AMD Phenom II x6 1090t: sufficient, overclock or upgrade?

[Cragman]

Hi, I've recently upgraded GPU and I am wondering if my CPU will bottleneck it. My main concern about this match up is FPS, and the game I'll be playing most is Elder scrolls online. I play MMOs and RPGs. If the CPU will hinder my performance, should I upgrade or overclock? How much would I need to OC? Would I need a new CPU cooler?

Motherboard: Asus M4A89GTD PRO
GPU: EVGA GTX 780 SC ACX
CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1090T (stock fan, default settings)
16GB RAM
Monitor: 2560x1440 120hz QNIX QX2710


Current FPS info:

- Elder scrolls online beta: I'm getting anywhere between 40 and 90 fps on max settings (obviously the game is not optimized yet, so that's another limiting factor).

- Diablo III: 100-120 fps on max settings

- World of Warcraft: pretty bad 40-60 fps on max settings

Thanks!

 

[AnEwG]

If you are not satisfied with the current performance of your system, overclocking may get you a small increase in fps, but if you mainly play MMOs then you should try to upgrade to an Intel rig. MMOs are more CPU limited because most of them use ancient poorly optimized engines.

 

[Cragman]

If you are not satisfied with the current performance of your system, overclocking may get you a small increase in fps, but if you mainly play MMOs then you should try to upgrade to an Intel rig. MMOs are more CPU limited because most of them use ancient poorly optimized engines.

By "CPU limited" do you mean MMOs demand high CPU performance? What kind of intel mobo/cpu would be necessary?

 

[AnEwG]

Yes, their performance is more related to the CPU than to the GPU. CPU limitations especially show itself with large numbers of people on busy servers on a map at the same place and the same time. How much budget do you have for the CPU+mobo?

 

[Cragman]

Yes, their performance is more related to the CPU than to the GPU. CPU limitations especially show itself with large numbers of people on busy servers on a map at the same place and the same time. How much budget do you have for the CPU+mobo?

My budget is not so much of a problem as the case size (it's a CM storm scout http://www.cmstorm.com/en/products/chassis/scout/ ). This might restrict the possibility of water cooling for example, but I'm not sure, I don't know how much space new processors take up. What CPU set up would you stick in that case? And, if it's not possible to upgrade yet, what options do I have in terms of overclocking? Apparently the 1090T is quite overclockable. It's at 3.2GHZ at the moment, linustechtips managed to get it to 4GHZ on all six cores. Would the performance increase be considerable? What cooling would I need (linus didn't mention that in the video)?

 

[Cragman]

Yes, their performance is more related to the CPU than to the GPU. CPU limitations especially show itself with large numbers of people on busy servers on a map at the same place and the same time. How much budget do you have for the CPU+mobo?

By the way, since my main concern is Elder scrolls online, here is a question in an interview with their tech director:

Q: Did you integrate multi-core support into the engine / your game and what Fps benefit can we expect if we take a Quad-Core-CPU instead of a Dual-Core-CPU? Will there be even a performance boost for Hexa or Octa Core machines?

A: Massive alliance war battles get a big FPS boost out of quad CPUs, and it goes up for more cores beyond that. There is a lot of work to get giant player battles running smoothly, and we will use your extra cores to make it even smoother.

 

[AnEwG]

The case is fine and it should be able to handle any ATX motherboard. Why would it restrict the possibility of water cooling? The 1090T reaches a turbo frequency of 3.6 GHz when only three cores or less are under workload, this is usually the case when you are playing MMOs. You can change the turbo multiplier in the bios settings and increase it as much as system stability will allow and see if that will result in a significant increase in performance. Phenoms usually don't overclock beyond 4 GHz though.

 

[AnEwG]

Scyrim doesn't scale well on AMD processors as when compared to Intel's. As you can see the Phenom II X6 1100T which is only clocked 100 MHz higher than your processor doesn't do very well against the sandy bridge and ivy bridge i5s:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427-6.html

 

[Cragman]

The case is fine and it should be able to handle any ATX motherboard. Why would it restrict the possibility of water cooling? The 1090T reaches a turbo frequency of 3.6 GHz when only three cores or less are under workload, this is usually the case when you are playing MMOs. You can change the turbo multiplier in the bios settings and increase it as much as system stability will allow and see if that will result in a significant increase in performance. Phenoms usually don't overclock beyond 4 GHz though.

Maybe I should be looking toward an i5 4670k Haswell? As long as this kind of motherboard fits in my case! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-Motherboard-4thGeneration-IntelCore-Processors/dp/B00CXK5AY6/ref=pd_bxgy_computers_text_y

 

[Cragman]

The case is fine and it should be able to handle any ATX motherboard. Why would it restrict the possibility of water cooling? The 1090T reaches a turbo frequency of 3.6 GHz when only three cores or less are under workload, this is usually the case when you are playing MMOs. You can change the turbo multiplier in the bios settings and increase it as much as system stability will allow and see if that will result in a significant increase in performance. Phenoms usually don't overclock beyond 4 GHz though.

Would I be able to do some minor overclocking with the stock fan?

 

[Cragman]

Scyrim doesn't scale well on AMD processors as when compared to Intel's. As you can see the Phenom II X6 1100T which is only clocked 100 MHz higher than your processor doesn't do very well against the sandy bridge and ivy bridge i5s:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427-6.html

Okay so I've had a little search, what do you think of:

i5 4670k 3.4ghz + Corsair Hydro Series H60 + Asus Z87-K?

http://www.ebuyer.com/349029-intel-core-i5-3570k-3-4ghz-socket-1155-6mb-cache-retail-boxed-processor-bx80637i53570k
http://www.ebuyer.com/411328-corsair-hydro-series-h60-2013-model-high-performance-liquid-cpu-cooler-cw-9060007-ww
http://www.ebuyer.com/507966-asus-z87-k-socket-1150-dhmi-dvi-d-sub-8-channel-hd-audio-atx-motherboard-z87-k

 

[AnEwG]

Unless you are going for an extreme overclock, you won't need a water cooler. Decent air cooling will be more than sufficient. If you want a budget cooler the CM Hyper 212 EVO will do, if you want the best air cooler for your money, the Noctua NH-d14 is the best air cooler you can get.

 

[sora]

Seems great for the price, and like AnEwG said, the CM Hyper 212 EVO would do great! (make sure it fits in your case though)