[SOLVED] Can I upgrade a cpu

[CoolFrank]

Can I upgrade a CPU, according to Dell/Alienware I can't, I only wanted to upgrade my video card, (waiting for RTX 3000 series ) but according to Nvidia and Dell, it can't be done. They told me my CPU to slow, it will bottleneck. Here is my rig

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K Processor (4-Cores, 8MB Cache, Turbo Boost 2.0, Overclocked up to 4.4GHz on all four cores).
64GB DDR4 2400MHz
850W PSU Liquid Cooled Chassis

 

[mdd1963]

Whatever mainboard you have, it's undoubtedly a 100 or 200 series, which absolutely tops out with the 7700K as the 'pinnacle CPU' available on those boards....

In short...

NOt upgradeable on your existing mainboard...

 

[CoolFrank]

Whatever mainboard you have, it's undoubtedly a 100 or 200 series, which absolutely tops out with the 7700K as the 'pinnacle CPU' available on those boards....

In short...

NOt upgradeable on your existing mainboard...

Actually it's a 300 series

 

[mdd1963]

This will give you an idea of the 7700K's relative performance...

As long as you have no live streaming/recording while gaming aspirations, the 7700K is hardly a 'slouch' just yet....

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zllim2fglJY

 

[maxamillionfeettall]

Actually it's a 300 series

It's not a 300 series, the 100 and 200 series were skylake and kaby lake, intel then changed to lga 1151 v2 in the form of the 300 series, cutting off any backwards compatibility citing different voltage and power requirements. The 100 and 200 series supported 6xxx and 7xxx cpus respectively, the 300 series supported 8xxx and 9xxx cpus.

 

[CoolFrank]

Actually it's a 300 series
[/QU

It's not a 300 series, the 100 and 200 series were skylake and kaby lake, intel then changed to lga 1151 v2 in the form of the 300 series, cutting off any backwards compatibility citing different voltage and power requirements. The 100 and 200 series supported 6xxx and 7xxx cpus respectively, the 300 series supported 8xxx and 9xxx cpus.

thx for more clarity, I guess I will change motherboard and CPU first then in the future, check for RTX 3000.

 

[Karadjgne]

Whomever said a 7700k was too slow and would bottleneck the gpu was full of (insert favorite flushable terminology here, mine starts with S and ends in T).

There's only 2 reasons for such an announcement, 1) whomever said it was totally clueless, 2) whomever said it was hoping to scare you into purchasing an expensive upgrade through them.

The fact they used the term bottleneck is a dead giveaway, full of (and again, the insert) because it's impossible for a cpu to bottleneck a gpu. A bottleneck is a component that slows down the flow of information, choking the output. That's like a kink in a hose slowing down the flow of water. BUT, that assumes the flow is actually higher to start with. The cpu cannot be the kink, it's the tap. It supplies all the fps output, it's not in the middle, it's the start. So it's output is whatever it is, it slows nothing down.

And that changes from game to game. There's a large difference between the fps output capability in CSGO and BF5, and that difference affects any cpu, even the brand new grandaddy i9 10900k or the diminutive i3-6100.

That fps gets sent to the gpu, which either lives upto the limit, or fails, depending on the strength of the gpu and level of details and resolution. The cpu output has no affect on gpu ability it only affects the amount of work the gpu has to do. A cpu will not 'slow down' a gpu at all.

If you have a Dell, that's it, you are done. There's no simple 'I'll just swap the motherboard', that doesn't work. You own a Dell, and Dell owns the proprietary rights to the Windows. It's tied to the motherboard. If you change the motherboard, you no longer own a Dell, you own an aftermarket pc that's housed inside a Dell case, go get your own version of Windows, the Dell version key will not be valid and any warranty, written or implied, any support from Dell at all will be done and over with.

The i7-7700k was the flagship cpu, there isn't one better or stronger in the lga1151 v1 generations. And honestly it's not all that weak, it's plenty capable of very high fps, no matter what game, it's only a few % weaker than 9th gen cpus like the i7-9700k. It'll pair just as easily with a gtx1060 or a RTX2080ti, how much use you get out of the gpu depending on what resolution, 1080p or 1440p or 4k, and the level and complexity of graphics details.

 

[John Chesterfield]

^^^ That.

I run a 4790k, so two generations behind your 7700k, with a 2080 at 1440p with G-Sync and have zero issues, BF5 silky smooth at full settings. Mine is probably the oldest i7 still viable these days, yours is also still very viable.

 

[CoolFrank]

thx for more clarity, I guess I will change motherboard and CPU first then in the future, check for RTX 3000.

thx for more clarity, I guess I will change motherboard and CPU first then in the future, check for RTX 3000.

