upgrade now or wait

[Laststop311]

For the PC I'm thinking of upgrading it has a radeon 5770 with 1 6 pin pci-e.

For an upgrade the card has to only require at max 1 6 pin pci-e or 1 8 pin pci-e.

I want to hold out for 16/14 FF as 20nm is being skipped for gpu's but the 5770 is really showing it's age in even relatively simple games. Should I just get the fastest gtx 960 available now? Should I wait for TI versions of the 960? Should I wait for 4GB GTX 960's? Should I just try to go for the long 16/14 FF wait?

Would love a nice rousing convo of the pros and cons.

My current gaming problems are heroes of the storm slowing down in big battles, civ V beyond earth running choppy. Everything else seems to be running ok that I play though starcraft 2 can get choppy at times too as well as WoW with many things on screen.

The PC is a phenom II x6 1100t @ 4.2Ghz @ 1.45 Volts on 6 cores with a noctua nh d14 cooler with 2x 140mm noctua A14 PWM fans and Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra TIM and a 2GB Sapphire Toxic 5770 which is basically one of if not the best 5770 run on its standard factory OC (yes I could push more but the psu is only 450 watt and I don't feel like it's worth the much larger amount of heat dumped into system for tiny frame rate gains and the max strain on PSU). In a Silverstone Fortress FT02 with 3x 180mm intakes (the newer white ones) and 1x 140mm noctua A14 exhaust and a 512GB samsung 840 pro and a 2TB HGST 7200RPM HDD. Windows 7 and most used games and apps installed on the 840 pro with additional 25% Over provisioned to guarantee max SSD performance under almost any condition and mostly video, music, and e books and lesser used games and apps on the HDD. I know the CPU isn't the greatest but I'm fairly certain the GPU is the bottleneck in mostly everything. The PSU is a 450 watt gold rated but only has 1 pci-e 6+2 pin for gpu

I will be saving the 5770 as I will eventually turn this PC into a NAS/seed box and will move the new GPU I get onto a 6 core skylake-e PC when it's released in 2016.

Do I suffer with the 5770 and be a cheapskate? Do I just get a GTX 960 to use for now and throw away the 5770 and get another new gpu when I build Skylake-E? Or do I wait for 14/16 FF GPU's and get that and then soon after get the skylake-e system and put the 5770 back into this and turn it into NAS/Seed box?

 

[jackstar7]

Are you playing at 1080? What's the rest of your rig look like?

Do you have a budget limit?

Just trying to narrow things down.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Newegg has PowerColor R9 270 2GB GDDR5 cards for $119.99 + ship, "Open Box", right now.

They take a single 6-pin PCI-E.

 

[Laststop311]

Yes playing at 1080. Dont like the current radeon cards. Budget is not a major concern and I like the power efficiency/ performance ratio of maxwell if I were to buy now.

I've researched and currently the fastest card I can get that supports my gpu pci-e connectors is a 1x 8 pin gtx 970 as in the full size asus strix or the mini itx 970's

 

[RussianSensation]

Your CPU is way too slow for a 970. Giant waste of money. Either get a 750Ti as a stop-gap card or pay a bit more for a 960. Even a 960 will be bottlenecked by your CPU.

 

[Spanners]

Second hand 760 might be a good fit? Not far off the 960 performance wise. I know the ASUS GTX760-DC2OC only needs one 8 pin.

 

[Laststop311]

I feel like i only got 2 real choices. As I don't want to buy previous gen stuff. I either just get the 960 till the skylake-e build Or I wait for consumer version of next titan and buy a new PSU as well and save the old psu and old gpu and transfer the new psu and new gpu to skylake-e build but then i lose out on having 16/14 FF gpu.

