i7 920 vs i5 4690 - Please Help Me Determine If An Upgrade Is Necessary

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Code-3

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Apr 2, 2015
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I write, play Star Wars the Old Republic and use the internet.

My system: Core i7 920 @ 2.67 / AsusTek P6T Deluxe V2 Rev 1.xx / Nvidia GeForce GTX760 / 9 gig standard memory.

I am trying to determine if this offers the best performance for what I use this system for or if one of the following options gives a large improvement:

1) Add a SSD for my main drive
2) Add a SSD and an i5 4690 dual or quat @3.6 (No hyper threading)
3) A better option for a sizable improvement to the game at a reasonable price point that is justified

Thank you for your help
 
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Code-3

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Thank you for the quick response! My main issue is playing the MMO. It is very slow to load and it uses a lot of cut-away scenes as well as blacking out the game while it sends characters to whatever place they travel to. I find on occasion, other players have refreshed are ready to start the next action but are waiting for me to arrive.

Since my processor is older, I wonder if a current gen middle of the road processor would show large gains. If I am maxed performance-wise for what I do, that just saves me money in the end. I did pick up a 250gig SDD last night and will be putting it in today. I asked about my graphics card performance in relation to any other cards in the $200 - $300 range and found my seemed to out perform most of the others based on a website the sales person checked.

As for the processors; I don't know anything about them these days and just didn't know if a new processor would be another large leap in performance or if it would be little gain for what I do with my system these days. In the past, I was told processor speed didn't matter much anymore and was just told it still does matter. My current processor has hyper threading but the new processor doesn't. I'm not even sure if I need hyper threading with what I do.
 
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t3naci0ust

t3naci0ust

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I would think that if it is taking a long time to load and it is taking a while to load cutscenes then it would be your HDD that would be causing this issue. Processors have very little effect on those kinds of things.
 
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coozie7

coozie7

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There is a lot of possible reasons for this but the i7 920 isn't likely to be one of them, it's still a fine gaming CPU and should run SWTOR with ease.

Check the motherboard manual, maybe the current memory configuration is causing problems, 9Gb is an odd amount and if you're mixing sizes and speeds that won't help, see if you can run a triple channel or dual channel layout using matched memory modules.
As t3naciOust says, the HDD is most likely the main culprit, can you tell us what drive is installed and how much space is available? If the drive is getting full, is badly fragmented or very old that'll also cause load/save problems.
Check your internet connection, it could also be slowing things down.
How many tasks/programs do you have running? The more running programs you have the less resources the system will have to run the game.
Do you have any folders on the desktop? Putting large files or folders on the desktop can cause this type of problem as Windows loads them at startup AND regularly scans them to ensure their integrity, causing a double hit to performance.

You could easily live off a 256Gb SSD; reformat your HDD in AHCI mode, format the SSD in AHCI mode then install your most used stuff to the SSD (fresh Windows install plus a few games) leaving the HDD to store media or even to install less used games. Note AHCI drives will NOT work with non AHCI drives, BOTH must be formatted under AHCI. SSDs really need to be used under AHCI, not all their features will be available otherwise.
 
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maney266

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I literally just made the same upgrade as you but instead i got an i7 4790k and my FPS is some games has increased quite a bit. Around 60% id say but those games are more demanding than TOR. As for overclocking the 920, my chip was great for 6 years! ran it at 4 - 4.4ghz over 5 years with the voltages varying between 1.35 and 1.475v on a noctua NHD14 with pretty good temps. Lack of Sata III on your motherboard is a problem but you'll certainly get better loading times even on a decent SATA II SSD. I'd replace the stock cooler with an aftermarket cooler and see if you can overclock your CPU. A decent cooler will only set you back around $60 i reckon. Good luck
 
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