Building an AMD PC. Need advice please

[Gravatrax]

Ahh if you're wondering this is my setup

 

Asrock Extreme4 Z77 Mobo (my second, bent the pins on my first :wallbash: (140)

Intel Core i5 3570K Processor (220)

Cooler Master EVO Heatsink (35)

G. SKill SNiper Series 8 GB 1866Mhz Ram (6)

AMD Radeon 4890 (being swapped out for a GTX 670 today) (400)

Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5 TB Hard Drive (100$)

Antec 500 watt psu (had another much more powerful one but it is way too loud) (eh...40?? twas free )

Cooler Master HAF932 Advanced (100$)

 

All in all that setup pushed 1100$ (almost 1400 NZD) I saved some money hear and there

Keep in mind I still will upgrade the PSU in the future, as well as get an SSD, another 8gb of ram, and probably a different heatsink.

[Illiad86]

Hey all. I'm finally fed up with my PC and I think it's time to upgrade - I'm currently running

AMD Phenom II x4 920 @2.81GHz 4GB DDR800 Ram. ATi RADEON 4670 1GB

Your CPU is fine. But 2.81GHz, what? It should run 3.2 at least, 3.5 preferably. It should do it easily.

 

GPU is the thing holding you back, it's hopeless. Just put a HD7850 in and it should be fine. It's all about the GPU, you wouldn't notice a bit of difference even if you had 3960X at 6GHz.

 

RAM... not perfect but it's OK. I mean, it's borderline and already a bit low for Battlefield 3 at max settings and other native DX10-11 games with 64-bit executables. But so far it's still this side of the line, you have a year to go or so.

 

So overclock your CPU, get a better cooler if you need, get a proper GPU.

I don't see a need to upgrade to SB or IB right now unless you're also getting a 7950 level card with that upgrade.

 

 

I agree, your CPU is fine. Get that beast overclocked. My chip is an AMD Phenom II x2 555 BE unlocked to a Phenom II x4 B55 BE. Easily got that to 4.0Ghz ;) Some chips are more overclockable than others. Is yours a Black Edition or no? The non black editions are a bit more touchy when you have to overclock them. I would have to ask my boyfriend, he did most of my OCing when I had my old Athlon 64 x2.

 

If you upped to 1600MHz RAM, you would see quite a difference in loading times and general applications. DDR3 1600 is super cheap in the States, don't know how much it'll run you where you live...but it should be reasonably priced.

 

Indeed, you need a better GPU. If you want to stick with ATi, I would suggest a 7850 if you could afford it. 7770 if you are a little tight on cash. I'm rather shocked, the 7770 is supposed to be the same specs as my card (5770) but uses about 15% less power. It actually has less stream processors (640 compared to my 800). It's core clock is a bit faster, but that's all that's different. It's still a pretty decent card for the price though.

Edited July 3, 2012 by Illiad86

[hoofhearted4]

he cant get DDR3 RAM without a new Mobo. he said his mobo is only DDR2.

[Illiad86]

Oh, missed that reading through the thread.

 

Well, a new AM3+ mobo won't cost too much. Can get a decent one for around $90USD.

[FMod]

Thanks guys, well its stock speed is 2.80 its not unlocked and if i bump anything up at all it wont post.

You're probably not doing it right. You need to set a different DRAM:FSB ratio so as not to overclock the memory.

Then o/c it by increasing FSB speed.

 

It may be that your motherboard is too bad. However, DDR2-800 is actually acceptable. It's approximately as fast as DDR3-1066, and the gain from DDR3-1066 to DDR3-1600 and above is pretty small.

 

 

The thing is i dont want to do a Incremental upgrade. like just slap some new stuff in yada yada. I would like to play games at decent settings.[/q]

It's really simple: if you aren't going to install a top of the line GPU, like 7950 or 670 level, you don't really need a top of the line CPU.

 

The difference between 4650 and 7950 is +500%. Six times faster. And 4 times more RAM, and plus DX11.