I am leaning towards just getting the gtx 960 and using it till skylake-e and 16/14 FF GPU's come out and then relegate my current pc to seed box nas unit. Slightly wasteful with money having a 200 dollar gpu in a nas/seedbox but oh well. maybe not totally useless since 960 has hardware hevc decode and hdmi 2.0 so I could even play 4k movies off it and use it as a HTPC/NAS/Seed Box. Plus I do have an Asus Essence STX audio card in it already so it could become a powerful htpc as well and be a nice triple threat even tho it's like 8 years old by that time. I wanted to get the new asus essence STX 2 for the next PC anyways so it wont kill me to leave it in the old pc

Basically if I get the GTX 960 now, when skylake-e and 16/14 FF GPU's come around in late 2016 early 2017 the only bad part will be I will have an expensive 960 in a nas/seed box but I get an awesome finfet gpu in my skylake-e build. Plus it's not a total waste if I use it as HTPC too. If i get the gm 200 consumer titan and new psu then when skylake-e comes i can make more efficient use of gpus and have the 5770 in the nas box and still a good gm 200 for the skylake-e build.

I think I'm gonna go the less efficient route and get the gtx 960 now and just have a 5770 sitting around doing nothing and then get a finfet gpu with the skylake-e build and just never have the 5770 ever used again. Maybe give the 5770 away in 1 of those give your stuff away threads and take something off the thread some 1 is giving that i need. Maybe make some 1's day to crossfire their 5770 setup for free

 

[Laststop311]

The other bad thing is I will have to locate another ft02 case in 2016-2017 when I build the new PC as I don't want to switch all the parts out and I want a fresh case when I build the new skylake-e and I have an unhealthy love affair with the ft02 case. It's just an amazing awesome case that cant be beat in my eyes. The new AP182 triple 180mm fans creates a ton of positive pressure and moves copious amounts of cool air even on the practically 0 DB low speed plus it takes advantage of heats natural convection to rise out the case. The PSU gets direct cold air from the outside and the 140mm exhaust helps pull the cpu heat directly out the case off the noctua d14. It really is the best case ever.

Hopefully by the time skylake-e comes out we will see some 600-800 watt titanium rated consumer psu's which is another reason i don't wanna upgrade the psu now. So the pc will be so cool with so much efficiency psu will probably be a constant 0db 0 rpm fan

 

[Laststop311]

This was very therapeutic for me to type out my thought process in a thread and i welcome questions comments concerns. Thank you guys

 

[xthetenth]

Your CPU is way too slow for a 970. Giant waste of money. Either get a 750Ti as a stop-gap card or pay a bit more for a 960. Even a 960 will be bottlenecked by your CPU.

On the other hand, if he's going to be upgrading his CPU into that GPU couldn't a larger GPU be worthwhile so the GPU doesn't need an upgrade to match the CPU when he upgrades?

However, if you want to upgrade your GPU when FF drops, then the lower longevity of the 960 becomes a lot more acceptable and the extra price of the 970 would make it more of a boat anchor.

 

[RussianSensation]

On the other hand, if he's going to be upgrading his CPU into that GPU couldn't a larger GPU be worthwhile so the GPU doesn't need an upgrade to match the CPU when he upgrades?

He wants to upgrade around Skylake-E. Considering BW-E is slated for Q1 2016, when do you think Skylake-E will launch? Probably not before Q3 2016 at the earliest. Why spend $330+ on a card now that will be nearly 100% bottlenecked when a 960 is basically just as fast for his CPU?

However, if you want to upgrade your GPU when FF drops, then the lower longevity of the 960 becomes a lot more acceptable and the extra price of the 970 would make it more of a boat anchor.

One can make a case that he'll get a big boost in performance going R9 270/270X and sometimes those cards go for $100-120. Why spend $200-330 on a 960/970 when his CPU is so slow? I am sure you've seen benchmarks on GameGPU and X6 1100T is dog slow, sometimes 2x slower than i5/i7s!

It's OP's personal choice but I wouldn't be gaming on the X6 1100 OC at this point. It uses a lot of power and it's slow as hell. For example, the difference in power usage between an after-market R9 290 is FAR less than between an overclocked X6 1100 and an overclocked i5.

