I have paved myself a poor upgrade path. Opinions please!

[MonsieuRoberts]

It has been a few months since I'e done any meaningful research on PC stuff, since I "completed" (I know I know, it's never really done) my rig earlier this year.

Here are my specs:

i5 4670K OC'd @ 4.0 GHz
Corsair H60
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI
G.Skill Trident 16GB DDR3-2400
MSI R9 390 X
Crucial MX100 256GB SSD
WD Caviar Green 1TB HDD
EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W
Fractal Design R5

PartPicker link: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/Mons...d/#view=qtKfrH

I'm noticing CPU bottlenecking when playing higher than average CPU-intensive games, namely Fallout 4 and Witcher 3. Everything else has been a steady 60 FPS without breaking 80% GPU usage, and the CPU is for the most part beneath the GPU, both in usage and temp. Worse than that, my 390 X struggles to push Fallout 4 at Ultra in most scenarios, hovering around the high 40s to mid 50s during most non-indoor gameplay. I ahve several settings reduced to less than ultra, but...it's still less desirable than I was expecting. IT's the same story with Witcher 3, my 15 is holding my 390X back. Not unplayable at all, but I want more, and I think I'm going to NEED more if I end up grabbing a Vive/Rift, which...well, as I'm watching gameplay of VR games, it's something I really want to experience.

I have put myself in a less than desirable upgrade path, however.

My board supports Crossfire and my CPU has 16 PCI-E lanes available, but my Power Supply, with 51amps available as a total, will probably not be enough. And my CPU, I worry, will hold back a pair of 390Xs even worse than it is currently. Furthermore, if I'm going to jump to 5th or 6th gen, I'll need a new board and new RAM as well.

If I'm going to change anything, I want it to be the CPU so I can at least play Fallout and Witcher properly, so I'd be looking at a 4790k. I worry that my system would still struggle with VR though, but that's pretty unfounded of me, since all the vids I've watched of VR gameplay are on crazy 980 ti SLI machines. I suppose I don't know how well a 390X can handle VR. If it's struggling with demanding games at ultra now because of my 4670k, I imagine it might have a tough time pushing two screens at once, even if I grab a 4790k.

The way I look at it, I've put myself in a 4th gen, 300 series corner. Amazing performance for 90% of games, almost desirable for that last 10% (only because I want more than 48-50 FPS on average in some super demanding titles), and a tough to guage upgrade path that will probably involve some heavy component replacement.

What do you guys think I should do?

[Sorshen]

Push your 4670k higher? H60 can handle 4.5GHz.

[TaintedOne]

The performance difference would not be worth the money spent unless you have the cash to throw around just for laughs.

As hextor said push your OC higher. Free gains.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Wow, I missed a very important point.

My 4670k cannot surpass 4.2 without becoming horrendously unstable. I have tried, believe me, It's simply a poor roll of the silicon lottery. Blueescreens about no matter how careful, how specific I get with the voltage, how fast I have my H60 pumping, whether I have my 390X (and my 760 and 7850 before it) running at stock or not...it doesn't make a difference. Not even the auto-overclock Gigabyte software can get it beyond 4.2 without an instant bluescreen, and even at 4.2, it's quite unstable. Can't run my PC for a few hours without a crash, which sucks.

That's part of why I was thinking of a new CPU, because my specific 4670k is such a poor overclocker.

[Denpepe]

I think if anything is holding you back it's the GPU not the CPU, see the benchmarks here http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews...nchmark/Page-2

Some games just don't run at 120+ fps on current hardware or however high you were thinking. Even a new CPU like a skylake i7 would only give you 5-10% gain if (and that's a big if) your CPU was the problem.

[Remilia]

Turn the settings down for gameworks stuff. You don't need 64x tessellation on light and hair.

[Kagthul]

Your CPU is definitely not holding you back. Witcher 3 isn't even particularly CPU intensive.

[Lathais]

Weird that you are having issues with Fallout 4 as my rig had no issues at all. Same CPU and a much lower end GPU. There must be something else going on. Your system should handle VR just fine, even with that mediocre OC. A better CPU or OC at this point will gain you, at absolute best, 5% increase in performance.

[DeltrusDisc]

Weird that you are having issues with Fallout 4 as my rig had no issues at all. Same CPU and a much lower end GPU. There must be something else going on. Your system should handle VR just fine, even with that mediocre OC. A better CPU or OC at this point will gain you, at absolute best, 5% increase in performance.

4670K and 4690K I believe are two different CPUs, aren't they?

[Remilia]

4670K and 4690K I believe are two different CPUs, aren't they?

Same CPU. Only difference between the two is better TIM.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Same CPU. Only difference between the two is better TIM.

I believe your 4690k is clocked higher out of the box as well, not that that's too relevant when overclocking.

You guys must be right, and this isn't me just reassuring myself of my past purchases, I'm not that kind of person. I know that there has to be something else at play here...but I honestly don't know where to begin. Fresh reinstall of windows and all my games, run them modless and with brand new Crimson drivers? Pop a fresh OC on my CPU to 4.0, maybe 4.1? Like...is it even worth it? I don't know how to get more out of my system aside from that.

