Upgrade questions

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Tentonaxe
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Upgrade questions

Unread post by Tentonaxe »

I'm looking to upgrade my system a little bit, its been almost 2 years i think since my last upgrade so i think it's time to put a little more into it. (Also i wanted to offload a little bit off to my dad's pc so he can offload to mom's pc, etc.).I'm not worried with budget atm, if i go over budget i'll just wait a month or two and get it then.

I'm running an i7 920 at 2.67,
GTX 295,
6GB DDR3 PC3-10600 (2x2x2),
120GB Corsair 250/250 read/write SSD

I'm looking at upgrading my memory, but i'm not sure if i should just add more of what i already have, or replace it with something else completely. As a replacement i was looking at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231314

After upgrading the memory, i wanted to look at what choices i have as far as video now days. When i got the 295, it was just thrown into my lap(for free) by a friend, so i really didn't do any research when i picked it up. I'm not looking to do any SLI.
I'm looking at either http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150517 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130593 (leaning toward this one) both are rated really well for what i'm doing.

In the end, i'm looking to upgrade to a point where i can capture videos in WoW without my framerate dropping below 30 fps. Currently it'l stay at 30FPS idle while capturing, however, in "battle :ctf: " it'l drop to around 15 fps, which is borderline unplayable. During this time there is a lot more data moving, events happening, textures loading, graphics going, animations, spell effects, sounds, etc.

Any suggestions? thoughts? insights? :minigun:
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GRouND ZeRo
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by GRouND ZeRo »

For performance over price the GeForce GTX 570 will beat out the Radeon HD 6970 but they are very close in performance.

If you throw the GTX 295 on E-Bay I'll bet that you will get a decent offer for it. It benchmarks at half of those newer cards that you are looking at.

When it comes to playing WoW it may be huge on textures and the Video RAM may help a lot with this. Just walking through 100 of other players may lag a bit and this may not just be your video cards fault.

Your system RAM seems fine for the size. WoW may only eat up a Gig of it.

The 120GB Corsair is awesome... I'm looking for a decent SSD myself.
{DOU}

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Tentonaxe
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Tentonaxe »

as far as memory i know i have enough size, i was wondering if i would see much benefit from getting faster ram. Also my mobo is 3 channel, would i be forced to run 3 of whatever i choose to get the most benefit out of them?

i know the video card is a clear upgrade and worth it, i just need to research more tonight whether i want to upgrade my ram. might just hold off for a few months and see what kind of boost i get with just getting the video card. Might even save some money going that route.
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Concrete
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Concrete »

I have the EVGA 570 SC and it can handle everything I throw at it. Good price/preference IMO.

As far as the RAM go's, I would not upgrade it, you won't see any real word performance gains.
Only in benchmarks does the triple channel pull ahead and only slightly. If you could find some RAM with Elphida hypers IC's on them you could get timings like 2000 7-7-7-20 but they are very rare. Just keep the RAM you have.

Why don't you get a semi decent cooler and put a slight OC on the 920? Most of them will do at least 3.6-4.0 GHz without raising the vcore or QPI very much.
I killed a six-pack just to watch it die.
Without question the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you the wheel was also a fine invention, but a wheel does not go as well with pizza.
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Tentonaxe
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Tentonaxe »

the last time i tried messing around with OC i ended up getting a flaky network connection, it would either be there or not at all, though i dont know how long ago that was. might have been before i upgraded to this new system. worth a shot if i get an aftermarket cooler, currently using stock. though, i wouldn't know what cooler to get tbh

any suggestions for a cooler? what should i look for? air flow? type?
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Concrete
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Concrete »

This is a very good closed system H2O system, holds temps well when you put two fans on it in a push pull config, and no maintenance. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835181013

This is one of the ones I have and it works very well with a good CFM fan. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835242006

This is about the weekest one I would put on there but I would still upgrade the fan. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835109021

What MOBO do you have? I can very easily help you with some settings. I bet I have OC more then 40 CPU's and all my i7's have been over 5 GHz but that is with Dry Ice but you get my point.
I killed a six-pack just to watch it die.
Without question the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you the wheel was also a fine invention, but a wheel does not go as well with pizza.
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Tentonaxe
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Tentonaxe »

its a P6T model, not sure of the exact model, can look it up tmorrow. i'll be researching this most of the day tmorrow prolly.
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Concrete
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Concrete »