This is with an HD6970, slower than an R9 270!

I don't know what games the OP plays but when an X6 1100 @ 4.0ghz bottlenecks an HD6970 in older games, and an R9 270 is actually faster than an HD6970, well just think about the prospects of upgrading to a 960 or so.

Idle and load power usage of an overclocked X6 1100T is high

305W for X6 1100 @ 4.0Ghz vs. 163W for a system with a max overclocked i5 2500K (!!!!)

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_12.html#sect0

The OP is focusing almost entirely on the power usage of the videocard but he is missing the most obvious part - his overclocked CPU platform is eating most of his PSU's reserves! On the positive side since his PSU can cope with such a beastly CPU load, it shows us that he actually has a decent 450W power unit.

You can just get a 4-pin molex to 6-pin PCIe adapter for $5, and easily get a card much faster than a GTX960 if the OP were to sell his Phenom II X6 power hog and get an i3/i5 as a stop-gap. Otherwise, he'd be waiting prob. 2 years until SB-E. The sad part is even a 960 will be bottlenecked by that CPU. If the budget is limited, I'd try to pick up a used 7870 or a GTX660Ti instead of a $200 960 in this case --> If you know you are going to be CPU bottlenecked, might as well spend less as a stop-gap solution.

 

[xthetenth]

I can barely keep track of AMD's pricing for video cards, but the 270 does seem like a good idea for that price. And yeah I missed the -E bit of Skylake so even devil's advocating a faster card is a bad idea.

 

[2is]

Your CPU is way too slow for a 970. Giant waste of money. Either get a 750Ti as a stop-gap card or pay a bit more for a 960. Even a 960 will be bottlenecked by your CPU.

He also said he's upgrading to a 6 core skylake when it becomes available and this GPU will be transferred to that box, so I'd say a 970 is a very good buy right now.

That said, and this is slightly off topic... Using that Phenom X6 box as a NAS device would be horribly inefficient.

 

[RussianSensation]

He also said he's upgrading to a 6 core skylake when it becomes available and this GPU will be transferred to that box, so I'd say a 970 is a very good buy right now.

I 100% disagree in relation to the OP's situation. Why would you recommend someone spend > $100 extra for a GPU when those frames won't even be seen in most modern titles 2 years from now when until the OP gets Skylake-E?

1) Skylake-E is nearly 2 years away; it's not as if he is getting a new CPU in 3-4 months.

2) He'll spend $130+ more over the 960 for no performance advantage on average. Why? Put that $130 aside towards his next gen (i.e., 14nm) GPU upgrade.

3) Notice how quickly GPUs fall in price and get faster. He can get an R9 270/270X/960 or a used GTX660Ti/670 as a stop-gap, sell it in 18-24 months and get something way faster with the $130 saved from not wasting it on a 970 today. Since his CPU won't allow for the 970 to stretch its legs, getting a 970 is simply wasting $.

Do you realize just how slow an X6 1100T @ 4.2Ghz would be in modern titles with a GTX970 ~ GTX780Ti/290X?

Don't forget you need to keep in mind the minimum fps of that CPU too, not just averages. X6 1100T @ 4.2Ghz won't even beat an FX8350 @ 4.0Ghz in modern games.

GTX970/290 or faster => You will want a Core i5 or faster for 1080P or 4.5Ghz+ FX8000 or faster.

 

[shady28]

... (yes I could push more but the psu is only 450 watt and I don't feel like it's worth the much larger amount of heat dumped into system for tiny frame rate gains and the max strain on PSU).

Emphasis on the 450W PSU...

Unless you plan to also get a new PSU with the video card, your best bet is the 960.

The 270X is a dual 6 pin card and takes significantly more power than the 960, while being slower.

Yes, it's cheaper. Technically you could purchase a 270X + 650W PSU for about the same cost as the 960. But, the 960 is about 20% faster than a 270X, so you gain nothing unless you plan to replace the video card with a higher end model later.

