is it time for an upgrade ?

[Leoherm]

GeForce GTX 680
intel i5-3570k @ 3.40GHZ ( should i OC or get a new one ? )
8 GB RAM

All this was bougth July 2011 . ( 3 YEARS )



Current Games:

WoW : Ultra settings


Want to be able to play all the new and upcoming games such as
MGS / AC SYNDICATE / Battle Front / i just want all games at 1080p 60fps.
Also being able to raid (wow) and max out settings .

Also what do you think of playing some games with the Xbox one controller ? such
as mgs and A creed ? i find some batman games easier to play with the controller .

also does the Xbos one controller works with windows 10 ? is there a way to put it wirelessly ?

Thank you for the Help Guys.

[Sinist]

Your hardware is fine, no need to upgrade unless you have extra money to spend. Get an SSD if you don't have one. You can OC the 3570, that should hold you over for a while.

XBone controller works on Windows 10 when connected via USB. MS will be releasing a wireless dongle for the xbone controller some time soon.

[Deleted]

OC the CPU and you could possibly get a new GPU.

What is your budget?

[Leoherm]

Your hardware is fine, no need to upgrade unless you have extra money to spend. Get an SSD if you don't have one. You can OC the 3570, that should hold you over for a while.

XBone controller works on Windows 10 when connected via USB. MS will be releasing a wireless dongle for the xbone controller some time soon.

I have a 128gb Crucial M4 but only have WoW there.

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OC the CPU and you could possibly get a new GPU.

What is your budget?

No real budget , just wanted to know how long would it carry me for . you for the new games that are coming out this year .

[Vyse]

I have the same CPU, and a GTX 660.

Im a real PC noob, how can I overclock the CPU? Is it simple? What kind of performance boost would it give me? (If its 5% idc, but 10% and more I would
be willing to learn how to OC)

[Deleted]

No real budget , just wanted to know how long would it carry me for . you for the new games that are coming out this year .

Well, a 680 is still quite good. If you want to see any form of improvement you would have atleast need to pick up a 390 or 970. Or for a bit more power a 980 or Fury. Those cards should hold out for a couple of years.

I have the same CPU, and a GTX 660.

Im a real PC noob, how can I overclock the CPU? Is it simple? What kind of performance boost would it give me? (If its 5% idc, but 10% and more I would
be willing to learn how to OC)

Performance boost depends on the game. If it is CPU bound you will notice an increase, these are usually MMOs and RTS games. For GPU bound games you will probably not notice a big improvement.

OCing is not that difficult and there are plenty of guides online. Just google your CPU and your MOBO and there is probably a guide for it.

[Pleeb]

Can you run WoW with everything on ultra AND everything maxed in the "Advanved" tab? Just having "graphic" section set to Ultra is only half of the settings. Having 16x/16x color / depth, 200% render scaling, SSAA x2, bicubic rendering etc is where you gain the best improvements to image quality.

[Azortharion]

An OC to the CPU and money spent on a new graphics card (GTX 970 minimum, probs, which is not cheap but is still very good value for the money) would be a pretty solid bet. For just WoW, the 680 is just fine really.

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Can you run WoW with everything on ultra AND everything maxed in the "Advanved" tab? Just having "graphic" section set to Ultra is only half of the settings. Having 16x/16x color / depth, 200% render scaling, SSAA x2, bicubic rendering etc is where you gain the best improvements to image quality.

Except combining SSAO with SSAA completely destroys FPS. You can only really have one (without facing a completely disproportional FPS loss).

Furthermore, the "improvement to image quality" going from MSAA 4x/8x to SSAA of any kind is hard to notice. Hell, I hardly notice CMAA to MSAA 4x, but I'm on 2560x1440 @ 27in so I don't notice aliasing as much.

Also, is 16/16 bit color depth even a good thing when most monitors are 8-bit or 10-bit color, or are those completely separate things?

[Blackmist]

CPU is still top notch. You could go i7, but what's the fucking point for gaming?

Games might need more than 8GB in the future, right now it's perfectly fine.

680 can be upgraded to a 980Ti for about double the performance.

Personally, I'm more interested to see what nVidia can do with HBM next year.

Save your pennies, and wait for a meaningful improvement in technology. DirectX 12 games are on the horizon, and they might be able to take advantage of an i7, or even true 8 core chips.

[Pleeb]

Also, is 16/16 bit color depth even a good thing when most monitors are 8-bit or 10-bit color, or are those completely separate things?

