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How much will my performance increase?
SomeOldBloke
Member UncommonPosts: 2,167
in Hardware
I'm considering a few upgrades to my desktop and was wondering how much of a performance difference I will see. I currently have: Intel E8500, ASUS P5Q Pro, 8Gb DDR2, GTX285.
I plan on going to: Intel Core i5-2500K, ASUS P8P67 PRO, 6Gb DDR3, GTX570.
How big a performance increase are we looking at, mainly MMOs but also a few other games. Also, would it be work getting a SSD drive for OS and Apps? I don't know much about SSDs.
Thanks.
Comments
To give a rough guestimation, you should be looking at more or less double the performance or a bit better as compared to your old system, both for CPU power and GPU power.
The old system was already sufficient to play most games smoothly at decent settings and a decent resolution, but now you'll gain DX11 support, and the ability to max out settings on games that would have overloaded the previous system (especially the GTX285).
As for whether you should get an SSD or not, the answer is would seem to be most definitely yes, considering the amount you intend to spend, even if only a smaller one for your OS and your most frequently played games.
I was gonna say, slow down there!
FYI, The bus speed on a motherboard depends on the installed CPU. On the older LGA775 standard, motherboards still had a northbridge to control the FSB and memory. That said, regardless of what motherboard you used, a Core2Duo E8500 would still use a 333mhz bus, subject to various multipliers to get the system speed. The normal memory speed would be 667mhz (bus*2), unless slower or faster clocks were used via a memory divider. The CPU, in the case of an E8500, uses a 9.5X multiplier for its clock of 3.16ghz (really 3163.5mhz, but who's counting?). The more popular E8400, by contrast, only used a 9x multiplyer for a 3ghz (2997mhz) core clock.
Today, the motherboard doesn't even control FSB. That's all built into the CPU now, which has an integrated "northbridge" to control memory and bus clocks.
From the processor, you can expect about 60% better performance in single threaded applications, and triple the performance in programs that scale well to four cores. Games would typically be somewhere between those figures, but it would vary considerably by game.
From the video card, you can expect a performance improvement of around 50%. Unless you need DirectX 11 support in the near future, I'd be hesitant to pay $350 for that. And there aren't any other video cards on the market that would obviously make more sense for you than the GTX 570, either.
If you don't need to keep the old computer functional, you could consider taking the video card out of the old computer and using that in the new one for a while. Later this year, when AMD launches Southern Islands cards or Nvidia launches Kepler cards, then you'd be able to upgrade and see a much bigger performance boost for a similar budget. The transition to 28 nm HKMG process nodes is going to be a big deal.
The question of whether to get an SSD is fairly simple. If you want your computer to be fast and responsive, then yes, you should get an SSD. If you don't mind it if your computer constantly sits there and makes you wait every time it asks you to do anything, then you don't need an SSD.
You could save money by getting a Core i5 2500 rather than 2500K if you're not going to overclock it. You could also save money by getting an Asus P8P67 (not Pro), unless you're going to use two cards in CrossFire or SLI.
6 GB is the wrong amount of memory to get for a Sandy Bridge system with two memory channels. You should get exactly two memory modules. Whether it should be a kit of 2 GB modules or 4 GB modules depends on whether you want 4 GB or 8 GB of system memory in total.
Thanks, that made a lot of sense. I'm unlikely to overclock and although I have considered SLI many times in the last 10 years I have never done so yet and probably won't. For some reason I thought I required 3 memory strips for DDR3 and as I'm wrong I may as well get 2x4GB. Also the SSD makes sense too.
I will also re-use the GTX285 and wait for the newer cards as I don't need to keep the old PC usable, and I have a HD4870 around somewhere so I could throw that in it if need be. This should save me some money and get a considerably faster PC.
Thanks again.
With the memory... it depends on if your motherboard uses dual-channel or triple-channel DDR3. If it uses triple-channel, you'll want to opt for the 3 x 2gb... though I'd spend the extra few bucks and get 3 x 4gb.
SSD is still too expensive to make much sense and will net minimal gains in performance. Consider... a 64GB SSD is as much or more than a 1TB conventional drive. 64 gigs gets swallowed up fast.
The GTX 285 is still a viable card, but the GTX 570 is staggeringly better... uses less power, and runs cooler. If you can swing it... get it. Sell the 285... it'll still be worth a few bucks.
Never argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level, then beat you with experience.
DDR3 = Double Data Rate, 3rd major JEDEC specification intended for use as system memory.
The number of memory channels is independent of the memory type. There are video cards that use GDDR5 memory with two, three, four, five, or six memory channels, for example.
The number of memory channels is however many the memory controller has, which for modern systems is usually built into the processor. The first processors to use DDR3 memory were Intel's Bloomfield processors, which did have three memory channels. That may have been responsible for a lot of confusion. Most subsequent DDR3 systems have had two, though AMD's Magny-Cours server processors have four, and their Brazos netbook APU has one.
