680i vs 750,780,790

[roush2fast]

Hello all , I am currently using a XFX680iLT. My question is , would I see any improvements by upgrading to 750,780 or 790? My system is stable and I have run as high as 4.5 but is there any benefit from using a newer board ? Is there a large enough increase in moving to DDR3 with the 790 to warrant a change out ? I'm not reay to move to I7 and won't be for probably another year. I am also a strong believer that if it isn't broke , don't fix it. So , I might have answered my question. Any feedback would be appreciated.


Thanks

 

[Proximon]

Why do you want an SLI chipset when you are running a single card?

If you are stable at 4.2Ghz with an E8400 you should still be content. If you just have the need to upgrade wait 3 months and get a P55.

 

[roush2fast]

Hey Prox , thanks for the reply. At some point between now and move to I7 I will add another 260. I ran 2x9800GTX+ on this 680i and it sucked horribly. My decision to add another 260 is not what influeneced this inquiry though. The 750 boards are really cheap and the 780/790 are affordable. So , if I could net short term benefit for little out of pocket I would do it. I guess it's just the desire to change something.

Are they going to manufacture P55 boards for LGA775?

 

[megamanx00]

If you're stable then just leave it alone. 750i boards have fewer lanes. 780i/790i boards allow you to run two cards with two PCI-E 16x slots at 16x. You would see a slight increase with two PCI-E 2.0 16x lanes vs two PCI-E 1.0/1.1 lanes, if you were running the same two cards in SLI. For a single card configuration the difference is very very small. There is a small benefit to using DDR3 with the 790i board, but it's really not worth the cost. Also, if you get a new board there is no guarantee that it will be able to overclock as well as your current one leaving you worse off.

 

[Proximon]

No, P55 is for the LGA 775 replacement, LGA 1156. It's supposed to support SLI.

EVGA is showing off their P55 already:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/EVGA-Classified-P55-GTX-295,8001.html

The new CPUs:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3570

Sept. 1st by all reports.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

You're thinking of an upgrading to a newer generation chipset although 680i to 780i was possible 2 years ago. How big is your monitor and what resolution do you play in? Usually, upgrades are made to gain performance for a certain task. If what you have now is satisfactory, no lags in framerates or rendering times, then don't waste cash (or plastic credit) for a 2% gain that you won't notice.

I'm using an e8400 with a single GTX 260 on a 22" monitor after wasting cash on an SLI rig with 2 X 9800 GT's that doesn't perform as fast or smoothly as one card. My next upgrade will be more value minded to a core i5 that I will overclock and a 26" monitor. I'm expecting the GTX 260 will keep up but if I start seeing lags, then I'll wait to see what GPU's are available that will be a significant improvement. The GTX 275, 280, 285s aren't worth upgrading to. Maybe the GTX 295 in 6 months will cost less than $300?

IMO, upgrades that give less than 5 or even 10 percent improvement are a waste of cash and time.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13790/7

good article to compare performance between 680i and 780i.

 

[4745454b]

The only reason I would change out what you have now if your happy with it is if your afraid of encountering the overclock bug. The 6xx series had a habbit of corrupting the SATA drives on overclocks. I believe a bios fix was released however, so you don't need to buy a new board to avoid it.

Swapping out the motherboard isn't really worth it. I would buy some things that will carry over to a new build. Buy a new case/PSU. Buy a nice chair. Perhaps you could use a new laser mouse, or upgrade your LAN to gigabit speeds. Uprading the motherboard to a new chipset isn't going to increase your benchmark scores that much. Buy something that matters while waiting for the next gen chips to come out. (matters and will carry over.)

 

[roush2fast]

I play on a 24" and am really happy with the performance. After considering your comments I will ride out this system "as is" until upgrade time.

As always thanks for the opinions.