Should I upgrade or buy a new computer?

[SampsonNation]

Hey all,

I recently upgraded my GPU to a 1080TI OC Strix from ASUS. Now I'm wondering if it would be more beneficial to just upgrade the whole unit piece by piece, or just start with a a newer computer.

I used some benchmarking software and it seems that I'm pretty spot on with the results most people are getting from a setup like mine. I also went to http://thebottlenecker.com/ and according to them I am 13% bottlenecked by my CPU. They recommended I upgrade to a Intel Core i7-8700 @ 3.20GHz (no Advanced settings used such as OC % during this test).

Money isn't really a problem. I just want a decent gaming rig. I'm not a competitive gamer. I mostly play FPS's and RTS's. I love Arma III, Battlefield, The Division, PUBG, etc. I would love to be able to max every game out with at least 60 FPS on my 28" 1440P 60 HZ monitor.

If it's worth mentioning, I also intend on streaming with my rig if it doesn't sacrifice too much performance.

Specs:

Motherboard: Giabyte Z87X-D3H

CPU: Intel i7 4770k 3.50 GHZ

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

RAM: 16GB DDR3 1866 MHZ

PSU: Corsair 750 WATT Gold Edition

Case: Corsair 750D

Samsung 120GB SSD for Windows OS and Applications

Western Digital 4TB 7200 RPM for my Steam Library and other games, etc.


Second part of my question... I don't see a problem with how my storage and OS drives are set up. I understand some people place their main games they play often on a SSD because it improves load times. Would changing how I configured my drives give me any added bonus while actually in an online game?

 

[R_1]

Overclock the 4770k. you have not squeezed all the performance out of that rig yet.
Overclock the chip as far as you can, then get a bigger cooler and go for more. by overclocking the K series chip you can eliminate the bottleneck.

bottlenecker.com is not gospel, the results will vary. did you enter all your parts or just the CPU and GPU. its more a reference than anything and 13% by their measure could be 2-3% IRL usage. it all depends on the total hardware.

BTW that is a decent gaming rig

"Second part of my question... I don't see a problem with how my storage and OS drives are set up. I understand some people place their main games they play often on a SSD because it improves load times. Would changing how I configured my drives give me any added bonus while actually in an online game?"

I have a tiny 50GB SSD (crucial Adrenaline) that is an active cache for my HDD. everything is on my HDD but the hot data is on the SSD.
in game performance you will notice no improvement from faster storage. Game loading times will shorten if on the SSD. Killing Floor 2 takes almost thee minutes when loading from the HDD (WD black 1TB) or 45 seconds if in the cache. loading is the only speed boost games will enjoy. no more FPS, no better textures, just faster loads.

 

[WildCard999]

Ugh that website is terrible and should not be used. Your build as is, is perfectly fine and very similar to what I have. If you want to gain a bit of extra performance you could always overclock the CPU/GPU. And no, putting your games on a SSD won't make a performance difference besides load times.

 

[SampsonNation]

Thanks for the quick answers! I was sweating bullets thinking I was going to have to buy a new CPU or something. I added my CPU cooler to the original post.

I haven't overclocked my CPU yet because I just haven't found the time to read up on how to do it. I tried the Gigabyte Over Clock software today, but I don't think it worked very well. It said something like I could handle 4.7 GHZ, but then proceeded to clock me at 3.90 GHZ on auto-tune. Not sure why it happened that way.

By the way, I was using Unigine Superposition for the benchmark test. I only got 40 FPS average on Extreme and then got 130 on Medium.

What do you suggest for overclocking?

 

[WildCard999]

Don't use auto overclocking software as, IMHO, it raises the voltage higher then needed. A good guide by CompuTronix is the Intel Temperature Guide, I'd recommend thoroughly reading it before starting.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1800828/intel-temperature-guide.html

Depending on the chip and your cooling 4.2-4.4 may be achieveable but TBH it's probably not even needed, at the moment my 4770K is at stock as the extra performance isn't needed and also the Division stutters for some reason when my CPU is overclocked (only game that does it).

