Time to upgrade my Lynnfield i5-750?

[shuai_ma]

Hi,

I'm looking into upgrading my rig. Currently

i5-750 lynnfield processor
16 gb 1600mhz ram
GTX670

I'm looking at getting another 670 for SLI, but after looking how old my processor is, I've decided I need to look into possibilities there. I really dislike that I have the 1156 pin. This is causing me to have to chose to upgrade my processor AND my motherboard, or to just go with the SLI answer for now.

On a side note, I run 5670X1200 every chance I get. Love battlefield 4, but it crashes at that resolution after about 20 minutes due to lack of memory.

Summing it all up, is my processor bottlenecking my system, and should I upgrade it? I will be strictly gaming at high resolutions. If I SHOULD upgrade it, then should I go with AMD or Intel. (I've been with Intel for a while now and their bang for buck is really making me rethink where I want to go from here).

 

[Supernova1138]

You are likely hitting a CPU bottleneck if you are running your CPU at stock clocks. If possible, you can try overclocking to improve the situation, Lynnfield CPUs can achieve some pretty good overclocks.

If you want to upgrade your CPU, I would recommend sticking with Intel, AMD's best CPUs are more a sidegrade compared to Lynnfield i5/i7s unless your software can scale across 8 cores, and can fully utilize those 8 cores. If you must go AMD, the FX 8350 would be the absolute minimum for you, the FX 4350 would be a downgrade, and the FX 6300/6350 would be a sidegrade, even in heavily threaded applications the 6300 series CPUs only trade blows with Lynnfield i5s.

For Intel, you're best options would be either a new i5 or an i7 if you have extra cash. Future games might perform better with the i7 because of the new consoles having 8 (very slow) cores. However, how much of an impact that will have isn't really known at this point, the only remotely close to next gen game out right now is BF4, and like its predecessor, it is very CPU heavy in larger multiplayer maps, but isn't very CPU heavy in single player and smaller multiplayer maps, so it isn't necessarily representative of every future game.

As for your problems with BF4, getting another 670 for SLI isn't going to help your crashing issues if you are running out of video memory. In SLI video memory is mirrored so you would still only have 2GB effective with a second 670. You would need to look at getting a video card with more than 2GB of video memory or turn down some graphics settings if you want to do triple monitors with BF4.

 

[shuai_ma]

That was the most thorough and helpful response I've gotten on these forums. Thank you very much.

 

[shuai_ma]

As a side note:If you look at this again, would you recommend SLI or Xfire for 3 monitor support? I notice the Vram seems superior on the AMD line, but I know there are other factors to look at as well.

 

[Supernova1138]

SLI has fewer issues than Crossfire right now, but Nvidia cards do tend to ship with less video memory than AMD cards which can be an issue when running multiple monitors. There are 4GB versions of the 670/680/770 available, though they do carry a bit of a price premium over the regular 2GB models, I believe the price difference tends to be about $40 between the 2GB and 4GB versions of those cards.

If you want to go for a single GPU solution and have a lot of money to spend there is the 780 and 780Ti on the Nvidia side which I believe have 4 GB of video memory as a standard feature. The R9 290x from AMD also sports 4GB of video memory, but if you do want to go that route, make sure to avoid the reference coolers, they are noisy and don't do that great a job.