Of course, you could use your new PSU on the future rig, but it would still be slower until / unless you upgraded your video card (again).

Naturally the other choice is to upgrade the PSU now, and get a higher performing video card to match (R9 290 / 290X, GTX 970, etc). It did not sound like that was an option from the post though. as the cheapest of those choices will cost ~$300 when all is said and done.


270X = 50W more power :

960 = 20% faster :

 

[RussianSensation]

There is only a 28W difference between a GTX960 and an R9 270X at peak power usage.
960 = 144W
R9 270X = 172W

Average power usage from the same graphs:
960 = 108-132W, depending on the model
R9 270X = 122W

Don't try to paint it that there is some massive gulf in power usage between the 2 models, especially since the OP is literally using a 300W CPU+motherboard OC combination.

While not mentioned in this thread, both 270/270X and 960 cards have a major flaw - 2GB of VRAM. That is also a major hindrance for those cards. The OP would be better off selling the Phenom II X6 platform, getting a budget i3/i5 and a $150-160 R9 280 with 3GB of VRAM as a stop-gap solution.

This is a tough situation really because the CPU is a major bottleneck for faster cards, but 2GB cards are going to be another major bottleneck too.

And of course discussing 30-40W GPU peak load power differences in this case is not really a big factor here since that Phenom II X6 OC platform uses 2X the power of a Core i5 2500K @ 4.7Ghz and 30-40W more at idle. That Phenom II X6 OC needs to go for anyone considering a power efficient system.

I would strongly consider selling that Phenom CPU+mobo platform and getting some $ out of it while it still has some value. It shouldn't cost that much to upgrade to a used i5 or even a new one.

The OP's PSU is strong enough to handle 300W on the CPU platform - we already know that. If he can upgrade to a used i5/new i5 system and pick up a used HD7970 for $100-120, that system will absolutely mop the floor with a Phenom II X6 @ 4.2Ghz and a GTX960, give him 3GB of VRAM and still lower power usage than he would have had with an X6 1100@ 4.2Ghz + a GTX960, but a TON more FPS courtesy of the overclocked i5. Since he already has a Noctua NH-D14, this is a smart stop-gap and would result in an overall way better balanced gaming system. If he prefers NV, try to get a used GTX670/680 card.

Otherwise, I agree that GTX960 is the absolute maximum I would put with that CPU.

 

[shady28]

There is only a 28W difference between a GTX960 and an R9 270X at peak power usage.
960 = 144W
R9 270X = 172W

Average power usage from the same graphs:
960 = 108-132W, depending on the model
R9 270X = 122W

Don't try to paint it that there is some massive gulf in power usage between the 2 models, especially since the OP is literally using a 300W CPU+motherboard OC combination.

I tire of your misrepresentations that are spread all over these forums. Your posts here highly suspicious, it is always AMD for you... The OP lays out a set of conditions, and you ignore them so that you can rec an AMD card. Very typical.


Unless you are devoid of basic math skills, the conclusion is obvious....... and pretty consistent.

From Tom's charts section GTX 960 vs R9 270X is 153 - 102 = 51W difference:

24 Power Consumption Maximum
Maximum Power consumption (in Watt)
Score in Watts 102.00 153.00


Overall system power consumption -

298-226 = 72W difference :

Infraction issued for member callout.

-Rvenger

 

[shady28]

On the performance difference between 270X and 960, I was wrong.

The average FPS at 1080p for a 960 vs 270X are 78.3 vs 58.23

So on average the 960 is 34% faster than the 270X, not 20% faster.



http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2015-vga-charts/compare,3687.html?prod[7376]=on&prod[7299]=on

20 Index 1080p

Score in Score Go 78.30 58.23

 

[garagisti]

I tire of your misrepresentations that are spread all over these forums. Your posts here highly suspicious, it is always AMD for you... The OP lays out a set of conditions, and you ignore them so that you can rec an AMD card. Very typical.