A quick guide that explains how color depth works: http://bolekcg.blogspot.se/2014/10/b...-about-it.html

But essentially, yes. The higher quality color output you have from your source (be it WoW, paint, photoshot or your xbox / ps) the more data your monitor have to utilize. "True" color is 24 bit depth, whereas dx9/11 and most video drivers allow for 32bit coloring. The higher quality color is sent to the monitor the better quality image it can "scale" it down to. It is essentially as having a increased render scale that is then scaled down to fit your monitor (200% render scale will render your image in 3840*2160 but then scale it down to 1920*1080 for increase quality to shapes and reduced blurring).

SSAA x2 is a perfectly playable AA setting as long has you have a high end card and a big GDDR memory. (say an OCd 770 with 4 gb memory). The quality changes is bigger when you play at lower res. as you said of course, so using an 24" IPS monitor the difference is actually significant, when the monitor has 1920'1080 res.

Furthermore, the "improvement to image quality" going from MSAA 4x/8x to SSAA of any kind is hard to notice. Hell, I hardly notice CMAA to MSAA 4x, but I'm on 2560x1440 @ 27in so I don't notice aliasing as much.

I think comparing MSAAx4 to CMAA is unfair to either of them as they work differently, whereas one of them work on all types of texture while the other only affects still, geometical textures.
i.e MSAA does not affect foilage or transparent textures whereas CMAA does. But MSAA appies AA to the whole image (Thus being more demanding).

Maybe I am unnecessarily picky about details, but I hate jagged edges and I can't stand over-smoothed images that just blur everything. I guess being able to run either CMAA or MSAAx4 with normal render scale and everything on ultra and 4/4 color depth settings is by far enough. But it need's to be said that while you can run WoW on a 18th century toaster with fairly decent FPS you actually require quite the monster to run everything on Ultra.

A lot of the high-graphic games have these settings baked into the normal "low / mid / high" settings on "Environment Details" or "Characted Model quality" or whatever you name them and hence many miss out the importance of having a proper color setting, correct AA and if you should use SSAO or HBAO.

Edit: This blog article from Nvidia is also good to read if you are unsure if you want to run SSAO or HBAO+. : http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/02...nor-gameworks/
http://international.download.nvidia...s-vs-ssao.html

edit 2: On topic: I would wait with upgrading the computer untill Q1/Q2 2016. By that time Nvidia's new architecture Maxwell will be well established and the cards cheaper, Intel's new Skylake will face the same and drop in price and the amount and quality of DDR4 ram will increase. A computer now running Skylake, haswell and ddr4 would cost you between 1200 and 1400 euro where I live. I expect this will drop to 1000-1200 euro by Q1/Q2 2016. You will also face less buggy, more optimized products and have more games support dx12 and possibly Hyper-threading.

[Azortharion]

You cannot feasibly run SSAA 2x + HBAO+ (I think it's HBAO, at least, it's one of the higher AO settings that completely fuck your FPS when coupled with SSAA).

I got a 970 with 4 gigs, but I play at 1440p so I got like 76% more pixels to push. Still, I don't surpass 2-3 gigs in any situation (mostly because I keep Shadows and other shit low).

[Kezotar]

OC the CPU and you could possibly get a new GPU.

What is your budget?

> 680
> WoW
Replace GPU? What world are you living in?

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680 can be upgraded to a 980Ti for about double the performance.

That's not even how it works.
And wasting what? 700-800$ for 5 FPS?

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Can you run WoW with everything on ultra AND everything maxed in the "Advanved" tab? Just having "graphic" section set to Ultra is only half of the settings. Having 16x/16x color / depth, 200% render scaling, SSAA x2, bicubic rendering etc is where you gain the best improvements to image quality.

I'm running double GPUs at 1080P. And I can't.
It's not a hardware issue. It's just bad on Blizzards side. Just as their Game being CPU locked. You run what? 4 Cores? 6 Cores? 8 Cores?
They don't care, they wont utilize all of it. And that's simply what happens with the GPU and those settings. They couldn't even make content for Warlords of Draenor:
Do you honestly think they managed to fix settings that suits 0,01% of the whole WoW population? Because those are not for the everyday 970/R9 380 user. They're for people running multiple GPUs.

[Noctifer616]

i5 3570 at 4.2Ghz and 7970 here. I play at Ultra setting at 1080p and 4xMSAA in raids. With Win 10 and the latest AMD drivers in mythic I play at a stable 55FPS (before it was around 40). Mind you, my GPU load is still around 40-50% so I don't even stress it properly. I suggest you OC your CPU and switch to Win 10 if you already haven't. I don't think it's worth upgrading from a 680 this year if you play at 1080p, maybe next year when new 14/16nm GPU's are out.

