Where are the holes in my gaming rig?

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5T34LTH

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Dec 22, 2011
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M/B: GA-990FXA-UD3
CPU: Phenom II x6 OC 4.1GHz H60 cooler(stays around 60C when benching)
RAM: 8GB 1333(never gets close from being all used out side from benchings)
GPU cards: x2 GTX570 non-OC 2.56 GDDR5 stock cooler(stays around 80C when benching, 70C when gaming)
Storage: main storage: Corsair Force3 120GB, secondary and backup: Seagate 1TB Barracuda
PSU: 750W Gold(Sh*t forgot the most impotent thing..... if you need it ill post it later, but its not a no name)
Screens: x3 Asus VE28Q (you can guess that these are 27inch 1080p LED backlit screens right)
Games: BF3, Arma3(only wanted).... ya you get what im saying, power games

since my triple screen upgrade i got from playing BF3 on ultra to playing it on medium(fine for me) some pple say my GDDR5 is low.... but i think there might be a bigger hole like the cpu.... since i can play every games i got right now.... would it be better to switch with a newer M/B later and get a PCIe3 one thats been proven, or is it better to switch the graphics before the motherborad..../CPU

and please no fanboy's
 
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benski

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At that resolution I think your 570's are the bottleneck, I don't think there is any CPU out there that is going to increase gaming performance noticably for you so I wouldn't bother with a new CPU and motherboard at this point. I don't think PCIE3 is going to make any difference in gaming for many years, just as PCI-E x8 vs x16 makes almost no difference today.
 
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5

5T34LTH

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Dec 22, 2011
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so what if i switch these 2 lovers with a 7970..... that should all ready make one hell of a difference right.... the only problem i have with that is that this card really new, and that its had to tell if its going to be even better.....

and im not sure about what your saying about PCIe3

since i OC'ed my CPU i notecied a upgrade in gaming right away, so saying that my CPU is not working at his best is not exactly right(i had less lag)

even do my processor is doing its best i can run fraps without problem(probably cuss i got a 6 core)

btw thx for the reply benski
 
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whatsthatnoise

whatsthatnoise

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If it makes a difference to OC your CPU, it's the CPU that slows things down.

You can check this even further if you OC your graphic cards and see if it improves anything, if the CPU bottlenecks, there shouldn't be much of a difference.

Then un-OC the CPU and check again.
 
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ssddx

ssddx

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agree that it could be your cpu or gpu or both.

its not the ram, psu, or hd.

since you're gaming at 5760x1080 you will need a real beast of a video card to get any sort of decent framerates. even top notch video cards might struggle a bit. check the tomshardware charts for performance data.

some newer games also push the cpu a little harder than games used to in the past. not sure on how the pIIx6 compares but an i7x4 does fine so i dont see how this is the bottleneck. agree that you should test as mentioned above.
 
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HEXiT

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the gpu's dont really have the grunt to run 2 monitors for gaming... there isnt 1 currently available that will do it... to max out bf3 your looking at 4 570's with 100% scaling.
the cpu is a bottleneck for the gfx cards in most other games but bf3 isnt as cpu bound as much as it could have been... so wont be a bottleneck.

to be honest i cant see anything wrong with the setup apart from the cpu, its a productivity part first, and gaming second. reason? the single threaded performance isnt great even oc'd and more often than not it will slightly (5-10%) bottleneck the gpu's in games like starcraft 2 and witcher 2... but its still not absolutley terrible as some would have you belive.
 
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5

5T34LTH

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do they have triple screens charts? cuss im not seeing them...
would a 7970 be a good plan or would waiting for nvidea for comparison be best? if the graphics is the bottleneck...
im look for the 7990 also.... but im not sure if its going to be in my current price range(dint saw much prices about)
 
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benski

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^Probably not when it's clocked at 4.1 ghz. The easy way to check is to look at the task manager while you are running BF3 and see if your CPU usage is at or near 100%. If it's close then a GPU upgrade probably won't help because the CPU is the bottleneck, but I doubt that's the case here.
 
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casualcolors

casualcolors

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The real problem is that you think you have 2.56gb of VRAM. You do not. You have 1.28gb VRAM with 2 570's in SLI. This creates a problem at your huge resolution. You need more VRAM (2gb models of the 570's would have been perfect).
 
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Gothams Finest

Gothams Finest

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+1
 
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casualcolors

casualcolors

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Fair enough but for the sake of contribution, OP should come back and clarify exactly which models of 570 he has, since 2.56 is exactly double the standard VRAM rating and just within the last week there was another experienced poster here who made the mistake of misinterpreting his VRAM total.

Dual 570's with 2.56gb vram each should be mowing down triple monitor BF3 on all high settings with no anti-aliasing at 60 fps.
 
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5T34LTH

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[strike]
im not running SLI, i cant run SLI with triple screen, it only support 2 screens per cards, i dont know how i do it, but i play on medium[/strike]

edit: sorry i had the wrong configuration, im playing SLI now dont pay attention to this
 
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benski

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Ok, now we are getting somewhere. You CAN run triple screen with SLI if you span the screens using Nvidia surround. I assumed that's how you were running things. How is it that you are gaming on all 3 screens? Does BF3 have native support for multiple monitors or something?
 