 

[chemiguelito.miguelangel]

That web is bullshit for the sole reason is a paper calculation and real performance varies. Just OC it. Its a K so made for it. Now i dont understand the question. thats something you should ask yourself and not someone else, Like "ok i expect X fps at X resolution and this pc meets the requirement. therefore i dont need am upgrade"

 

[SampsonNation]

Now i dont understand the question. thats something you should ask yourself and not someone else, Like "ok i expect X fps at X resolution and this pc meets the requirement. therefore i dont need am upgrade"

My computer parts (not including the GPU) are over 4 years old. I would have figured I'd be outdated by now and need an upgrade to maintain 60 FPS on most current games with my 1440P monitor. That's why I posed the question.

 

[chemiguelito.miguelangel]

Now i dont understand the question. thats something you should ask yourself and not someone else, Like "ok i expect X fps at X resolution and this pc meets the requirement. therefore i dont need am upgrade"

My computer parts (not including the GPU) are over 4 years old. I would have figured I'd be outdated by now and need an upgrade to maintain 60 FPS on most current games with my 1440P monitor. That's why I posed the question.

But you figured it by yourself so i dont know what was the real motivation of asking it here. Certainly if you wanan play at 1440p get a 4 GB card at least, Something like a 1070 should be more than enough in most games.

 

[Shadow777]

i would keep that setup for quite a few years at least, its a pretty decent rig, btw Streaming requires ALOT of upload bandwith so check if you have enough of that, if not you could consider upgrading your internetz

 

[SampsonNation]

Now i dont understand the question. thats something you should ask yourself and not someone else, Like "ok i expect X fps at X resolution and this pc meets the requirement. therefore i dont need am upgrade"

My computer parts (not including the GPU) are over 4 years old. I would have figured I'd be outdated by now and need an upgrade to maintain 60 FPS on most current games with my 1440P monitor. That's why I posed the question.

But you figured it by yourself so i dont know what was the real motivation of asking it here.

At the time I posted this question I didn't have a good understanding of which direction made the most sense for my PC. I wanted a second opinion. I'm a novice at this and was shooting in the dark with my guesses. I appreciate your input.

[ get a 4 GB card at least, Something like a 1070 should be more than enough in most games.

I had a 980 4GB card and it just wasn't giving me the results I had hoped for. I wanted to max out all my graphic settings on most games while maintaining 60 FPS on my monitor if possible. Realistically, I didn't achieve that. I took care of the card by upgrading to the 1080 TI OC Strix. After I received the card, it made me wonder if I needed to upgrade other components of my PC to get the full potential out of the card. That's why I came here to ask about it.

i would keep that setup for quite a few years at least, its a pretty decent rig, btw Streaming requires ALOT of upload bandwith so check if you have enough of that, if not you could consider upgrading your internetz

I have at least 30 Mpbs upload on cable. I'm just dropping a lot of frames recently, so I'm upgrading the modem to something better.

Depending on the chip and your cooling 4.2-4.4 may be achieveable but TBH it's probably not even needed, at the moment my 4770K is at stock as the extra performance isn't needed and also the Division stutters for some reason when my CPU is overclocked (only game that does it).

It looks like The Division stutters for me as well (didn't OC yet) with graphics on the highest setting.


Thanks to everyone who added their 2 cents.

 

[Shadow777]

Now i dont understand the question. thats something you should ask yourself and not someone else, Like "ok i expect X fps at X resolution and this pc meets the requirement. therefore i dont need am upgrade"

My computer parts (not including the GPU) are over 4 years old. I would have figured I'd be outdated by now and need an upgrade to maintain 60 FPS on most current games with my 1440P monitor. That's why I posed the question.

But you figured it by yourself so i dont know what was the real motivation of asking it here.

At the time I posted this question I didn't have a good understanding of which direction made the most sense for my PC. I wanted a second opinion. I'm a novice at this and was shooting in the dark with my guesses. I appreciate your input.

[ get a 4 GB card at least, Something like a 1070 should be more than enough in most games.