I will be home tomorrow if you want to jump on vent and discuss any of it.
I killed a six-pack just to watch it die.
Without question the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you the wheel was also a fine invention, but a wheel does not go as well with pizza.
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GRouND ZeRo
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by GRouND ZeRo »

I've got this HUGE...little guy in my system right now...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835103057
Might be easier on the wallet. I had to pull out my M/B, take off the AMD stock heat sink, take off the old heat sink retainer and flip my M/B over to install it. Newer cases allow a space under the CPU for easier installation of fancier coolers. NewEgg "Cons: - Installation requires two humans to be done correctly"
...Or just one.
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I'm running an AMD Athlon II X4 630... Stock at 2.8Ghz but I wouldn't push it past 3Ghz myself.

Some Motherboards allow overclocking of the i7's at a push of a button and have a thermal safeguard feature where it will throttle back the CPU when it gets too hot.

Liquid cooling is at your own risk. Condensation or leaks may develop.

The CORSAIR Hydro H70 CPU Cooler
Self-Contained Closed-loop System...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835181013
May take most of the guess work out of liquid cooling and is highly rated.
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Concrete
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Concrete »

That cooler is not bad GZ but it won't keep an i7 with Hyper thread on cool. If you run HT off you could still get a tiny OC out of it with that cooler.
Only thing about push button Overclocking is it is software based and it tends to overvolt the hardware. Say the software say's push this to get to "4 GHz" and you do, it will probably give the vcore like 1.45 volts where as if you did it yourself it would be at 1.35 volts. That can be the difference in heat and life of the CPU.
Buuuuttt, Gigabyte has an X58 board coming out in the next few weeks that is supposed to do a great job of figuring out the volts needed for the OC and getting it very close.

Condensation can only happen when the H2O is below ambient temps. I have never seen it on a regular H2O loop.

Here are some pics of one of the loops I made http://www.overclock.net/9425692-post2428.html
I killed a six-pack just to watch it die.
Without question the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you the wheel was also a fine invention, but a wheel does not go as well with pizza.
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GRouND ZeRo
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by GRouND ZeRo »

Concrete wrote:That cooler is not bad GZ but it won't keep an i7 with Hyper thread on cool. If you run HT off you could still get a tiny OC out of it with that cooler.

Condensation can only happen when the H2O is below ambient temps.
I'm not worried about any OC on my CPU as I am running it at a stock 2.8Ghz. I bought the aftermarket CPU cooler to hopefully get more life out of my CPU and better cooling for it rather using a small stock heatsink.

I am worried about OC on my Video card as it is a stock OC Edition and temperatures can rise above 70 Degrees Celsius but I use a Utility program called Riva Tuner to manually dial the GPU Fan to keep it cool. Who needs their GPU to run at 105 Degrees Celsius?

I wonder what Tentonaxe is doing for his system to keep his cool?
{DOU}

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Concrete
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Concrete »

Yeah I just meant for Tent that cooler would not hold up. For your CPU it should be able to to you to about 3.6 with good temps.

What GPU are you using GZ? I still use RivaTuner for some GPU's but the software sucks compared to some of the newer stuff like MSI after burner or Sappire Trixx, both will let you set a fan profile so you never have to mess with manually tuning your fan.
Like you can set them to scale with temps so the hotter the GPU gets the faster the fans will run. Just a thought. Let me know it you want to try any and I can upload some.
I killed a six-pack just to watch it die.
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Tentonaxe
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Tentonaxe »

currently i'm running completely stock, with the exception of an additional fan on the front at the top(replaced 3 drive bays with a hard drive rack+fan to make room for my video card). my GPU's peak around 85C and my cpu peaks around 70C when i throw everything i can at it. normal operation the CPU runs between 55C and 65C and GPU's rarely drop below 75C while in game.

