Question about the MSI GTX 780

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Anthony825

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I've recently acquired a late 2009 alienware aurora alx. Motherboard is a year and a half old replaced with the same stock board from Dell. Running the i7 960 with 12gb of ram.

I'm curious if my gtx 780 is getting bottlenecked by something in the computer? I play Final Fantasy XIV and my laptop handles the game better than this computer, even though it has a 680m.

I overclocked the msi gtx 780 and I'm still getting fps issues on maximum settings. Recently installed a Samsung 850 evolution ssd 250gb, and did a fresh install of windows 7 ultimate and the game. I was told by some that the motherboard is responsible for limiting the performance of my graphics card, and I was also told by others that it's not.

Could it be the ancient i7? If so would this i5-4690k solve the problem? I just need to know exactly what could be causing the fps issues before I start making purchases since funds are limited.
 
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Eximo

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Something else. I7-960 is still a very potent CPU, far from ancient, and you can easily overclock it with the right cooling to take to about 4.0Ghz with some ease. There should be no issues with an X58 board playing host to a PCIe3.0 graphics card. PCIe 2.0 at x16 is equivalent ti PCIe 3.0 at 8x which is commonly used for SLI graphics solutions.
 
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faalin

faalin

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Your i7 960 is a socket 1366 and the i5 4690K is a socket 1150, so you will need to buy a new motherboard if your wanting to get the 4690K.

First off get a good air cooler and try overclocking your 960 a little to see if that helps. The first gen i7 are still a very strong cpu, Have you tried running any benchmarks to see how your system compares to others? Since i like to just wast money upgrading my system, i would still be running my 950. That thing was a beast being able to overclock to 4.87GHz under water.
 
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Anthony825

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So you're thinking I should see a significant increase in performance if I swapped out the board and processor I currently have with an Asrock z87 extreme4 mATX and an i5-4690k?
 
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Anthony825

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The processor is liquid cooled by Alienwares version of corsair 140mm self sustained liquid cooling loop. I believe it's currently clocked at 3.2ghz. I could push that? I don't recall how to overclock a cpu. I built a monstrous pc last year that I sold. I7-4790k that I overclocked to 4.8ghz through the bios, would it be the same? IIRC, the alienware ms-7591 bios is pretty limited with options to tweak anything.
 
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Eximo

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That processor series overclocks a little differently then more recent Intel chips.

Basically you have the multiplier and the base block BCLK. Memory multiplier is tied to the BCLK so you also must overclock the memory at the same time.

stock:
133 x 24 = 3.2Ghz
133 x 10 = 1333 memory , x12 = 1600 etc

What you do is set the BCLK to a much higher value and reduce the CPU multiplier. Some people managed as high as 250 Mhz, but more commonly tapered off at around 220ish. You then 'underclock' the memory so that it comes out to around a similar value to its rating. (or as high as you want to attempt to overclock the memory) So at 200Mhz you set the memory multiplier to 8x to get DDR3 1600 again, and so on.

You will still need to manipulate core voltage and the like as you did with the i7-4790k.
 
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Anthony825

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Ok, I'll have to give that a shot then before I decide to buy a new cpu. Will the alienware liquid loop be sufficient? Also, is it possible for the ms-7591 mobo to handle a gtx 970 or 980? Or is it too old?
 
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Eximo

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Fairly small radiator, so I wouldn't take it too far. Probably stick to the safe voltage range with 1.35 being the maximum.

Motherboard seems to have decent dedicated cooling for the VRMs. Not much of an expert on OEM parts though. Might search overclock.net for an owner's forum.
 
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