Upgrade Advice (Mainly CPU)

[ButtChew]

[EDIT] God, posted in the wrong forum. Sorry.
Moved (well re-posted) here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2327886/upgrade-advice-needed-intel-series.html

 

[bliq]

go with 1150. for your needs, probably a core i7-4790k if you want to stick with i7. an i5-4690k will also probably work just as well for gaming while saving you a bit of money.

In all honesty, I went from an i7-860 to an i7-4770k earlier this year and I don't really notice much difference. The real difference came from adding an SSD.

 

[popatim]

1155 is the last generation of the intel socket which was replaced by the 1150. Since you only do limited overclocking then I would suggest you go with the 1150 socket.

 

[ButtChew]

go with 1150. for your needs, probably a core i7-4790k if you want to stick with i7. an i5-4690k will also probably work just as well for gaming while saving you a bit of money.

In all honesty, I went from an i7-860 to an i7-4770k earlier this year and I don't really notice much difference. The real difference came from adding an SSD.

That was another concern of mine, as I feel like my processor really isn't bottle-necking anything, at least for gaming. The problem is mainly my motherboard though, which Im pretty sure only runs PCI-e 4x.

 

[bliq]

really? what motherboard is it? it seems unlikely to have just an x4 slot and no x16. I've only heard of one board like that but it was an ancient 775 board that allowed you to use PCI-E or AGP. but I guess it's possible. one other thing is that even today's fastest GPUs are apparently not saturating 8x. So if it is only an x8 slot, you might not be bottlenecked by that either.

 

[ButtChew]

really? what motherboard is it? it seems unlikely to have just an x4 slot and no x16. I've only heard of one board like that but it was an ancient 775 board that allowed you to use PCI-E or AGP. but I guess it's possible. one other thing is that even today's fastest GPUs are apparently not saturating 8x. So if it is only an x8 slot, you might not be bottlenecked by that either.

Newegg link to mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128406

It has a PCI-E x16 slot, but it says it runs at x4 (PCIEX x4)

 

[popatim]

you have two pcie (v2.0) x16 slots, one runs at x16 and the other runs at x4 so make sure your GPU is in the one closest to the CPU, not the one at the bottom.

 

[bliq]

really? what motherboard is it? it seems unlikely to have just an x4 slot and no x16. I've only heard of one board like that but it was an ancient 775 board that allowed you to use PCI-E or AGP. but I guess it's possible. one other thing is that even today's fastest GPUs are apparently not saturating 8x. So if it is only an x8 slot, you might not be bottlenecked by that either.

Newegg link to mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128406

It has a PCI-E x16 slot, but it says it runs at x4 (PCIEX x4)

Actually, looking at the specs, there are two x16 slots for crossfire. One is full x16 and the other is x4. So I think you have no worries. Just use the upper slot.