Upgrading from x58 to x79 Which of these is best ( Or Suggest <3 )

LunaP

Honorable
Jul 12, 2013
13
0
10,520
Greetings! First off love this place, I read up all the time and learn more and more everyday!

First off I'll start with my current rig before explaining:

intel 980x extreme
gigabyte x58a-ud3r ( Pretty sure this is bottlenecking)
24gb ram 2000 series(Can't remember if corsair/crucial + crap heatsync ( if any) taking recommended suggestions for replacement )
196GB SSD Corsair
2TB SATA6 x2 Storage
eVGA Titan
Cosmos Case

That out of the way heres the issue/undermining decision.

My board is almost 4 years old. I just upgraded from SLI 470's to 1x Titan and thinking of getting another ( or returning it today for 2x 780's (sep thread) )

Anyways I'm playing some semi old MMO's "Tera Online" and other games such as Skyrim , TR, and running benchmarks, and it feels like I"m not getting the performance I should.

When I say performance I mean FPS goes up and down, and in many situations plummets under 30fps ( no AA or MSA)

I've performed a clean install of drivers, using driver sweeper from Phyxion and Ensured my PC was clean, also recent windows install still plagues this. I could just be overexpecting from the giant but after reading up on PCI Lanes, better b/w management and the setbacks of 1366 boards, I started to consider either 1) something was bottlenecking, or 2 possible south bridge failure due to slow speeds on HDD, GPU, and USB at certain times.

So my question to everyone is I"m looking to grab a socket 2011 board today along w/ an i7 3960x core ( its about 590$ at my local store as they're getting rid of stock ) if not either 3770k or 3930x depending.

I've justified most of my needs for upcoming hardware upgrades with this board. I'm passing on Haswell as well as Haswell-E and going to wing it till Skylake honestly, as I feel this small upgrade should suffice until late 2015.

My question is which Motherboard would be recommended best for this as I was looking @ reviews for both the MSI Big bang 2 and the ROG and RIVE from ASUS.
I'm a Gigabyte fan but the lackluster of additional SATA ports and USB 3.0 pushes me towards the other 3 choices though I do miss having the mini PCI-E slots being by themselves vs in between the graphics slots.

That + your recommendations on the CPU as I've stated above + additional boards I may have missed!

And before I forget, and before someone asks "What are your normal needs" Let me answer that too.

I normally have upwards 50+ chrome tabs open , as well as 10+ firefox
As I do web design.

I use photoshop for heavy editing
I use Lightroom for rendering
I'm learning Maya/3DS

I'm drawing a comic currently ( shouldn't matter what I use for this )

Gaming, sometimes surround dependent on support and looking to do a tri setup later once prices come down ( if any )
I like to have max settings though I can do w/o MSAA as I haven't noticed a huge change with it. I want to support whats coming and I don't want to be throttled.

I'm not a heavy O/Cer but getting more and more into it. Not ready for Hydro cooling yet, but looking @ phase coolers.

Here's a shot of my current setup (scheduled to change ) Appreciate your input and sorry for the long read! Hoping to buy this today! Also just bought a samsung 840 pro SSD to install 7 on once I get one of these!


http://s16.postimg.org/x7rpz86at/lunacave5.jpg as the pic may be to big for the screen.
 
Solution
Gigabyte might, but I'd be wary of EVGA, they don't have many mobos out there at all anymore, and the the ones they have released haven't been very good
I ended up not upgrading when I went as I was having a hard time justifying the price, though I still want to upgrade. My friend stated specifically I would notice it, and I did a test by taking my Titan and putting it into my friends 3770k machine and noticed a huge boost in performance, so I definitely feel I"m being bottlenecked in a way.

Should I grab that new p9 extreme asus just released as it seems to support native pci 3.0 and usb or would that not even get to be used if I still grabed the 3960x?

So yeah my southbridge is dying and I definitely need to upgrade and just lost my entire post due to clicking post vs submit >.<
Thanks!
 


Yeah I know what you mean, I was initially waiting on Haswell but seems there's alot of dissapointment with it, and I"m not exactly sure when Ivy-E will be announced let alone the new Extreme version for it (if any)

Was lookging at the 4960x vs 3960x but not seeing to much of a difference unless I missed something new supported. Seeing as the 3960x's are pretty damn cheap atm I"m more leaning towards it but at the same time since Ivy-E is on the horizon I"m hoping that Asus updates their board as the ROG mentioned is a bit old now though still expensive. The only new board I've seen is the new p9 extreme WS they released a few months ago in preparation for Ivy-E.

Hoping reviews surface on that soon as I"m finding it hard to find any vs the ROG, and by the P9 Extreme WS I mean the 499$ one vice the deluxe/premium thats sporting around.
Seems like Mother boards are going to be almost as expensive as high end CPU's soon...

As for my reasoning for wanting native PCI 3.0 / USB 3.0 support on the board? I don't upgrade often and GPU's will be my biggest upgrade so I'm pretty sure by whenever time we actually fully make use or start making more of for the b/w I'll be ready for it. This is why I"m searching for info on the new 2011 boards for 2013, as I want to know if by installing a 3960x in them would I be required to use the nvidia hack for 3.0? or Would it just work as indicated since I"ve read so many articles about specific CPU's and or architecture required for 3.0 to even activate..


Thanks again!
 


I was a lil worried when I read the "WS" part as Workstation as opposed to a gaming board, though other than design look I don't see any drawbacks in it, though there are only a few reviews seeing as the chip's aren't out yet to take actual advantage of it. Septembers just around the corner (granted it doesn't get pushed) and after reading reviews of the 4960x it sounds like about a 50% jump from my 980x which sounds nice, though please DO correct me if I"m wrong.

500$ is pretty insane for a motherboard, though seeing as the ROG IV is still 400$ I doubt it'd go down in the next 2 years lol. Only other interest is the new eVGA Dark, curious if Gigabyte will enter the scene prior to launch :s
 
Blah, after researching even more the past week, and tallying up reviews, suggestions, and information from professionals, I feel I should wait for Ivy-E and that will be my sweet spot for the next few years.

Gonna probably go for the 4960x as it seems to be a nice jump from the 3960x Hopefully it releases the first/2nd week of September as stated since they haven't pushed it back yet. Waiting for more motherboard reviews as well as there only appear to be 2 NEW 2011 boards out for the year 2013 thus far.

I would like to do some benchmarks between the 2 to test the difference in upgrade as well, so I"ll look up some recommended apps to crunch out some numbers.