I have the day off tomorrow so I could look into doing even MORE overclocking bullshit, see if I can get to 4.3 with stability over a few hours. Any suggestions for keeping your OC super stable?

I'll come back to this thread in 8-10 hours and see what's here.

[Deleted]

Like others have said, your i5 is not holding your 390x back.

In the case of TW3, what settings are you running? Turn hairworks of for example, play a bit with the AA settings.

[Sorshen]

It's pretty strange you can't go higher. 4690k's "better TIM" is pretty much a story tbh. Your ram might be keeping your OC back, have you tried relaxing the timings/lowering the XMP profile to 2133/1866/1600?

[Artorius]

You shouldn't be experiencing any CPU bottleneck with what you have. And I honestly wouldn't say that upgrading it is a good idea.

We might see some VR games in the future that make usage of more threads, but in our reality even the newer dx12 games are just fine at the normal 4C/4T that we've been recommending for gaming for years now, in fact dx12 made the difference between bad and good CPUs even smaller.

In any case, if you still want to upgrade your CPU later to future proof yourself as much as possible, I'd wait for Zen.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Message received, I'll look into what I can do to get my overclock higher.

[Artorius]

Message received, I'll look into what I can do to get my overclock higher.

Honestly, the clock difference shouldn't impact your framerates considerably at all for most games. It might help with the minimum FPS and frame-time variance but I wouldn't expect your average FPS to go higher.

[DeltrusDisc]

I believe your 4690k is clocked higher out of the box as well, not that that's too relevant when overclocking.

You guys must be right, and this isn't me just reassuring myself of my past purchases, I'm not that kind of person. I know that there has to be something else at play here...but I honestly don't know where to begin. Fresh reinstall of windows and all my games, run them modless and with brand new Crimson drivers? Pop a fresh OC on my CPU to 4.0, maybe 4.1? Like...is it even worth it? I don't know how to get more out of my system aside from that.

I have the day off tomorrow so I could look into doing even MORE overclocking bullshit, see if I can get to 4.3 with stability over a few hours. Any suggestions for keeping your OC super stable?

I'll come back to this thread in 8-10 hours and see what's here.

I'm sure with other settings being tweaked, not just the voltage, you could get your CPU past 4.2GHz.

On my old i5-2500K, I had to tweak the PLL Overvoltage settings. Miraculously, I was no longer stuck at 4.4GHz! I pushed it to 4.6GHz!

Make sure you are trying everything.

Regardless, people are still talking about the i5-2500K being more than good enough for gaming right now, you shouldn't even be considering upgrading/changing your system. I do wonder if an NVidia card would perform at all better, even though it shouldn't.

[MonsieuRoberts]

I'm sure with other settings being tweaked, not just the voltage, you could get your CPU past 4.2GHz.

On my old i5-2500K, I had to tweak the PLL Overvoltage settings. Miraculously, I was no longer stuck at 4.4GHz! I pushed it to 4.6GHz!

Make sure you are trying everything.

Regardless, people are still talking about the i5-2500K being more than good enough for gaming right now, you shouldn't even be considering upgrading/changing your system. I do wonder if an NVidia card would perform at all better, even though it shouldn't.

I do, too. Even with my huge discount, I feel that the 390X was the wrong choice.

Games like Fallout 4 always default to Godrays on at least low, which is a total FPS killer for AMD. I have to go into settings and turn it off every time I bopt the fucking game. Even if I manually change the INI files to turn it off, when that launch button is clicked, Godrays turn on again!

Crap like this makes me wish I would ahve just bought a 980 or a 980 ti, but...that's giving in, I feel like. I shouldn't have to feel like I "settled" when I bought a very powerful card like the 390X.

I'm gonna grab a new SSD soon as mine is dying slowly but quicker every day. Once I do, I'm gonna do a fresh install, fresh reloading of my backup, goodbye to my saves, to my mods, to everything. I don't think I can activate my copy of windows as Windows 7 anymore since it's been months since I upgraded to 10; I don't know if it'll default to giving me 10, or if it'll say that my 7 isn't genuine or some shit.

I need to see how my system performs at "stock", how my 390X and 4670k cooperate. I'll run a bunch of benchmarks and spit the results out here, probably in a new thread, to see if anyone can identify a performance issue or bottleneck. I'll play a few games, setting visuals for a consistent 60, record the highs and lows of the FPS.

I don't want to feel like I'm being cheated by my hardware, but...that's how it feels right now.

[Artorius]

Going back to Windows 7 will probably give you worse performance due to WDDM 1.3 drivers.

If anything, latest Windows 10 build + latest Crimson driver without that gaming evolved shit should give you the best results.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Going back to Windows 7 will probably give you worse performance due to WDDM 1.3 drivers.

If anything, latest Windows 10 build + latest Crimson driver without that gaming evolved shit should give you the best results.

I"ll begin the process in 4 hours, once I'm home from work. Gods, what a pain.

I need to do it though. I need to see what my actual performance is.