Unless you are devoid of basic math skills, the conclusion is obvious....... and pretty consistent.

From Tom's charts section GTX 960 vs R9 270X is 153 - 102 = 51W difference:

24 Power Consumption Maximum
Maximum Power consumption (in Watt)
Score in Watts 102.00 153.00


Overall system power consumption -

298-226 = 72W difference :

He did recommend both 960 and 970... but why stop and read posts when you could just label him.

 

[RussianSensation]

He did recommend both 960 and 970... but why stop and read posts when you could just label him.

Ya, exactly. All people see is me mostly recommending AMD cards and assume I am some AMD marketer or fanboy. Look I try to give the best advice to get the most possible performance and IQ when someone has limited funds. That's why we buy PCs for over consoles. IMO, the OP would have a way more balacned gaming rig if he sold his parts and gotten an i5 + used 7970 than just getting a GTX960 to pair with that ancient and slow AMD CPU.

Anyway, I gave the options and even said if the OP doens't want to upgrade his CPU, the 960 would be a better option than the 970 but still got called a fanboy. Whatever.

Unless you are devoid of basic math skills, the conclusion is obvious....... and pretty consistent.

From Tom's charts section GTX 960 vs R9 270X is 153 - 102 = 51W difference:

Some of you just always see AMD vs. NV in my posts and fail to see the big picture of my recommendation. Look, X6 1100T @ 4.0ghz system uses 300W+ of power under load against a 163W i5 2500K @ 4.7Ghz, but a stock it 2500K with 0 overclocking is faster in games. You are sitting here grasping at straws about 20% performance difference between a $200 GTX960 and a $150 R9 270X, fully ignoring the 2GB VRAM issue for both cards, fully ignoring how much of a power hog the X6 1100T @ 4.2Ghz is, fully ignoring how the OP could sell his parts today and get a stop-gap i5 system with an HD7970/7970Ghz which on the used market goes for $120-130. You are not really interested in presenting options to the OP but just pushing perf/watt agenda on a GPU vs. GPU basis, fully ignoring the perf/watt of his entire system (which is crap) and attacking me for offering the better advice which is to get a used i5+ a 3GB card.

Look, it's not my fault NV has such poor products today on the market below a $310 GTX970. I'll call it how it is when I see it. I even recommend the OP to consider a used 670/680 or even a 660Ti. If I was biased against NV, I would have never even recommended those cards. It's obvious to anyone who is brand agnostic that a $200 GTX960 that gets destroyed by 45%+ by a $240 R9 290 is an overpriced, VRAM gimped product. It's not my $, whatever.

 

[shady28]

Ya, exactly. All people see is me mostly recommending AMD cards and assume I am some AMD marketer or fanboy. Look I try to give the best advice to get the most possible performance and IQ when someone has limited funds. <snip>

This is what the OP said :

"For an upgrade the card has to only require at max 1 6 pin pci-e or 1 8 pin pci-e.

I want to hold out for 16/14 FF as 20nm is being skipped for gpu's but the 5770 is really showing it's age in even relatively simple games.
Should I just get the fastest gtx 960 available now?
Should I wait for TI versions of the 960?
Should I wait for 4GB GTX 960's?
Should I just try to go for the long 16/14 FF wait?"

There's nothing in here about "throw out my system and buy a 4 year old sandy bridge so I can run an R9 280". He clearly wants to wait a year for Broadwell.

With a Phenom X6, upping power draw by 50W on a 450W PSU could easily be catastrophic. The main reason a GTX 960 is perfect for his setup is that he has a 5770 - almost identical power draw to a 960.

ie from Guru3d's review of the 5770 :
Single GPU 5770

System in IDLE = 228 Watts
System with GPU in FULL Stress = 321 Watts

=93 watts max

This is directly in line with the 960's 100-120W draw in reviews.