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"it depends on if your motherboard uses dual-channel or triple-channel DDR3. "
It's the memory controller, not the motherboard, though for compatibility reasons, the processor socket of the motherboard does basically dictate how many memory channels the processors that fit it must have.
"though I'd spend the extra few bucks and get 3 x 4gb. "
There's already a pretty good case for taking 4 GB rather than 8 GB. 12 GB is kind of ridiculous right now for gaming purposes, though there are some programs (not games) that do need tons of memory.
"SSD is still too expensive to make much sense and will net minimal gains in performance."
An SSD will make a huge and obvious difference. 12 GB of system memory, as you advocated above, won't make a noticeable difference. It may cost more than an SSD, though.
Here's my usual link to explain why you need an SSD:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-special-sauce-sf1200-reviewed/6
See the Western Digital VelociRaptor down at the bottom? That's generally regarded as the fastest consumer hard drive on the market. And it not only loses to the SSDs, but in some cases, it loses by two orders of magnitude. That's bigger than the difference between integrated graphics and a GeForce GTX 570.
"The GTX 285 is still a viable card, but the GTX 570 is staggeringly better... uses less power, and runs cooler."
While the GTX 570 is, indeed, better, I wouldn't call 50% faster "staggeringly" better. In your previous paragraph, you were arguing that 100x faster in some cases was "minimal gains". Now a 50% improvement is "staggeringly better"?
Also, while the GTX 570 is faster, it also uses more power than the GTX 285. It does run cooler, but that's because it has a better heatsink on it. It also needs to run cooler, as TSMC's 40 nm process doesn't handle high temperatures as well as their 55 nm process did. That's why AMD and Nvidia both put markedly better heatsinks on their cards made on the 40 nm process--well, except for Nvidia's GF100-based cards, for which they didn't know this yet, and launched cards that run dangerously hot and are likely to have rather short life expectancies.
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You might want to post your build before buying everything. Some SSDs are vastly better than others, and you don't want to spend a bunch of money on a bad one. It would also be good to make sure that you've got a good power supply, and that your power supply and case can handle whatever parts you're getting.
I did already note that the GTX285 is still fine for gaming, but that said, I believe the 570 is more than 50% faster than a GTX285. You'd never see the two together in a review, but going to Futuremark's benchmark records (as all 3dmark scores obtained are submitted to them with system information), the GTX285 scores around 6500 in 3dmark Vantage's Extreme preset, pretty much with any faster CPU (it varies only a little, even between i7s and newer C2Qs). The 570 scores between 11,000 and 13,000 on reasonably newer CPUs, settling largely around 11,500.
That's really closer to an 80% performance increase. Obviously, things are more complex than what a single benchmark can reveal, but 3dmark Vantage has typically been included in reviews for as long as its been out precisely because the scores usually fall right in line with the average of gaming performance (not always, but generally). It's a benchmark that does a very good job of being as representative as possible of real gaming, so that 80% figure should be maybe plus or minus 10% of what you could expect in an average of real world situations.
Is that worth paying $350 for? Well, to be honest, OP, if all you're doing is gaming, there's not a whole lot wrong with your system now in general. That E8500 may be a little on the obsolete side, but games should still run pretty well on it, as with the GTX285, and on the CPU side of things, the Wolfdale chips are absurd overclockers anyways. Almost every E8400 ever made will overclock to 3.6ghz right out the box, with no voltage increase, just by upping the FSB to 400mhz. For an E8500, that FSB would give 3.8ghz, and I bet it would hit that mark just as easily, without too much increase in temperature either (my E8400 at 3.6 never got all that much hotter than at 3.0).
Still, if you want to max out newer games and get high framerates, neither that CPU nor GPU will be adequate, so I'd say it's less of a question of whether you want to pay $350 for a GPU that's going to grant that over merely playing decent, and more of a question of whether it's worth paying $1200 for a whole new system, to move from playing games decently at medium-highish settings (with no DX11), to playing anything out with settings maxed out, Metro 2033 possibly being an exception (you might have to knock a FEW things down
)
If it were me, I'd wait in general, because that's kind of a lot to pay to replace something that's already fairly decent, a tribute to it really being top notch when it was new. In maybe 8 months or so, I'd expect The Radeon HD 7000 series to be out, and Bulldozer has to be coming along pretty darn soon here, with AMD saying, just 3 days ago, that consumer chips will be around in Q2. By that time, even if Sandy Bridge still proves to be the way to go, and I have doubts there, motherboard selections should become better, and I imagine a bit cheaper anyways, even if the CPUs themselves don't (but then, shouldn't the introduction of Bulldozer cause a few prices to shake up anyways?). I think that's more the time to think seriously about upgrading your system.
On that topic... when are those new SSD controllers supposed to be coming, anyways?
I use a different methodology to compare a GTX 285 and a GTX 570: chain the review results.
