_

rockie_

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Sep 20, 2014
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£165.00 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£24.19 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.19 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£91.50 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.50 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX Video Card (£299.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case (£51.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£79.92 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£10.09 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.23 @ Aria PC)
Total: £935.55
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-06 15:12 BST+0100
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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Update:
*Skyrim and i5-750: http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyrim-performance/page7.html

Since Skyrim is more CPU bottlenecked than most games this is an important graph. The i5-2600K is getting 25% better performance (paired with GTX580) which is in line with what I've observed. An i5-4690K would get a bit better still.

So most games will be LESS than this and future games may have less even still due to better CPU usage. I'm not sure I'd recommend building a new system. You might as well just get the GTX 970 and see how it goes. If you seem to be maintaining 60FPS then spending a lot of money to push to 80FPS+ may not make sense, especially if you use VSYNC to cap at 60FPS anyway.

Also, Skyrim is likely to stay above 60FPS most or all of the time anyway so even though a modern CPU is technically better it probably won't matter for this game much

To recap, I suggest:
1) Get the MSI GTX 970 and install it
2) Run games with FRAPS to observer frame rate
3) If game runs below 60FPS then google "gamename cpu scaling" to see if a better cpu would make a big difference

If you get several games that would definitely run a lot better then maybe consider building a new Windows PC. You may even want to wait until Windows 10 launches AND we get a new Intel CPU on a smaller die size. I would not however pay any extra for DDR4 or Haswell-E features.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Tomb Raider: http://www.techspot.com/review/645-tomb-raider-performance/page5.html

Your CPU is almost as good as an i7-920 for gaming. Or look at my Skyrim graph. As you can see in Tomb Raider there's no obvious CPU bottleneck. So again, it will really depend on the game.

Mass Effect 3: http://www.techspot.com/review/507-mass-effect-3-performance-test/page5.html

Another game that won't benefit from a better CPU.

Far Cry 3: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427-5.html

*So, not saying don't build a new system. I'm just suggesting you see if you really need it for the games you play. It appears we get similar performance in most games to an FX-8350.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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That comparison doesn't reflect gaming performance differences. You need to go to actual benchmarks for games that compare different CPU's to get an idea of how they compare, like the ones I linked.

For example, Tomb Raider would see essentially no benefit with a faster CPU whereas a few games would be above 25% difference. And again if you get above 60FPS in a game already you may not care either.
 
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