The highest card on the AMD side that has similar power draw with a single 6 pin, meaning it's likely to work reliably in his current rig, is an R7 260X. For $20 more you can get a 750Ti - a much better card in almost every respect. But if OP is going to keep the card for an upgrade next year as stated, the 960 is the most powerful card on the market that fits his current rig and would be far better matched to an upgraded CPU than lesser cards.

The 970 isn't an option either based on what OP said. 970 is a dual 6 pin card.

 

[DownTheSky]

To OP: IMO you should put together a cheap i3-4340 system, slap-in a 2nd hand 7950/7970/280X and call it a day. Much better option than yours. I know you're tempted to keep your system some more as it looks you've put some work into it.

Source: I own both FX 8350 and i3-4340 systems, and the i3 is faster.

 

[garagisti]

@OP
I think if i were you, i'd be musing if a microcenter is nearby and buy the cheapest intel combo with an i5 or i7

 

[boozzer]

Yes playing at 1080. Dont like the current radeon cards. Budget is not a major concern and I like the power efficiency/ performance ratio of maxwell if I were to buy now.

I've researched and currently the fastest card I can get that supports my gpu pci-e connectors is a 1x 8 pin gtx 970 as in the full size asus strix or the mini itx 970's

you should edit your op and mention you want maxwell only then.

 

[Laststop311]

Russian makes a lot of good points. If the benchmarks are accurate and an r9 270 is going to give the same frame rates as a gtx 960. I just am not sure every game will be bottlenecked the same and maybe the 1100t can make use of some of the extra 960 power on some titles. It's only 200 dollars. The 1100t isn't as god awful as it's made out to be. The radeon 5770 is what is holding back this pc from being "good enough" to get me to skylake-e and pci-e 4.0 native usb 3.1. The r9 270 is like 50 dollars cheaper and thats for the cheapest crappiest one. 960 is the way to go you have to remember im going to convert this into a big htpc/nas/seed box. Run everything at stock and undervolt till stability lost and have a nice quiet htpc/nas/seed box. Keep all the fan profiles incredibly slow with 3x 180mm intakes and a dh14 and 3x 140mm noctua fans and stock undervolted components they can just turn at inaudible levels and still be plenty cool. So if I'm thinking long term of where this pc is ending up for the next decade ill just go with the 960 with hardware hevc decode and hdmi 2.0 and low power and noise

Plan on spending a lot on the skylake-e pc (probably in the 3000 +/- 500 range) and plan for it to easily last me a decade (which is why I don't mind spending so much. we have it so good compared to 25 years ago where every year you had to drop tons of cash and speeds were advancing at warp speed and you had to spend spend spend to keep up). The only thing I will have to touch is a new gpu every 3 years. Intels cpu gains just get smaller and smaller every generation so by skylake each years gain will be so small that even after 10 years the only reasons i will need to upgrade are new standards and ports and such.

That's why I think skylake-e will be the right place to invest in a new pc, with pci-e 4.0 just coming out and natively having the new all around do everything usb 3.1 with 100 watt power delivery, display port, 10gbps data and also possibly thunderbolt finally integrated into chipset. It's going to have incredible longevity.

I also think the chipset pci-e will be upgraded, so 4.0 pcie lanes from cpu and 3.0 from chipset like how it's 3.0/2.0 now. This will allow for a massive amount of sata express or ultra m2 slots and make 10gbit ethernet an easier possibility. Should really open the platform up for massive scalability. Hopefully upgrade the link between chipset and cpu too. And hopefully by this time you will be able to buy ddr4 that actually outperforms ddr3 without spending a third of your pc budget on it. CL is so bad you need 3000MHZ ddr4 just to be close to 2400 CL10 the sweet spot for ddr3 ( i meant outperforming if you compared them dual channel to dual channel, the way higher latency makes ddr4 perform worse on benchmarks than the gold standard 2400 CL10 ddr3 until you get to the super expensive 3000mhz ddr4, of course the fact it can go quad channel even the slowest ddr4 will win in that)