When the GeForce GTX 465 launched, people said, oh hey, it's a GTX 285 with DirectX 11 support. When the GTX 460 launched, it was basically the same thing, except with lower poewr consumption. So the GTX 285 performs comparably to a GeForce GTX 460 1 GB, with both somewhat slower than a Radeon HD 5850 in basically every review.
Now compare the GeForce GTX 460 1 GB to a GeForce GTX 570, as both cards usually were included in the GTX 570 reviews. I'd say that a 50% improvement sounds about right.
Now, the potential problem here is if there have been major driver improvements to the Radeon HD 5850 and GeForce GTX 460 and 465 since their launch. There have been improvements of a few percent here and there. But nothing like the 20% across the board average that it would take for a GTX 570 to go from 50% faster than a GTX 285 to 80% faster.
While there are new SSD controllers coming, I'd be leery about buying a new SSD controller as soon as it comes out. The various controllers that have launched in the past have usually had serious firmware problems. You can deal with driver issues in a new video card for a while until they get fixed. But you really, really don't want bad firmware on an SSD making your data go poof.
I think a lot is waiting for the new 24-27 nm (depending on manufacturer) NAND flash to be ready. There are supposedly going to be new SSDs based on the same Marvell controller as Crucial's RealSSD C300 launching in the next couple of months with different firmware. Crucial, Patriot, and some other company quoted rather different performance figures, so they might all be using different firmware.
Intel's third generation X25-M should launch soon, too. SandForce's new SF-2000 controller should show up a little later. And Indilinx's Jet Stream should arrive, well, eventually.
For some reason I thought I required 3 memory strips for DDR3 and as I'm wrong I may as well get 2x4GB. Also the SSD makes sense too.
http://flowersnewportbeach.com/
Odd as it is, I actually find a couple reviews of the 570 include the 285 (example)
3dmark Vantage shows the expected 80% increase, almost to the percent. Game tests bounce between the high 50s all the way to 80%, but the sample size is fairly small, unfortunately, because the 285 can't take part in DX11 tests. What's perhaps revealing, however, is that the 570's biggest gains of the 285 come in games where it doesn't matter, like COD6, where you go from excessively high framerates (82) to absurd framerates (148). In games where the 570 makes or breaks smooth gameplay, it's advantage is only 55-65%, which makes it a questionable long-term purchase, unless for the DX11 support (and I personally wouldn't spend so much just on that).
Again, I have to question the whole rationale of replacing this system to begin with. An E8500 is far from a terrible CPU, as can be said for the GTX285 for a GPU. It's not that a decent upgrade isn't available, but aside from lacking DX11 support, that system isn't going to choke games much. Even Crysis Warhead, a game that's still intensive by today's standards (what the hell Crytek?), ran very playably in that review at 1920x1200 with the second highest settings preset, and even some AA tacked on. I think, at this point, the need to replace the system is not so urgent, that it warrants doing it right this minute, instead of waiting at least a bit to see what the market does in 2011. Why not see what the Radeon HD 7000 series offers, and what Bulldozer offers, and whether Sandy Bridge setups comes down in price (with the advent of a more robust motherboard selection, and competition from Bulldozer), and while we're at it, see if Nvidia says anything at all about Kepler?
On that last point, I may be skeptical about Nvidia's recent claims that Kepler will arrive this year, but if it does, it's certainly going to make for a more interesting market (and a better one, for the consumer).
The argument for replacing the processor, motherboard, and memory right now is that you don't gain that much by waiting. If you don't need to replace it now, but you would later this year, and would get the same parts at the same prices later this year as you do now, then why wait?
Intel isn't going to slash prices on Sandy Bridge. Intel just doesn't do that. Even if their engineering side isn't up to snuff, they don't slash prices to compete; they rely on their marketing side to convince people to buy it anyway. It's been a while since Intel's processors have been bad, but that's what they did in the Pentium 4 versus Athlon 64 era, and then Pentium D versus Athlon 64 X2--and it worked for Intel. Competition may save you $20 on a motherboard, but memory prices are more likely to go up than down in the near future (though the long term price trend remains downward in $/GB), as they've plummeted greatly recently.
Bulldozer probably will significantly better for people who want to go CrossFire, though that's more because of chipsets than the processor itself. For SLI, it depends on whether Nvidia finally relents and stops artifically disabling SLI in their drivers on AMD chipsets. But I don't think that the Zambezi processor itself will be so much better than Sandy Bridge for gaming.
I'd expect Zambezi to end up a little behind Sandy Bridge in instructions per cycle. If Zambezi wins there, it probably won't be by much. I don't expect Zambezi to clock that much higher than Sandy Bridge, either, as power consumption slams into a wall around 4 GHz. Eight cores will beat four in programs that scale well to eight cores, but games don't, and won't in the foreseeable future. If Bulldozer were out now, it might well be a little nicer than Sandy Bridge for a gaming system, or it might not. I really doubt that it will be so much better that the obvious choice will be to go with Bulldozer, and Sandy Bridge will make no sense at all to buy new.