[SOLVED] Worth Upgrading?

[Sir_Tuc]

I have an Intel i7-5960 CPU water cooled (not overclocked), 2 GTX-980 SC graphic cards SLI'd together, 32Gb DDR4 RAM (VERY SLOW clock speed) all on an MSI X99A Godlike Gaming (MS-7883) motherboard. Oh, I also have a 1350W 80 Plus Silver power supply. My RAM is a major drawback because it claimed to be XMP certified and it isn't AND max speed is ONLY 2800MHZ.

I AM a gamer, and I want a system that will play the most hardware demanding games that will be released in the next three years. Can I get by with just buying 64 Gb of very fast DDR4 RAM and a top of the line graphic card or two and keep everything else?

Or should I just buy a new bare bones system and get all new CPU, RAM, graphic card (or two) and motherboard?

Thank you very much for your help.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

You don't need more than 16GB for gaming. Period.

Ram that is faster than 2400MHz on Intel doesn't make a noticeable difference.

Unless you go straight from 2400, to 3600, then you might notice something, but it isn't worth the money you would spend.

Dual 980s are pretty good.

I think of you just overclock them as far as you can that'll help you out until the next generation cards come out.

That CPU however could use an upgrade.
Seeing as how it's not even overclockable it's stuck where it is.

If you can find a 6800K for a good price, I would say that's the only upgrade you need right now.

And then you can overclock it.

 

[Groveling_Wyrm]

Your system isn't the fastest, as the processor is already 4 generations old. However, it is capable of running most games. Your system is good for I would say roughly 2-3 more years before you truly need to upgrade, unless you are wanting top edge performance.

As QwerkyPengwen stated, 16GB of RAM is all you need for the foreseeable future. Unless you are encoding or video editing, I would not see you using your 32GB ram that you have now. Your power supply is highly overpowered for your system.

As for your RAM. Your CPU maxxes out at DDR4 2133. Anything more would be overclocking. Intel processors don't gain much at all by overclocking the RAM. You didn't really lose anything you would notice.

@QwerkyPengwen I am assuming he is referring to the Intel I7 5960x. It is an 8 core, 16 thread processor. It is quite powerful, and it is quite overclockable, even though it is aged.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Ah, if it's an X chip, and you are for a fact running your RAM at 2800MHz, then you don't need to upgrade anything.

Instead, as time goes on, you can overclock the CPU.

And as I stated before, you can upgrade to the next generation of graphic cards when they release.

Let's wait and see how Navi stacks up when it drops.

 

[mgallo848]

You don't need more than 16GB for gaming. Period.

Ram that is faster than 2400MHz on Intel doesn't make a noticeable difference.

Unless you go straight from 2400, to 3600, then you might notice something, but it isn't worth the money you would spend.

I completely agree

Dual 980s are pretty good.

I think of you just overclock them as far as you can that'll help you out until the next generation cards come out.

Normally I agree also unless he's playing games that don't support dual card setups very well

That CPU however could use an upgrade.
Seeing as how it's not even overclockable it's stuck where it is.

I disagree. To my knowledge, all i7 5960's are "x" series chips and can be overclocked. Tom's hardware review got 4 out of 5 to run at 4.5 and one at 4.6. it's an 8 core/16 thread beast of a chip. You could simply turn off the hyperthreading in BIOS to achieve a higher stable overclock. (you said you're a gamer and almost no games will take advantage of 16 threads)

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclocking-retail-intel-core-i7-5960x-cpu,4237.html#p1

 

[geofelt]

In what way is your pc not doing the job now?
Your processor seems to be to be perfectly adequate.

You have a processor with 16 threads.
If you overclock, you can get better single thread performance.
Your i7-5960X has a passmark rating of 15950 and a single thread rating of 2336.

As mentioned before 16gb of ram is sufficient for gaming.
More is only useful if you are also running many other tasks.
Intel is not very sensitive to ram speeds
Replacing with faster ram will not be worth much.

If I see any problem with gaming it is the use of sli.
You do get wonderful fps on synthetic sli benchmarks.
But, your gaming experience is apt to be better with a good single card.
dual gpu is prone to stuttering and screen tearing.
An increasing number of games no longer support dual gpu.

Today, a RTX2080ti is about the strongest graphics card you can buy.
I would do that first.

If you think you need better single thread performance, the Intel 9th gen "K" processors are as good as it gets for gaming. All will oc to around 5.0
You can get a 9600K, 9700K or 9900K with 6/8/16 threads respectively.

To see how many threads are actually useful to you, run this experiment:
Remove one or more cores/threads. You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of threads to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, your game does not need all the threads you have.

 

[Sir_Tuc]

You guys are awesome for answering my question. But I thought at the least I should get XMP capable memory and a graphic card update. I have not OC'd anything before but i did try to overclock this PC and was met with failure. When I researched why, I found out it was because my installed memory wasn't XMP capable. Isn't that true?

 

[geofelt]

XMP is a setting imbedded in ram that allows ram to be overclocked to higher than stock speeds.
Of course, one can set the same specs without the xmp profile.

Intel ram controllers are very good at predicting future use of ram and fetching it pre-emptively.
As a practical matter faster ram speeds makes little difference in real app speed or fps.

Your thought of a better graphics card is likely correct.

Try this simple test:
Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

 

[mgallo848]

Unless there is something specifically different about your chip I have overclocked countless numbers of CPUs without the use of XMP. Do you have an aftermarket cooler capable of supporting overclocking?

 

[mgallo848]

Sorry I just saw your original post. Obviously you have a cooler that can handle overclocking. It's possible you tried to overclock it too aggressively or didn't have any voltage settings correct? I didn't read the entire article but take a look at the link I previously posted because they overclocked your CPU and it might give you some ideas

 

[cryoburner]

What resolution are you gaming at?

 

[Sir_Tuc]

My mis-typed, my CPU is indeed an intel i7-5960x. plz forgive. All of you have given me great feed back but I can only select one of you for the best answer. If I did not choose you please do not take it personally. I'm having a hard time choosing.