Whomever said a 7700k was too slow and would bottleneck the gpu was full of (insert favorite flushable terminology here, mine starts with S and ends in T).

There's only 2 reasons for such an announcement, 1) whomever said it was totally clueless, 2) whomever said it was hoping to scare you into purchasing an expensive upgrade through them.

The fact they used the term bottleneck is a dead giveaway, full of (and again, the insert) because it's impossible for a cpu to bottleneck a gpu. A bottleneck is a component that slows down the flow of information, choking the output. That's like a kink in a hose slowing down the flow of water. BUT, that assumes the flow is actually higher to start with. The cpu cannot be the kink, it's the tap. It supplies all the fps output, it's not in the middle, it's the start. So it's output is whatever it is, it slows nothing down.

And that changes from game to game. There's a large difference between the fps output capability in CSGO and BF5, and that difference affects any cpu, even the brand new grandaddy i9 10900k or the diminutive i3-6100.

That fps gets sent to the gpu, which either lives upto the limit, or fails, depending on the strength of the gpu and level of details and resolution. The cpu output has no affect on gpu ability it only affects the amount of work the gpu has to do. A cpu will not 'slow down' a gpu at all.

If you have a Dell, that's it, you are done. There's no simple 'I'll just swap the motherboard', that doesn't work. You own a Dell, and Dell owns the proprietary rights to the Windows. It's tied to the motherboard. If you change the motherboard, you no longer own a Dell, you own an aftermarket pc that's housed inside a Dell case, go get your own version of Windows, the Dell version key will not be valid and any warranty, written or implied, any support from Dell at all will be done and over with.

The i7-7700k was the flagship cpu, there isn't one better or stronger in the lga1151 v1 generations. And honestly it's not all that weak, it's plenty capable of very high fps, no matter what game, it's only a few % weaker than 9th gen cpus like the i7-9700k. It'll pair just as easily with a gtx1060 or a RTX2080ti, how much use you get out of the gpu depending on what resolution, 1080p or 1440p or 4k, and the level and complexity of graphics details.

Thank you for this explanation, could you believe it was tech from Nvidia that told me this, saying, I can't change my graphic card from gtx 1080 ti to RTX 2080ti. They told me that the CPU will bottleneck because it was too slow. Again thank you.

 

[CoolFrank]

^^^ That.

I run a 4790k, so two generations behind your 7700k, with a 2080 at 1440p with G-Sync and have zero issues, BF5 silky smooth at full settings. Mine is probably the oldest i7 still viable these days, yours is also still very viable.

Thank you for this info.

 

[CoolFrank]

Thank you for this info.

My monitor is 2k at 120 hrz, so far so good, my only concern is the time it takes to render some 3D images, but I think with the added memory I recently install and a new card it should run more softly. Thank you again for this input.

 

[CoolFrank]

Thank you for this explanation, could you believe it was tech from Nvidia that told me this, saying, I can't change my graphic card from gtx 1080 ti to RTX 2080ti. They told me that the CPU will bottleneck because it was too slow. Again thank you.

Btw I have two monitors, one is 2k at 120 hrz, I run most games on this one, and satisfied with the result. The other monitor is 4k at 144 hrz, one I use when I work on complex 3D render images, and the gtx 1080ti struggles but never crashed. All this started when I asked Nvidia if I could upgrade my graphic card both Dell and Nvidia told me that the CPU was too slow, I'm glad I found this forum, it clear things for me, again thank you.

 

[CoolFrank]

With all of you, I resolve my problem, Thank you, everyone, for your input, I resolve my problem, I overclocked my CPU, bought a new graphic card, RTX2080Ti, and bought a bit more memory up to max now 64 gigs of ram. I kept both cards for now in case something goes wrong but mainly use only the RTX one. will take out the GTX soon. everything seems to run smoothly, was just hard to install, RTX at first did not want to upgrade the RTX, Dell probably did something with the bios but I finally found the right Bios and everything run smoothly now. Again thank you everyone, and I'm really glad found this web site.

 

[John Chesterfield]

For future reference, if someone mentions the word 'bottleneck', that's usually a good indicator that they don't know what they're talking about.

Glad you're sorted

 

[toetod]

^^^ That.

I run a 4790k, so two generations behind your 7700k, with a 2080 at 1440p with G-Sync and have zero issues, BF5 silky smooth at full settings. Mine is probably the oldest i7 still viable these days, yours is also still very viable.

I play BFOne with an i7-980X w/ a GTX1070 (.3440x1440).

 

[Karadjgne]

Still puttering around with i7-3770K and gtx970. The i7 is at 4.6GHz (was 4.9GHz for 6 years solid but changed coolers) and the 970 is the Asus Strix DC2 model and sits at 124% OC. Even 1080p has no issues with any games I play, but multi-player can get a little much for the cpu.