2011 Imac Upgrade advice

[drjack6]

Want to upgrade my 2011 27" imac but have a couple of questions.
First of all, heres the rig..

I7 2600k
16gb 1600mhz ram
Radeon 6970m 2gb video card
2tb HDD

I use it primarly on boot camp with windows server 2008r2.

Want to give it a big performance boost. Its fast now but i want more. FPS struggles with 2+ players on some emulated wii games.

Heres what i want to put in it..
I7-2700k
G skill 32gb ram
vertex 4 SSD
Better Graphics card

So heres my questions.
If i put it in that processor, will i have problems with software or OS or will it just boot up like nothing ever happened?

Id like to transfer both OS's to the SSD but though ive done that with just windows 7, is the boot camp setup too complicated to migrate?

Is there a better compatable video card? And what is it? And can i install it with no other modifications..

 

[alvine]

are you sure you can upgrade all in one imac? it looks all sandwitched like a laptop..you can upgrade the ram and hard drive but processor and graphics i dont think so

 

[drjack6]

I know the processor has been done already. Grahpics, idk, I was looking for what the processor upgrade entails software wise...

 

[k1114]

100mhz is not going to make a difference, no point in changing to that cpu. There are people who have put in the i7-3770. There is nothing to do software wise for cpu. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-benchmark-core-i7-3770k,3181-24.html

The gpu is mxm but the 6970m is the highest mxm card imacs use. The newer imacs use embedded gpus. Any mxm gpu won't work since it has to be compatible with mac.

Have you took a look at ram usage? I don't think you would be using 16gb on a wii emulator. Also is your ram really running at 1600? Because that is an overclocked speed and as far as I know you can't overclock so it defaults to stock speed 1333.

 

[jaguarskx]

The i7-2700k is going to be a waste of money. It is only 100MHz faster than the i7-2600k. That is less than a 3% increase in raw performance. Probably at best that will translate into a 1.5% increase in games if those games are CPU dependent. I suppose an emulator is very dependent on the CPU so you may get the full 1.5% increase or maybe slightly more.

Why would an iMac have an i7-2600k? I really doubt they come with motherboards that allows you to overclock.

Try to disable Hyper Threading (HT) in the BIOS. HT generally causes around a 2% drop in performance, but who know? Maybe it causes a bigger drop in emulators.