The difference between Phenom II X4 at 3.6-3.8 GHz and i5-2500K or 3570K is +50%.

 

That's it. Plus fifty percent, 1.5 times faster, no significant added features. You could overclock that i5 to 4.5 GHz, then it's +80% or 1.8 times faster than an o/c'd Phenom. It still isn't even a doubling of performance.

[Greentender]

Okay, its all done and purchased. In the end i buggered myself, Forgot about postage. 20 bucks a piece. ouch

 

I ended up going with

 

i5 3570k [unlocked]

Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H

Double D Radeon HD 7750 Black Edition

G.SKILL RipjawsX 8GB DDR3-1333

Raidmax Viper Black Case + 500watt psu

 

 

Although im now kinda doubting ill see much of a preformance increase *sigh

 

Parts get here in a few days.

 

My current Phenom 920 x4 is at 2.8GHz. Its always been 2.8 and i remember trying to OC it a few months after i got it and it cant be OCed. Theres no way to OC it in the Bios or through software. I spent hours searching for answers for my bios. Its locked or something, theres no jumpers or keys that "unlock" the bios like with other bios's you can hit F12 or a certain key combination and it unlocks the multiplier settings and what not.... and my mobo isnt so great. At the moment i play skyrim on Medium-High 1368x768 at 20-45fps. sometimes hitting 5-10 when theres 2 dragons on screen and action. No AA or anything. And all the draw distance sliders are on half. But i use a PS3 controller to like.. compensate so i cant tell its dropping frames as much, Just lower the sensitivity for X and Y look. Ahahaha. Both sensitivity sliders are on absolute bugger all gotta push the stick solidly in any direction for it to look even slightly quick enough in that direction. Never played skyrim with a mouse... Hope i can with my new setup.

Edited July 5, 2012 by Greentender

[eltucu]

Crap, too late. I was going to say that you shoulnt go with anything less than 2Gb for VRAM. 1Gb just doesnt cuts it anymore for 2k textures or 1080p resolutions.

 

And that mobo wont allow you to OC the CPU as far as i'm aware (only Z77 chipsets have CPU OCing). Yes, on the Intel side, OCing is almost a premium thing (K CPU + high end chipset or you wont be able to OC) sadly.

 

You WILL see a definitive performance increase, that's in the table. I mean, you are going from a Phenom to an Ivy bridge (big upgrade right there), and stepping over two generations of GPUs for an HD7750, which not only is way newer than your previous GPU, but also belongs to a higher range of cards. What im not sure of is ocing the CPU and good performance with high quality textures packs (by good i mean 40+ fps on everything ultra without much jerkiness).

 

I have a GTX560 Ti, 1Gb of vram and the official texture pack at 1280x1024 resolution maxes out my memory, works fine but it stutters more than normal when loading places and running around, even if the GPU can handle it.

 

But with the new setup you'll hardly care for that right now :P

[FMod]

Crap, too late. I was going to say that you shoulnt go with anything less than 2Gb for VRAM. 1Gb just doesnt cuts it anymore for 2k textures or 1080p resolutions.

Doesn't matter with 7750. At all. You want 560Ti or 7850 to start taking benefit of 1GB+.

[Erik005]

Why did you buy a b75 motherboard with a k-processor? You can't overclock with this motherboard and the chipset doesn't have a lot of features.

 

You can't get a second video card in the future, You should cancel the motherboard and get az77 board.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Erik005

[Illiad86]

Crap, too late. I was going to say that you shoulnt go with anything less than 2Gb for VRAM. 1Gb just doesnt cuts it anymore for 2k textures or 1080p resolutions.

 

Uh okies, sure...running Skyrim with the official HD texture pack at 1920x1200 on a 1GB VRAM card. Only "graphically intense" game I have other than TW2 and I can run that at the same resolution on Ultra (no ubersambling though).

 

 

Sounds like a good little setup OP, don't know much about Intel chips these days, but it looks nice :)