Help with gaming upgrade options.

[winterborn]

Hello first post here so I hope some of you experts can help me decide what to do.

Me and my girlfriend want to upgrade our old systems for gaming within a budget on 24" 1920x1200 and hoping to get 30-60 FPS in modern games.

I have a pair of XFX GTX 560ti 1GB cards in my old I7 920 box and I was thinking of giving one to my girlfriend and then upgrading to a pair of new 1150 MB's with G3440/i3- 4150's because she has a Core Duo E6800.

The other option is to buy a pair of X4 760K's and R9 270-280's and overclock Since this seems to be a popular combo.

I have few main questions will the G-3440/i3-4150 bottleneck the 560ti 1GB cards?

Will the X4- 760K's (OC'ed to 4.5ish) bottleneck the R9 270 or the R9 280?

Is the GTX 560ti even close to the R9 270/280's (rebranded 7850/70?).

What would you recommend?

Thanks.

 

[i7Baby]

The Pentium, i3 and X4's will be fine with 270/280.

The 560ti is about 3/4 the performance of a 270

I'd keep the 560ti's sli'd and get a 280.

I wouldn't get the x4 760k's. Just keep the pentium and i3.

 

[winterborn]

Thanks for the info, but she wants the same builds................don't ask its a girl thing so if it makes her happy and she games with me, the same it is : ) Plus my board (X58) is buggy and its time for a upgrade.

So a i3-4150 will outperform a OC'ed X4 760k at around 4.5+ ?

I was also considering aftermarket coolers on the 560ti's and try to OC them but they only have 1GB of mem.
Would you think a G-3440 would bottleneck a OC'ed 560ti (1GB) or would I need the I3?

Is there a chart somewhere that has 560ti vs 7850/70 (R9 270/280) here on Toms?

Thanks again.

 

[i7Baby]

Don't put aftermarket coolers on the 560ti's - its just a waste of money and time.

The Pentium and i3 will not bottleneck the 560ti's.

See - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html - 280's are too new for data.

If you want the same builds, just use one 560ti each. One use the Pentium and the other use the i3.

But 560ti's in SLI is about the same as a 280. So performance wise, you could do that.

 

[winterborn]

Thanks again i7Baby but benchmark scores mean nothing to me since I don't know what CPU's or other factors factored into a synthetic score.

I need to know if it can play modern games on a single 1920x1200 monitor at 30-60FPS on medium to high settings.

Aftermarket coolers can allow the 560ti's to overclock better and that may allow them to compete or come close to a R9 270? So with about $40.00 and some OC time it may save me the need for $300+ on new cards. Or does no one OC their cards anymore?

Maybe there is different site that still deals with overclocking for gaming on a reasonable budget?

And again she wants identical systems, she does not want me to have and edge : ) So the CPU/MB/GPU's would need to be the same in both our boxes.

 

[i7Baby]

Just google reviews for the 280 - http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/67581-sapphire-radeon-r9-280-dual-x/

These days a lot of cards are factory overclocked. We mainly use Afterburner to overclock graphics cards.

GTX560Ti's can be overclocked without the need for custom cooling . eg http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_gtx560_directcu_ii_review,1.html
The Asus cooler is probably the best.

Those reviews also highlight game perfrormance.

Looks like you are going to have to buy a lot of stuff if you want identical pc's.

As I said - the pentium and i3 will perform the same and the 560tis in sli will perform the same as a 280 - without the hardware being identical.

 

[winterborn]

Think I am going to wait for the Intel G3258 to come out.
Someone better make a article with a G3258 and a 760K OC'ed with the max GPU they can handle.