Upgrade advice

[Kneecap64]

Hello to the board.

I am once again upgrading my PC and thought I would get opinions on CPUs and motherboards.

The CPU I have now is: AMD Phenom II X4 940

My choices are:
Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.40GHz
Intel Core i7-2700K @ 3.50GHz
Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz

The motherboard I have now is: Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3P Motherboard

I am looking to get: ASUS P8Z77-V PRO LGA 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard


Are these adequate upgrades? Also, I do mostly gaming, including MMOs.

[Kneecap64]

No advice?

I want to see if I will see an improvement in my frame rates and graphics.

I am using a Radeon 7750 2GB

[Starglider]

No advice?
I want to see if I will see an improvement in my frame rates and graphics.
I am using a Radeon 7750 2GB

If you are mostly concerned with game graphics quality, you would be far better off spending your money on a good graphics card, e.g. Radeon 7970 Ghz edition, which has approx five times the shader power of your current card. An i7-2700K is only about 50% more CPU power than the X4 940, which is only really relevant if/when CPU-physics-intensive scenes bog down the frame rate.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where you can't max out the graphics at >60 fps with your current setup. Are you running an Eyefinity monitor setup or something?

[Starglider]

I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where you can't max out the graphics at >60 fps with your current setup.

A 7750 will not come anywhere close to max settings at 1080p in 2012 games. A 7970 (or 680 GTX) will allow max settings at 1080p at 30 FPS or better, and will max out everything from 2010 back fine. 2560x1600 and multi-monitor requires a dual card or crossfire/SLI to max out.

[Tolya]

Kneecap, quite seriously, stick with what you got until it dies. In terms of GPU, you could do what Starglider said (makes sense). You could also get something like Radeon 7870 which is a very decent card in terms of performance/price.

However, should you decide on CPU upgrade, there is no real need to go beyond i5 for games at this time.

[Kneecap64]

I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where you can't max out the graphics at >60 fps with your current setup. Are you running an Eyefinity monitor setup or something?

Right now, I'm all into TERA Online and I'm lucky to get beyond 20-25 fps at any time where in WoW I regularly get 40+ fps.

And I run a single monitor only.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Right now, I'm all into TERA Online and I'm lucky to get beyond 20-25 fps at any time where in WoW I regularly get 40+ fps.

And I run a single monitor only.

Good to know. Looks like my hardware knowledge has fallen behind the times.

[Tolya]

I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where you can't max out the graphics at >60 fps with your current setup. Are you running an Eyefinity monitor setup or something?

Right now, I'm all into TERA Online and I'm lucky to get beyond 20-25 fps at any time where in WoW I regularly get 40+ fps.

And I run a single monitor only.

What are your graphic settings? You know, modern games are a bitch when it comes to the small almost unnoticeable stuff that take a huge toll on performance.

For example, setting graphic settings to the highest will turn on Antialiasing to 8x/16x and anisotropy to 8x. If you turn that down to 2x/4x you will hardly see a difference in 1080 resolution, but the fps increase will be noticeable.

Also, things like SSAO/HBAO/HDAO might not be worth getting into. I usually turn it off.

I looked at the screens and videos of TERA and it doesn't look like much, you should be able to make it run at the near-to-highest graphics spec with significant performance increase with some minor tweaking of the graphic filters.