Best cpu for gtx 970

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Mrko2345

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Oct 2, 2016
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Hi, I bought a gtx 970 and I currently have amd athlon x4 740 with 12 gb ddr3. I was wondering what cpu ( or cpu with motherboard) should I buy to make the bottleneck smallest? I have a budget of 100 $.
 
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gggplaya
ECC is not a requirement.

Also, none of those chips will overclock well, you need a K series processor to overclock properly, because they have an unlocked multiplier. You can only overclock them by changing the bus clock and keeping the multiplier where it is.

Also, if using a chinese motherboard, I would never overclock at all. Their VRM setup is sketchy.

If you want to buy it now, the X5650 is now down to $18 on ebay. You can get higher clocked xeon chips like the X5670 and X5780 for $50-$80 buy it now.
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gggplaya

gggplaya

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Jan 27, 2011
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I'm rocking a ryzen with my gtx 970. But you would need over a $200 budget for the Ryzen since you have to buy a 2200g, B350 motherboard and DDR4 Ram.

Your best bet for $100 is the used market. Get a Xeon 1270 or Core i7 2600(k) with a LGA 1155 sandy bridge compatible motherboard.

If you want brand new parts and are willing to spend a little more, you can get LGA1150 motherboards and processors at decent prices. I would still buy the processor used if you can. This is the 4th gen Haswell family, but since you can still buy motherboards brand new, it's a good place to purchase. For example you can buy the Core i5 4570 and an H81 motherboard, or the Xeon 1230v3(make sure it's 80w, not 25w) if you want 4 cores and 8 threads.

At the very least, make sure you buy a 4 core processor in this day and age. Games like fortnite can take full advantage of 4 cores.
 
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engineer5261

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Apr 26, 2016
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I was using i7 2600k with my 970 GTX until 2016 when my motherboard died. I then switched to i7 6700K. I did not notice too much difference in FPS. I think you should go for a 3rd or 4th Gen i5 or i7 setup. I have often seen used bundles go for very low prices. You can recycle a lot of stuff from your current setup i.e. PSU / GPU / HDisks / Monitor / KB & mouse etc
 
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dontlistentome

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Sep 5, 2016
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It looks like you have an FM2 motherboard. Without knowing specifics, I'd say you're pretty close to the best CPU you could use on that motherboard, close enough that nothing else is worth spending money on to 'upgrade'.

Your 970 is a very capable 1080p card, so at least when you someday build or buy a better system you can still use that 970.
 
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Mrko2345

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Oct 2, 2016
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I have a asrock fm2+ motherboard.
 
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Mrko2345

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Oct 2, 2016
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Hello I was just looking at your replays and now I'm looking at buying a i5 3570 and a motherboard of ebay. Is it safe to buy these dell,acer and other OEM motherboards and will they fit, also can they overclock (I know that the i5 3570 isn't overclockable)
 
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gggplaya

gggplaya

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Some of those OEM boards aren't atx standard(micro or full). And some rely on the front panel connector and sometimes external sensors to operate. Be very careful what you buy there.

There are plenty of cheap H81 motherboards being dumped on ebay by coin miners after the crash of ethereum. You can find some decent deals for $40-$50. But brand new, you can get them for <$60. Then buy a Xeon 1230v3 for $50. It's nearly identical to the core i7 4770 but with the iGPU disabled and 200mhz less turbo clock. That's the best bang for your buck IMO.

Only the K series chips have unlocked multipliers and will still cost alot of money, even used. You can still give a decent overclock with higher end motherboards by changing the FSB frequency, but that causes other issues and you won't get a large overclock from it. Not worth it IMO since you will be GPU bottlenecked in most games.
 
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Mrko2345

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Oct 2, 2016
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I could be doing something wrong but I couldn't find a xeon 1230v3 for less than 150$.
 
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gggplaya

gggplaya

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Jan 27, 2011
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Oh my bad, I must have been looking at the 1230v2 version, which is still better than the i5 3570 because you get the extra 4 threads. There does seem to be some company in china selling boards on ebay selling brand new H67,H77 and Z68 chinese clone motherboards. I'm not sure if they're any good or reliable. They also make brand new X79 and X58 motherboards for that matter. There's a couple of guys on youtube which bought chinese motherboards, some good and some bad results.

I'm actually rocking a cheap 6 core 12 thread Xeon X5650($50) in my old asus X58 motherboard which I use solely for video transcoding. It's a good processor and I gamed on it for years with my geforce 970. I replaced it with my Ryzen 1600.

 
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Mrko2345

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Oct 2, 2016
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So i5 3570 vs xeon 1230 vs xeon x5650(no oc)
I don't know where you find your prices but xeon 1230v2 is $90 on ebay
Also do the xeons require ecc memory or is normal ddr3 also supported?
 
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gggplaya

gggplaya

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Jan 27, 2011
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ECC is not a requirement.

Also, none of those chips will overclock well, you need a K series processor to overclock properly, because they have an unlocked multiplier. You can only overclock them by changing the bus clock and keeping the multiplier where it is.

Also, if using a chinese motherboard, I would never overclock at all. Their VRM setup is sketchy.

If you want to buy it now, the X5650 is now down to $18 on ebay. You can get higher clocked xeon chips like the X5670 and X5780 for $50-$80 buy it now.
 
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Mrko2345

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Oct 2, 2016
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Thank you all for your replays I decided I'm going with xeon 1230 because it's a little better than the i5 3570.
 
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