Time for upgrade need opinions

[Bellem]

Hello people, im planning to upgrade my system . So the parts that im planning to buy are

i5 3570 / i7 3770
gigabyte 660/gigabyte 7870
ASUS Motherbaord P8Z77-V LX
8 gb 1600 ram i still need time to decide about the brand

i already have an ssd 128 vertex 3
a green wd Hdd 1tb
a coolermaster psu 500watt

So i want your opinions about some things. First which cpu to buy . i know that games take no use of i7 but im thinking if i7 worth buying cause i want that build to be strong for as more years as possible. Im not interesting at overclocking . thats why no "K" proccesors .
Second about the gpu which one of those two has better price/ value ratio ? Also my current psu can hadle this setup ? And for the end which rams to choose .

Thanks a lot for your time.

[Lathais]

Going i7 will not really help futureproof anything over an i5. By the time games and things start using what the i7 offers, you'll need to upgrade anyway, so no point in spending now. Overclocking on the other hand is easy to do with very little risk anymore and can definitely make the computer be stronger and running the latest games longer.

Personally, I am a big fan of nVidia, simply because my game of choice heavily favors nVidia. You did not leave u any information on which games you are planning to play though. Overall, I think the AMD Cards are better price/performance though, unless WoW or Rift is your primary game I would go with the AMD.

Wattage wise, that PSU is enough, however I do not know enough about the Coolermaster brand to say one way or the other. Never used them myself, always stuck to Corsair/SeaSonic. If it has an 80+ Rating it should be fine though.

[Deleted]

I would go with the 3570 (k), and go with atleast the 7870 XT (I think sapphire has the best cooler for it). The 7870 XT performs close to the 7950, but only costs about the same as the 7870.

[philic_6336]

As zeara said, if you go for 7870 make to have the tahiti gpu not the pitcairn http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...mark,3401.html

edit: and for ram i recommand corsair vengeance

[chazus]

If you DEFINITELY aren't going to overclock, skip the Z77 board and get a B75. Skip the 3570 and get a 3350. Use the extra $60 to either get a better video card. Or just spend $60 less. There is such thing as saving money.

[Deleted]

tbh just get an i5 and overclock it way very solid ratio performance/durable. (overclocked i5 beats a stock i7 any day when it comes to gaming).
perhaps care to elaborate on why not interested in overclocking?
as for the gpu's i'd say get a 660Ti. (however gigabyte ones seem to be affected with coil whine allot recently)
if you could mention a specific budget it would make it allot easier to recommend you something allong with some wishes/desires in regards to what performance you are after.

[Bellem]

First of all thanks a lot for your answers . I m afraid i cant say that i ll not definely skip the overclock after your replies. Maybe in my mind im still years ago behind thinking that overclock reduces the cpu life etc so i never thought of doing it to my pc.
As for the cpu now propably im going for the 3570k since as you said i7 it ll not make any serius difference for me. About games now im a wow raider for years, but who knows what ll come at the future .
shroudster the budget is about 650euros for cpu ram motherboard gpu and a new case . My only fear is my psu right now and still cant decide about gpu 660ti has the advantage but it goes a bit expensive

[Lemmiwink]

Usually, looking at past releases, if you are an MMO-gamer you'd want to get Nvidia. I can't think of a single AAA MMO the last few years that hasn't favored Nvidia. If you are a mixed gamer that plays a little bit of everything, stay far away from Nvidia and get AMD for their unbeatable price/performance ratio.

[Killora]

I'd recommend a 7870 XT at least. Or pay an extra ~$40 for a 660 TI.

Also, i'd go with 2400 mhz ram if you can afford it. Since you have an ivy bridge it's a pretty nice boost in games. And 2400 mhz is the sweet spot for ivy bridge's memory controller.

[chazus]

Also, i'd go with 2400 mhz ram if you can afford it. Since you have an ivy bridge it's a pretty nice boost in games. And 2400 mhz is the sweet spot for ivy bridge's memory controller.

Er? I'm under the impression ram speed actually has very little effect.

[Killora]

Er? I'm under the impression ram speed actually has very little effect.

Well, in general, you're right. But Ivy bridge's Memory Controller has been improved upon and in games and certain applications it can give a decent boost (10-20%) in framerates. Which to me isn't a bad investment.