I had a 980 4GB card and it just wasn't giving me the results I had hoped for. I wanted to max out all my graphic settings on most games while maintaining 60 FPS on my monitor if possible. Realistically, I didn't achieve that. I took care of the card by upgrading to the 1080 TI OC Strix. After I received the card, it made me wonder if I needed to upgrade other components of my PC to get the full potential out of the card. That's why I came here to ask about it.

i would keep that setup for quite a few years at least, its a pretty decent rig, btw Streaming requires ALOT of upload bandwith so check if you have enough of that, if not you could consider upgrading your internetz

I have at least 30 Mpbs upload on cable. I'm just dropping a lot of frames recently, so I'm upgrading the modem to something better.

Depending on the chip and your cooling 4.2-4.4 may be achieveable but TBH it's probably not even needed, at the moment my 4770K is at stock as the extra performance isn't needed and also the Division stutters for some reason when my CPU is overclocked (only game that does it).

It looks like The Division stutters for me as well (didn't OC yet) with graphics on the highest setting.


Thanks to everyone who added their 2 cents.

Wait.. Whaaaat?? by frames you mean the Stream frames or The frames you see on YOUR monitor? if you are having the problem il have to let you know improving your internet connection will do absolutely nothing to improve your Graphics performance

 

[SampsonNation]

I meant stream frames. I was dropping stream frames.. That's NOT to be confused with my GPU performance. I was speaking to you stating streaming requires a lot of bandwidth.


By the way, my computer seems to be taking a crap in game and I don't know why. I was getting 15 FPS on average with Company of Heroes 2 today. I just reinstalled my computer several days ago. Why could this be happening?

 

[chemiguelito.miguelangel]

I assume you have made sure your temps are ok and your storage drive health is good, now that is starting to sound like graphics card drivers related issue. Have you tried the beta drivers? did this started happening after updating drivers?

 

[SampsonNation]

I assume you have made sure your temps are ok and your storage drive health is good, now that is starting to sound like graphics card drivers related issue. Have you tried the beta drivers? did this started happening after updating drivers?

My GPU temperature is normal. I haven't had the time to check the storage drive health. However, when my computer was at BestBuy last week [for an unrelated reason], they did say all my hardware passed their tests. That's all I can confirm for now until I have time to really diag the computer myself. I tried to keep installing applications to the OS SSD to a BARE minimum. I probably only installed 10 or fewer apps. I was even apprehensive to install DropBox or other apps that run in the backgrounds 24/7, because I feel like my PC isn't as snappy when I open programs after a while.

All I did with this install was do the regular Nvidia drivers (no Beta drivers) from GeForce Experience and update windows 10 drivers via the software updater. I disabled as many services as I could to improve the computer's speed, etc. That's all I've done so far.

The mobo, ram, SSD, and mechanical HD, are all probably around 4-5 years old on average.

 

[SampsonNation]

I was able to solve my speed and FPS issues with a friend of mine. We re-installed Windows 10 with a minimalist version that doesn't include any bloatware, or extra software. It's literally bare bones. Now, Company of Heroes exceeds 60 FPS on maxed out settings at 1440P.

I used Unigine Superposition and got around a 5900 score on the high settings. I compared that to other users on the leader board with the same CPU and GPU setup I have and it seemed close enough. Some users with a 4770K and a 1080 TI with a different manufacture seems to be getting around 1000 points higher than me.

The motherboard was overclocked to 4.3GHz in the bios. However, when I boot to my OS, the system settings still say I'm running at 3.5GHz. Odd.

Currently, the computer is faster than I think I've ever seen and I'm very pleased! Thanks for the help.

 

[Shadow777]

Don't use auto overclocking software as, IMHO, it raises the voltage higher then needed. A good guide by CompuTronix is the Intel Temperature Guide, I'd recommend thoroughly reading it before starting.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1800828/intel-temperature-guide.html

Depending on the chip and your cooling 4.2-4.4 may be achieveable but TBH it's probably not even needed, at the moment my 4770K is at stock as the extra performance isn't needed and also the Division stutters for some reason when my CPU is overclocked (only game that does it).

DO you use it to play ARK?

 

[WildCard999]

I don't have ARK.