Gulftown homebuilt system - time to upgrade?

[patseguin]

Back in 2010, I went all out and spent $$ on future proofing my latest PC. I bought an ASUS Rampage III Black Edition mobo and a Gulftown i7 Extreme with 24GB of RAM. I installed a Corsair liquid cooler and overlock the system. I also have cooling fans on my Corsair RAM. I also run older nVidia 670's X2 in SLI.

I've gradually begun switching to my XBOX ONE for gaming but I still do some on my PC in the way of MMO's and some fps's that I find better with a keyboard and mouse. I've also begun a 3D hobby using Sketchup and 3DS Max.

Would an upgrade to a modern CPU/mobo give me a substantial performance increase? I'd be open to Skylake or the latest AMD offering as I've built those too and they've been good. I don't really have the money to go the 'Extreme' i7 route again (assuming they still make them).

Would an upgrade to a Skylake CPU and a more modern mobo show me enough of a performance increase to justify the money and hassle of rebuilding? My ASUS mobo already has USB 3.0 and my SSD's seem to be plenty fast on the ports it uses. I wonder if I am missing out on real performance improvements though since I built this system 6+ years ago.

 

[Mantad]

For gaming purposes... You won't have a big increase, because you know fairly well yourself that GPU is what matters the most... CPU is not going to affect the gaming experience a lot...
Looking at your current setup, you have quite a decent system, even though it was bought 6 years ago as you said.
Get new GPUs over sli or crossfire instead...
If you're planning to stick with gaming on Xbox and work, Sketchup and 3DS Max and quadro gpus..
If you need opinion on gpus, let me know.

 

[patseguin]

For gaming purposes... You won't have a big increase, because you know fairly well yourself that GPU is what matters the most... CPU is not going to affect the gaming experience a lot...
Looking at your current setup, you have quite a decent system, even though it was bought 6 years ago as you said.
Get new GPUs over sli or crossfire instead...
If you're planning to stick with gaming on Xbox and work, Sketchup and 3DS Max and quadro gpus..
If you need opinion on gpus, let me know.

Thanks for your reply. I've always been very tech savvy and built my systems dating back to the original Pentium. I future proofed my current build so well that I am a little out of touch.

I was talking about upgrading my video cards on another forum which is what brought me to this topic. I currently run 2x nVIdia 670's in SLI and was wondering if a single 970 or 980 would be worth the money. Actually most games I play still look and perform pretty well on my system. I am quite interested in VR and the Oculus and I know I will have to upgrade to a new video card for that. Plus, I think my current mobo would bottleneck a modern video card wouldn't it? One guy on the other forum said that I was better off waiting until summer for the new nVIdia GPU and instead upgrade my CPU/mobo since it is aging. However, in my bit of research so far I can't find a definitive comparison between my i7 Extreme Gulftown and modern Skylake's other than they run at a higher clock speed but only 4 cores vs 6.

Here's a little more detail on my current homebuilt system:

Intel 990X 3.47GHz Gulftown CPU w/liquid cooling
ASUS Rampage III Black Edition CPU w/USB 3.0
24GB Corsair RAM with cooling fan
Dual nVidia 670's in SLI
512MB Samsung 840 PRO SSD
4TB WD drive in RAID 0

As you can see, I knew what I was doing and really spent extra on future proofing it. Peope are telling me to go Skylake but going from 6 cores to 4 seems backwards to me, even with the moderate bump to 4GHz.

Would I see any kind of meaningful performance improvement or other major improvement to justify the work of upgrading? Only thing I can think of is I would really need a modern mobo to take advantage of the latest GPU.

 

[Mantad]

Well if you're that concerned.. Your mobo as far as I know has PCI gen2 slots, whereas nowadays gen3 is the standard and gives you higher bandwidth... Meaning higher GPU performance if you get a high end GPU...
970 or a 980 would be a great choice and upgrading your motherboard and cpu to skylake's new edition will make a massive increase in performance.. If you're planning to go for 970 or 980 of course...
I like your setup and I would definitely recommend making the upgrade...
Nvidia Titan X would be a really great choice if you want to use Sketchup and 3DS in their full potential
Hope this helped..

 

[galeener]

I think you would still have excellent gaming by just upgrading you gpus. It also depends on what res you are looking to play at if your going to stick to 1080p
A single 980 would play just as well with your sytem as building a new skylake with a 980. The big difference would be some of the other benifits such as usb3, better onboard sound (on some of the new m/bs) If you were looking to go 4k or something then yes a new build might not be a bad idea.
My wifes system is still runing a 930 cpu and a single 970gtx it still games fine at 1080p It really comes down to are you going to come completely back to pc gaming or just jump in for some games this and what you want to spend is the main question. For me if you still enjoying games on your current set up and not wanting to be a bench racer for .005fps or crap like that just real world gaming then I would just suggest upgrading to a 980gtx or if you want to future proof the viseo a little a 980ti. I think pascal will get a soft launch around april from rumers but not sure.
I still have a 3820 and 2 680gtx and at 1080p i see no issues in most games including the newer titles.
as for sketchup and 3ds a 980ti would not be a bad choice and is a lot cheaper than going for a titan. but if you have the money hey get what you want.

 

[Corwin65]

Don't the majority of MMO's rely on CPU instead of GPU?