what is a good upgrade for my Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3?

Nathan Dissington

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So I currently run a Intel Core i5 4590 with my Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3, what is a good upgrade? I've been looking into the Intel Core i7 4790K 4 GHz socket 1150 8MB Cache is that worth it or is there better options?

The reason i want to upgrade is purely to play BF1 more smoothly as my CPU jumps to 100% a lot while playing.

Also I don't overclock as i have no idea how to do it.
 


The 4790K comes with a considerably higher stock frequency than the 4790 for not much price difference; 3.6GHz, vs 4.0GHz

Battlefield 1 bottlenecked my 4690, it did not bottleneck my 4790K; using GTX 1060 6GB at 1080p. That's just been my experienced with my most played game in years.

Plus he will always have that option to OC if he desires to, given he also has that Z97X motherboard.
 

g-unit1111

Titan
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Yeah I was wondering if a GPU upgrade would be more beneficial. Honestly I'd wait before spending $350 on a 4790K and get the 7700K instead because that would be a substantial upgrade, but that would also require a new motherboard and RAM in this case.
 

Karadjgne

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BF1 is one of the few games that can actually make use of the higher thread count of the i7's. While it'll run fine on an i5, it shows definite benefits with higher clocks and more threads. Most games will only benefit from the higher clocks, being as their engines are built around the Intel i5 anyways. Considering op already has a respectable Z97, I'd not go for the unlocked version, which has lower clocks to start. At this point, the i7-4790k is the only real upgrade from the i5, but it's usefulness is curtailed by limited use in gaming. Waste of money? From a tech viewpoint, the limited usefulness says yes, it's not really needed or warranted, but from op's viewpoint, anything that'll alleviate the bottleneck is worth the price.

Me, I'd just lower some settings, that game is just as brutal on the gpu as the cpu.
 

Nathan Dissington

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Of course sorry I wrote this in a hurry my bad haha. my specs are:
CPU Intel Core i5 4590
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS10X Optima
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (was thinking of getting windows 10)
Motherboard Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3
RAM: 16GB Corsair 2133mhz Vengeance (2x8GB)
Hard Drive: 1TB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s and a Samsung 1TB with the OS on,
Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970,
PSU 650W Corsair VS

I guess, I could do with a new graphics card and OS for the better performance instead of the massive freezes and lags during the game?
 

Nathan Dissington

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Of course sorry I wrote this in a hurry my bad haha. my specs are:
CPU Intel Core i5 4590
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS10X Optima
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (was thinking of getting windows 10)
Motherboard Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3
RAM: 16GB Corsair 2133mhz Vengeance (2x8GB)
Hard Drive: 1TB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s and a Samsung 1TB with the OS on,
Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970,
PSU 650W Corsair VS

I guess, I could do with a new graphics card and OS for the better performance instead of the massive freezes and lags during the game?
 

Nathan Dissington

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No idea how to check the heat but that doesn't seem to be a problem i get no het coming off my tower at all if anything its still cool
 


MSI Afterburner has an on-screen display to monitor hardware usage and details such as temps. http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

 

Nathan Dissington

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My temp is 42 and my cpu usage is 100% and my ram goes to 60-76% oddly
 

CTurbo

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I would most definitely get a new better psu. The Corsair VS series are the worst Corsair psus you can buy. Even if it's not the problem right now, it's only a matter of time before it becomes one.

As far as performance goes, have you looked at some benchmarks to see what kind of performance you SHOULD be getting with your 970 + i5 at your monitor resolutions and settings?

Upgrading to an i7 would help a little in BF1, but I would only consider one if it was used and cheap. You would still benefit more from a better video card.