i5-4440 + GTX 1070 Ti

[youshallfollow]

Hi all,
at the moment I have the low-mid PC: i5-4440 + R9 280 + B45 MB + 10 Gb RAM. I hope some day I'll get enough money to buy something really special: something like i7-x700k + GTX xx70 + 32 Gb RAM, but now I'm able to afford only one specific high-end component.

Since I'm so tired to wait while my wallet will be filled with money, I want to upgrade right now. And, as you may understand, I want to replace my R9 280 with GTX 1070 Ti. Firstly I was dreamed about regular 1070, but now I've noticed, that in my country 1070 costs around 500$, while 1070 Ti costs only 30$ more. Feel the difference.

So, the point of my question is about reasonability of that decision.

First of all, GTX 1070 Ti is just a slightly cutted 1080 - it's the freaking beast. While 4440 is pretty old, Haswell-based CPU, not even the greatest i5 in his family. So, this CPU and that GPU are just in a complete different leagues, and I'm seriously worried about bottlenecking. Notice, that I play only in 1080p and, even if I would upgrade the monitor, it will be 21:9 1080p (2560x1080), maybe 75 or even 144 Hz.

Secondly, there will be GTX 11xx series coming soon... Maybe... So, new GPUs can be a way better than current GTX family, or at least - I hope so - current family might become slightly cheaper than now.

So, the main point is: is it reasonable to start upgrading my old, relatively weak PC right now, with such a monster graphics card, working together with such an old CPU, while new Nvidia's GPU family might be coming soon?

 

[Karadjgne]

Your question is not unlike many others posted here, but the answer is similar too. That all depends on you.

You could wait until the cows come home, there's always a new platform or new gpu line about to be unveiled, so unless you must have the latest and greatest, get what you want now.

Bottlenecking is the slowing down of info. Your cpu is not going to bottleneck your gpu since it's not going to actually slow down the flow of info, the cpu will work exactly as intended, upto its ability. It just might not be able to fully utilize the abilities of the gpu. This will be normal as it's 1080p and for most games even an older gtx970 is enough to max ultra, so a 1070ti will be underutilized anyway. You'd need a 1440p monitor to challenge a 1070ti.

As is, the i5-4440 is strong enough that 60fps won't be an issue in a goodly amount of games, it'll exceed the 60Hz cap in many at minimum frames. Your only issue will be in multiple thread games like Witcher 3, gta5, WoW etc where the i7 with 8 threads or more would be far better, the i5's 4 threads getting saturated.

Haswell isn't that old, as a platform with Intel 'tick-tock' 5-10% increases with each release, it's really not far behind current cpus in IPC ability. So what you'll have to decide is just where you want to go, according to the games you play.

10Gb of ram is a really odd number and doing you no favors. Honestly needs fixing. But, it's ddr3. Your platform is limiting as such, the best you can do is an i7-4790k.

So you could upgrade the cpu and get a couple more years out of the platform, nothing wrong with any of the i7's, even as far back as the Sandy-Bridge cpus, they are still viable for 1080p/60Hz games.

To change to anything better would require a complete replacement of ram, cpu, mobo. Which is only done in 1 purchase as none of the new parts are compatible with the old.

Nothing you have is going to perform to maximum ability until all is done, there's going to be lapses in ability no matter if you use new platform and old gpu, or old platform and new gpu, so worrying about bottlenecks is an exercise in futility, you will be slower than your neighbors until you are finished, just live with it til then.

 

[guanyu210379]

First let us look into my crystal ball to find out how the next nVidia GPU line up will perform and how the prices will look like.
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[youshallfollow]

Got it. So, I decided to get 1070 Ti anyway, but according your advice I'll stay at LGA1150 for the time being. Will try to find a good second-hand 4770k/4790k and get some more RAM. I know, 10 Gb is an odd number, but that's a long story. There were 2 pairs of 2 Gb modules, then I've found a 4 Gb one...

So, stay at 1150, get 16/32 DDR3 RAM, get high-Hz or/and 1440p monitor. Got it.

You've just made all the things easier. I really wasn't excited about potential perspective of upgrading the whole system - too much money.

 

[Karadjgne]

2x8Gb at 1600 will be the best you need do, unless you are into more professional rendeting/cad etc there's absolutely no requirements for more than 16Gb of ram. Most games etc average total system ram usage of 4Gb to @12Gb at best.

 

[youshallfollow]

2x8Gb at 1600 will be the best you need do, unless you are into more professional rendeting/cad etc there's absolutely no requirements for more than 16Gb of ram. Most games etc average total system ram usage of 4Gb to @12Gb at best.

Ok, and the last question.
For instance, as I've already said, I have 2+2+2+4Gb 1333Mhz RAM modules. Ok, I bought 2x8 1600Mhz. But I don't want to waste my old RAM capacity. So I leave my 2 old modules, for example 2Gb and 4Gb. Now I have 2+4+8+8Gb RAM. 22Gb is stiil an odd number, but I certanly don't want to waste my old memory! But old modules are running on 1333, while new are 1600. Will all the 4 modules run on 1333?

 

[Karadjgne]

Yep. If you place them right, what you'll get is 2x 8Gb running dual channel at 1333MHz, 2x 2Gb running dual channel at 1333MHz and the 2Gb remaining from the 4Gb stick will run in single channel 1333MHz. With 20Gb of 1333MHz in dual channel mode, basically the remaining 2Gb in single will be used last. Since you'll never use even 16Gb in games, that last 2Gb is next to useless and won't see usage at all.

You'd get better results just using the 2x8Gb in dual channel mode at 1600MHz.

That's assuming that with the mixed ram, it even works, there's always a possibility it won't, or will require dropping the speed down to 1066 or loosening timings even further, running 1333MHz at 10-11-10-30 etc, or maybe even both, just to get it to play nice, which is seriously slow.

I'd just sell the old ram and get at least a few $ back. There's always ppl looking for that ram for Hackingtosh builds, Macs, old 775 builds etc.

The only ppl who benefit at all from more than 16Gb of ram are professional renderers or cad type ppl who can and do use upto 128Gb or more, but they also won't be using a homeowner type board, usually a x99/x299 /2011v3 etc with anything upto 32 core Xeons.

So adding more to that 16Gb will have a net result of actually slowing your pc down for no reason.