[Kezotar]

i5 3570 at 4.2Ghz and 7970 here. I play at Ultra setting at 1080p and 4xMSAA in raids. With Win 10 and the latest AMD drivers in mythic I play at a stable 55FPS (before it was around 40). I suggest you OC your CPU and switch to Win 10 if you already haven't. I don't think it's worth upgrading from a 680 this year if you play at 1080p, maybe next year when new 14/16nm GPU's are out.

I've tried tests. Alot of tests.
5.0 GHz.
4.8 GHz.
4.5 GHz.
4.2 GHZ.
4.0 GHZ.
And the stock 3.5 GHz and also the 3.0 GHz.

Anything above 4.0 GHz gave no increase in FPS. At least no FPS that was noticeable.
Test were done on a 6 core CPU. Intel.

[Azortharion]

2 scientific 4 me.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

While you can see SOME improvement in upgrading your CPU (this would take a new MB as well -- and if you go current gen also new ram due to DDR4) it wouldn't be as much as one might think. Processor/MB/Ram isn't that huge of a performance gain in games these days. It isn't what I would consider anywhere close to bang for the buck.

The graphics card is where you would see the biggest improvement. With those newer games you brought up for sure (won't affect WoW as much). Just make sure your power supply can handle it (and it should most newer cards have gotten better at power usage, the 680 was a very thirsty and warm card).

What I would suggest is this.

1. OC that processor. You should be able to breeze into something like 4.0 - 4.2ghz and it might even go higher (I suggest playing it somewhat safe with a 3 year old chip though, but that is just a personal thing). This will help WoW a good bit. Just make sure you have a good cooler. So if it is the stock Intel go ahead and sink anywhere between 30 to a 100 bucks into a cooler and do that. It is a simple solution and is very low in the cost department. If you got a good aftermarket cooler already, hell.. it a free upgrade.

2. Think about a new GPU. The 680 is still a VERY good card, so don't think it is a super requirement. That 680 could easily handle 1080p for the rest of the year and then you could get the next generation card and make a stronger jump (but that is ALWAYS the case, go grain of salt). But it is where you will see the BIGGEST improvements in games outside of WoW. Newer games that will start to use DirectX 12 will see major improvements (a good # you listed). If you only plan to push to 1080p it should be EASILY done with a 970 or 980 depending on your budget (if you like the green team, but red has good cards too -- not a hater or either). If your budget it though the roof than consider a 980ti ONLY because the memory size increase will give it a much longer life but it will be MAJOR (major, major, major) over kill for 1080p gaming in the current generation. I just suggest always getting the strongest GPU for your budget even if its overkill. Because in gaming on PCs overkill doesn't last long.

[Noctifer616]

I've tried tests. Alot of tests.
5.0 GHz.
4.8 GHz.
4.5 GHz.
4.2 GHZ.
4.0 GHZ.
And the stock 3.5 GHz and also the 3.0 GHz.

Anything above 4.0 GHz gave no increase in FPS. At least no FPS that was noticeable.
Test were done on a 6 core CPU. Intel.

I use OC Genie and it just OCed my CPU to 4.2Ghz, I haven't played around with other clocks. The OC from stock helped, but yea, no other testing done. Outside of the OC the switch to Win10 was amazing, notice the change in FPS and smoothness in WoW (D3 on the other hand felt the same).

[Deleted]

> 680
> WoW
Replace GPU? What world are you living in?

One where I take my time reading everything.

From OP

Want to be able to play all the new and upcoming games such as
MGS / AC SYNDICATE / Battle Front / i just want all games at 1080p 60fps.
Also being able to raid (wow) and max out settings .

[Kezotar]

One where I take my time reading everything.

From OP

> 1080P.
> 980 TI.
Last I checked 980 TIs are doing 40-50 FPS at 4K.
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I use OC Genie and it just OCed my CPU to 4.2Ghz, I haven't played around with other clocks. The OC from stock helped, but yea, no other testing done. Outside of the OC the switch to Win10 was amazing, notice the change in FPS and smoothness in WoW (D3 on the other hand felt the same).

What CPU do you have?

[Noctifer616]

What CPU do you have?

Like I said in my above post, i5 3570k (not at home, but I am quite sure that's the one).