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5T34LTH

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sorry i had the wrong config, i just setted this up, my bad, i had it on span when plying bf3, i just modified it and noticed it was not able to be SLI, never mind, this was fixed before i even hear you guys say it

first time doing triple screen here

now i want to ask, wait for Nvieda 6**(supposedly changed to 7**.....not importent) wich might not support triple or get the 7970? can it run triple screen, on games like BF3 higher? or should i wait for the 7990.... i got some time to wait, my system runs BF3 on medium(with a weird lag some times)
the 7970 costs 600$ in Canadian cash right now(from NCIX)

what do you guys think?
 
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casualcolors

casualcolors

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Would always support waiting at least until the new Nvidia hardware is previewed. That would give enough time to see a sample-size of 7970 owners with bugreports. For all anyone knows, the 7970 could be a problematic child like the gtx 590 currently is. It's your dinero, but that is my 2 cents.
 
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5

5T34LTH

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ok so new graphics is probably im portent at this point like we say, but my PIIX6 is still a problem, if i OC it at 4.5GHz.... how long would it last xD
i and if i get new graphics card im gonna be able to change one of the Nvideas has a physx right?
so it would take some load out of my CPU, and give it to a.... 570, that has way better skills.... if im right this would work.... RIGHT?.... mn or would it make problems.....
 
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HEXiT

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having such a big card for physx is a waste, both of the card and the power it takes to run it... the most you need to get decent physx performance on an ati 7970 build is a gtx 260 or a 460, but any nvidia card from the 88gt/98gtx/250gts will do as long as the gpu is faster than the ati gpu. (this will ensure that the physx card wont bottleneck the gfx). but then you still have to source the hacked drivers and then theres the hardware mod that has to be used if you dont have a second monitor.

to be honest i found it frustrating for very little reward... to my eye, physics has turned into a gimmick at best. as other cpu based engines have surpassed it on so many levels.

to be frank though i wouldnt sell the 2 570's in favor of a 7970. the amount of money you will be throwing away will be nearly 1000bux for what? marginally better single card performance, and over all you will be downgrading your system.. if anything i would dump the cpu and jump platform, as the sandy will be much less likely to bottleneck the 2 570's... also you would see a marked improvement outside your games.
 
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casualcolors

casualcolors

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Agree with Hexit's overall view. AMD is a failing cpu platform at the moment and the 2500k and 2600k's do rip your X6 up in terms of gaming and daily use. And I really don't think you're going to see what you want by going to a 7970. You're going to lose performance by comparison with 2x 570's. 7970 outpaces the 580 by about what 20%? 2 570's are nearly the same as 2 SLI 580's.
 
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5

5T34LTH

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Dec 22, 2011
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i cant agree with something without facts, from what i heard the 2 570 in SLI does has good thejn 1 580, but keep in mind that im running 3 screens

ok so for a though, not allot of games are comming out in the next... what, 4-6 mongh? not allot i heard of, i still want to try bioshock, and find a good strategy game(cuss im not only FPS, im an all game guy) is there any other games then Arma3.... no i dont think im gonna go for more then that, and thats a game that is allot more about processing, since my friend with one 580 but a... 2500K i think.... plays it better then me, so yes, in these words going for a CPU would be good, but after all that talk of going from CPU to GPU to CPU... im just not sure.....

anyway, lets leave this beind, for a second, i reviewed everything and yes, a CPU would be good, but im still looking for one, definitive upgrade, would LGA2011 be a good thing to keep in mind or not? and a cooler, i need a new one to....
 
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casualcolors

casualcolors

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You heard wrong. 2 gtx 570's in sli scale nearly as high as 2 gtx 580's in sli. They offer very similar performance. You're going to learn an expensive lesson if you think that purchasing a single 7970 will improve your gameplay experience, unfortunately. If you want 3 1080 monitors and 60 fps with ultra/high game details you're going to need to crossfire 7970's and at that point, you're talking about $1100 USD and beyond. That's a lot of scratch for just 2 video cards.

With regard to the new cpu, that is really your choice. At the moment, an i5-2500k is probably the most prolific intel quad core CPU, and also one of the most overclockable. It's reasonably priced at $220 USD and since you will need a new motherboard as well, that is probably worth considering. I think that if you polled tomshardware right now about buying the new socket vs. getting an i5-2500k with a nice cooler and overclocking it to the moon, you would probably get results skewed in favor of the 2500k for the time being, given the price vs. performance. That is just my honest estimation man.

As far as definitive upgrades, that is probably a much murkier subject. For the time being it seems like the games coming out aren't heavily cpu-oriented and an AMD processor doesn't really hurt you as bad in that regard. By the same token, I remember the year and a half long stretch of endless console ports that were heavily cpu-limited. That is the reason I switched to intel, and it might be the reason that a lot of other posters here are also on intel systems. They just scale far better in games that rely heavily on the cpu, and without a crystal ball it is impossible to know which games are coming down the pike that might be cpu-limited primarily.
 
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