Worth upgrading to 3820/3770k from i7 950 w/ GTX 680?

[Zalgradis]

Evening everyone,

My current system setup is as follows:

Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E X58 Socket 1366 (http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/P6X58DE/)
CPU: i7 950 stock clock 3.06 Ghz
PSU: Corsair HX 1000W Modular
GPU: Geforce GTX 680 (Palit stock clocks)

I mainly use my system to game, and have been considering an upgrade to either:

Socket 2011 + 3820
Socket 1155 + 3770K.

I mainly play source games, Metro 2033, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a little Crysis 2 when i;m not wrought with disappointment, etc.

I have heard that the real world gaming performance increase from an upgrade to either of the above would result in only a few FPS gain, however I am concerned as to whether my current motherboards PCI-E 2.0 is bottlenecking the GPU.

I would be willing to upgrade if i would realise at least a 20% performance increase.

Do you think it would be worth upgrading, and if so, which option should I go for?

Thank you very much for your help

- Dan

 

[Zalgradis]

Sorry for the quick reply, I cannot seem to edit nor can I format text (IE fail?)

I have heard that PCI-E 3.0 may offer a rather sizeable performance increase for the 680 GTX, which is my main reason for considering an upgrade, however I am not sure whether this would be the case for a singe card.

Original link: http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o139/callsign_vega/PCI-ETests.jpg

Please let me know what you think.

Thank you.

 

[aicom]

I don't think an upgrade to either CPU/platform is going to give you the 20% increase you want. There's not enough CPU bottleneck in there. That benchmark you posted is a 4-way SLI configuration which craves bandwidth. Your single card won't have nearly that performance gain going from PCIe 2.0 to 3.0

 

[Blahman11]

Keep what you have. LGA1366 i7s are still very quick. To put it in perspective, Phenom iis are about the same performance per clock as the 45nm core 2s, and with the Phenom FXs no quicker you'll probably have a potent CPU for many years ahead.

 

[SteelLAD]

aicom is correct in saying you'll likely not notice a difference, as he points out the jpg's shown show a quad SLI set up that would benefit from the PCIe 3.0 and extra bandwidth socket 2011 can provide. I wouldn't have thought that a single GTX 680 could saturate a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot

 

[Zalgradis]

Hi guys,

Thank you for your quick response.

I intended to pass my existing setup to my cousin, however I honestly cannot invent much money into the upgrade.

He is running a core 2 E6600 with a Geforce 580 GTX which is definitely bottlenecking his performance in some games.

I can pick up a 2500k, motherboard and RAM for just over £250 so i'll most likely go for that option and save a good £400 in the process.

Many thanks

- Dan

 

[Zalgradis]

Best answer selected by Zalgradis.