Article on the effect of different ram speeds in different applications

[Deleted]

link is dead, either way im going for that it won't matter. (95% there is a gpu limiting factor, other option is slow/old cpu , RAM is one of the very least likely components to be slowing a rig down)
10-20% fps gain without altering the gpu/cpu sounds impossible to me. (assuming 1600 base speed)

[Killora]

link is dead, either way im going for that it won't matter. (95% there is a gpu limiting factor, other option is slow/old cpu , RAM is one of the very least likely components to be slowing a rig down)
10-20% fps gain without altering the gpu/cpu sounds impossible to me. (assuming 1600 base speed)

Eh, sorry. Fixed it.

[chazus]

Broken linky. =/

I've been under the impression that going from 1600 to 2400 on an Ivy Bridge would give less thna a 5% boost.

[Deleted]

Eh, sorry. Fixed it.

We must admit that gaming applications differ somewhat in this respect. Memory subsystem performance has a larger effect on them. By preferring high-bandwidth DDR3 SDRAM for your Ivy Bridge platform, you can get an additional 5-10% in terms of frame rate. You don’t always achieve this even by installing a faster CPU!

quoted from the article , also higher resolutions ram likely won't matter for a thing (1080p) since the gpu/cpu would be capped before ram speeds are.

[Killora]

We must admit that gaming applications differ somewhat in this respect. Memory subsystem performance has a larger effect on them. By preferring high-bandwidth DDR3 SDRAM for your Ivy Bridge platform, you can get an additional 5-10% in terms of frame rate. You don’t always achieve this even by installing a faster CPU!

quoted from the article , also higher resolutions ram likely won't matter for a thing (1080p) since the gpu/cpu would be capped before ram speeds are.

Well, i must admit i exaggerated a little bit. But of course, my exaggerations still ring true if coming from 1333mhz ram, assuming these tests are accurate.

[chazus]

Well, i must admit i exaggerated a little bit. But of course, my exaggerations still ring true if coming from 1333mhz ram, assuming these tests are accurate.

Well, a few things. Not that it's wrong. But.

Most people get 1600 anyway, so that % is even smaller.
Getting RAM to 2400 requires better ram, more expensive ram. That $30 could be spent on a btter CPU, or a better GPU. If money isn't a concern, then it's a budget on a system that's already powerful enough where more FPS is just wasted cash.
Two games were benchmarked.. Two games that nobody plays. It's hard to get good results or saying "You should do this" from synthetic benchmarks and some unplayed games.

[Bellem]

i thought that memory over 1600mhz bottlenecks . Im wrong ?

[vesseblah]

thinking that overclock reduces the cpu life etc so i never thought of doing it to my pc

Yeah it gets reduced somewhat, but you're talking about 20 vs 40 years which is purely academic discussion because the processor will be in a landfill in less than 10 years in either case.

Also, i'd go with 2400 mhz ram if you can afford it. Since you have an ivy bridge it's a pretty nice boost in games. And 2400 mhz is the sweet spot for ivy bridge's memory controller.

No, going above 1600MHz gives less than 5% gain but price of the RAM can easily double with 2400MHz sticks so it's really bad investment compared to straight CPU overclocking. Where you see massive gains with RAM speed is with AMD's integrated graphics, not on anything Intel does.

Well, in general, you're right. But Ivy bridge's Memory Controller has been improved upon and in games and certain applications it can give a decent boost (10-20%) in framerates. Which to me isn't a bad investment.

Article on the effect of different ram speeds in different applications

Those game tests are done at very low resolution to cut out effect of graphics card totally out and make it CPU only test making it unrealistic. If you look into the 3DMark numbers or the Photoshop/rendering tests you see less than 2% benefit from faster RAM. Yes, you can see 20% benefit on memory tests, but unless you're doing calculations for LHC the speed of your RAM means nothing.

i thought that memory over 1600mhz bottlenecks . Im wrong ?

No, it just isn't very useful at all in real world if you look at the link posted above. You see 1-2% gain in speed but 50-100% gain in price making it bad way to increase performance.

[Bellem]

vesseblah ur proposal about my setup and especially gpu ?