The extreme situation is when frapsing(capturing video) during a raid encounter.

my GPU temps don't seem to fluctuate very much.
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GRouND ZeRo
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by GRouND ZeRo »

Concrete wrote:What GPU are you using GZ? I still use RivaTuner for some GPU's but the software sucks compared to some of the newer stuff like MSI after burner or Sappire Trixx, both will let you set a fan profile so you never have to mess with manually tuning your fan.
GPU: BFG GeForce GTS 250 OC 1GB PCI-X16 2.0

Kinda hating the idea that such a great manufacturer of great video cards decides to stop making them. It is not the ultimately best video card out there but it runs Crysis on High like a dream.

I'm happy that I can manually tune my GPU fan. I don't have to worry that my GPU will get too hot when the software decides to slow down the fan... Constant is better than to have it questionably variable for me.
Tentonaxe wrote:The extreme situation is when frapsing(capturing video) during a raid encounter.
It may seem to be that the problem is like trying to breathe when the room is packed shoulder to shoulder. This may be a limitation of the Game and Servers itself no matter what you may have for a computer. The WoW Servers have to update many objects in one location and send the information back and forth... Pretty demanding on the servers itself. If the server can handle up to 256 players in one area smoothly and an extra 100 players just barge in, there will be a lot of congestion when the server is trying to keep up. There is a trick when the server is trying to keep up and it will effect your FPS because it has to drop its own refresh to handle the extra 100 players.

Just an idea... If the server can handle 256 players @ 60 FPS... An extra 100 players may eat up 23 FPS out of the server... What is left is 37 FPS for all 356 players.

I wouldn't blame you for wanting a better video card as WoW is always evolving twords the newer capabilities. I would suggest more video RAM to handle the extra information.

Ummm, I had just seen your link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231314

I have just bought a 4GB DDR3 10666 version to replace a 2GB Kingston DDR3 10600. I have seen the reviews of the Ripjaws and they seem like a 50/50 chance of a DOA. It may had seem like a chance when I had purchased the Ripjaws but the 4GB stick was 50% cheaper than the 2GB Kingston "Value RAM".

If you are serious in buying the 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 Ripjaws you might as well wait till you upgrade your M/B or at least buy the 4GB separately as it is surprisingly cheaper in some cases. Those reviews on the website are helpful! BUT the CL9 Timings of the RAM may effect overall performance. Better check to see what you are running with first.
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Tentonaxe
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Re: Upgrade questions

Unread post by Tentonaxe »

well its sort of like this. either i get new ram or new cooling for cpu. goin with cooling for now, ram should be fine, i'm running 3x 2gb 10600 corsair dominators

As far as players vs fps, the situation is this:

there are 25 players. sitting idle with 25 players(they may be moving, whatever, doesn't matter) i can fraps at 30 fps easy. however, when combat begins, all 25 of us are either doing damage to the target, or healing other players. These actions are being logged in a combat log, tracked with a charting system that displays after battle(just reads previosly mentioned log), most of them generate sound, and most of them have some kind of animation or spell effect. On top of that, the boss we are fighting has it's own animations/sounds/textures, and may spawn additional npc's for us to handle that have their own textures spells and sounds. This is where things slow down. i can cut the video quality down a very large amount, which does bring the fps back up to an acceptable number(25-28), however then the video quality is shit because there aren't any spell effects and the textures are all low res. I can live with turning the settings down a little bit, but not completely like i would have to now.

I don't think it is a bandwidth issue because my latency does not change between in-combat and out of combat. FPS while not frapsing can be as high as 60 fps for me in combat, and 90 or so out of combat.

I really think the video card is going to make the difference in this case, and if not, then i'll try the slight OC to see if faster processing of said events helps.

I'll start by just getting the video card + case, then add on better cooling later on if i still need it with the new case, or if i decide to try to OC.

The new case is going to be nice, going with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811147094

My current case doesn't have brackets for my 2.5" harddrives from old laptops, but this new one does. i'll be able to add the older hard drives for additional video storage instead of having to go and buy a bigger drive. Not to mention it's all tool-less, more space, more cooling options, space to hide power cords, etc.


Edit: Here's a video i recently took.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBWkfqkJtOA
FPS didn't drop too bad that night. you can really feel it when it drops to 10-15, but 24+ is good. The bosses we're working on now put more of a strain on the computer with additional npc's
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