New GPU on 5 Year old X58 System

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MreconD

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Nov 22, 2015
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Here is a link to the components that make up said system:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j94Rcf

I am looking to upgrade my graphics card to be able to play new games at the highest settings and FPS possible at 1080p. I am torn between the gtx 970 and the r9 390, as each seem to have their own merit. I would like play titles such as Fallout 4, the Witcher 3, and BF4 while retaining some degree of millage out of the card for future games as well. So my question is which card and why? Also, will any component of my system be a bottleneck and should this play into the consideration?

Thanks in advance.
 
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Darkbreeze
There are few scenarios at the moment where anything beyond 4GB is utilized anyhow. Mostly it's there in the hopes that developers of future DX12 games will add features that do utilize the additional VRAM.

The second post at the following link has guides for overclocking the i7-930 to various degrees and with various voltages.

http://www.overclock.net/t/662236/official-the-asus-p6x58d-premium-e-thread

The only thing is that if something does happen to your motherboard related to overclocking, and I'm not saying it will or should, but if it does, you're going to have a very hard time finding a replacement motherboard and will probably end up needing to upgrade the board, cpu and ram if that happens unless you go with another board...
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MaxieMooCow

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Oct 30, 2015
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You should overclock your CPU to reduce any bottlenecking. r9 390 and GTX 970 are both really close in fps performance from benchmarks I have seen. Probably best to type in the specific games you want to play and compare fps.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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You're going to have a CPU bottleneck to some degree or other using that CPU. Whether it's major or not will depend on the title and how CPU/GPU bound it is. I'd probably run the GTX 970 for the simple fact that if your PSU has been in service as long as the rest of your system it has almost certainly thermally degraded at least to some degree and the power consumption/demand of the GTX 970 is much lower than that of the R9 390 so it's less likely to put an unbearable strain on your PSU. Your PSU certainly has the capacity for either card, so really it shouldn't matter, but that's the theoretical devil's advocate so to speak.

I think the driver support, even now, is still better on the Nvidia card though. But either card is a good choice and will be miles and miles beyond what your current card can do. With high enough settings any CPU bottleneck may be somewhat mitigated anyhow. As mentioned, overclocking would certainly be a good way to reduce any CPU related issues, but I'm not sure that's a board I'd want to do it on, especially considering it's age.
 
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MreconD

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Nov 22, 2015
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I am kind of leaning toward the 970 at this point. Less strain on my old man PSU would be preferable and if my aging system will provide a degree a bottlenecking then the extra 4gb of vram from the power hungry 390 doesn't seem to factor in.

I was really considering doing at least a slight overclock on the cpu though. Do you think this would really contribute much to the cause? And how risky would overclocking on my old MOBO be at this point?
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Jun 24, 2014
80,411
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176,790
There are few scenarios at the moment where anything beyond 4GB is utilized anyhow. Mostly it's there in the hopes that developers of future DX12 games will add features that do utilize the additional VRAM.

The second post at the following link has guides for overclocking the i7-930 to various degrees and with various voltages.

http://www.overclock.net/t/662236/official-the-asus-p6x58d-premium-e-thread

The only thing is that if something does happen to your motherboard related to overclocking, and I'm not saying it will or should, but if it does, you're going to have a very hard time finding a replacement motherboard and will probably end up needing to upgrade the board, cpu and ram if that happens unless you go with another board that's used. I personally don't like spending money on somebody else's used parts, especially motherboards and graphics cards, because you have no idea how or to what degree they've been used/abused.

An upgrade might be a good idea anyhow before long, but if you want to overclock, it will definitely make a substantial difference once you hit around 3.5Ghz or higher. You certainly don't want to do it without a very good CPU cooler though. Overclocking on the stock cooler is a very, very bad idea. Having excellent case cooling, i.e, lots of case fans or several large ones, is also pretty much mandatory.
 
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