Should I upgrade from Sandy Bridge

[N.E.A]

Hi everyone, 

 

I'm currently on the lookout to upgrade my GTX 275 to GTX 1070. Now I've also considered that I should upgrade my CPU - MB - RAM in the near future. So I have two questions: 

 

1. Will it really be worth upgrading to Skylake? I've never noticed any hiccups or lags whatsoever in my current PC except when it came to GPU intensive games. 

 

2. Some have told me that there are issues with DDR4 regarding memory speeds and they slow down. I don't really believe that but I thought I'd ask you about it. 

 

If I'm to upgrade, I'd get Core i5 6400 and 16 RAM GB and probably H170 MB. My current PC has core i5 2400, 8 GB RAM and the Asus P8P67 Pro. 

[Ophidio]

It is not worth upgrading to Skylake. Luke from LTT hasn't even upgraded from Sandy Bridge because he see's no point in it. There haven't really been any huge performance increases in any Intel Chip since then. Mayeb wait anotehr generation before upgrading. 

 

But what chip do you have anyway? It might bottleneck a little (probably not though) depending on what chip it is. If it bottlenecks the GPU that's the only reason I would think you would need an upgrade.

[N.E.A]

6 minutes ago, Ophidio said:

It is not worth upgrading to Skylake. Luke from LTT hasn't even upgraded from Sandy Bridge because he see's no point in it. There haven't really been any huge performance increases in any Intel Chip since then. Mayeb wait anotehr generation before upgrading. 

 

But what chip do you have anyway? It might bottleneck a little (probably not though) depending on what chip it is. If it bottlenecks the GPU that's the only reason I would think you would need an upgrade.

I have the core i5 2400 and P67 

[Ophidio]

You should be fine. It might bottleneck slightly but it's only going to be in like 2% of games that are out today. Other than you should be fine. After one more generation though I probably would upgrade. It's just not worth it for you right now as those chips are still great in most every game today. 

 

Do you feel like it's been holding you back any?

[Darel321]

ehh.. you wont get an amazing upgrade by doing that... only thing worth mention is you would go from 95W to 65W

[ChrisCross]

11 minutes ago, N.E.A said:

 

current games are pretty cpu intensive. if you take a look at some benchmarks you will notice that even the upgrade from haswell to skylake brings you a couple more frames. i would maybe wait for polaris and then upgrade to a 6500.

but i assume at 1080p. your not loosing <20fps. so its not like your game will be unplayable.

[N.E.A]

11 minutes ago, Ophidio said:

You should be fine. It might bottleneck slightly but it's only going to be in like 2% of games that are out today. Other than you should be fine. After one more generation though I probably would upgrade. It's just not worth it for you right now as those chips are still great in most every game today. 

 

Do you feel like it's been holding you back any?

I don't feel that I've been hindered by CPU power at all. Everything runs so smooth. If anything, its the GTX 275 that is no longer powerful enough for today's games. Plus it does not support DX11 so I'm not getting the full experience of the game.

11 minutes ago, Darel321 said:

ehh.. you wont get an amazing upgrade by doing that... only thing worth mention is you would go from 95W to 65W

I thought as much. 

8 minutes ago, ChrisCross said:

current games are pretty cpu intensive. if you take a look at some benchmarks you will notice that even the upgrade from haswell to skylake brings you a couple more frames. i would maybe wait for polaris and then upgrade to a 6500.

but i assume at 1080p. your not loosing <20fps. so its not like your game will be unplayable.

Exactly why I did not think it will be worth the money at the moment. 

 

I have one question guys, my MB has a PCI-E 2.0. I know that PCI-E GPUs are backwards compatible. But does that apply to the new GTX 1070 / 1080 ? I didn't check on this but I want to make sure that I'm not getting the card and will end up not being able to use it with my current system. 

[Stefken89]

I say: get your new GPU and see for yourself if you get bottlenecks from your CPU in the games that you play. If you do, then you know you need to upgrade :-)

[Ophidio]

They should be backwards compat with PCI-E 2.0. There's no reason for them not to be. They'd be losing a lot of buyers if they stopped making them backwards compat. People just end up just buying 980tis and not even look at the new series.

[Cryptonite]

5 minutes ago, N.E.A said:

I don't feel that I've been hindered by CPU power at all. Everything runs so smooth. If anything, its the GTX 275 that is no longer powerful enough for today's games. Plus it does not support DX11 so I'm not getting the full experience of the game.

I thought as much. 

Exactly why I did not think it will be worth the money at the moment. 

 

I have one question guys, my MB has a PCI-E 2.0. I know that PCI-E GPUs are backwards compatible. But does that apply to the new GTX 1070 / 1080 ? I didn't check on this but I want to make sure that I'm not getting the card and will end up not being able to use it with my current system. 

no PCI-E 2 16x should be fine.

[Hubba]

• CPU
  1. I7 2700k 2. i5 6600k
• Motherboard
  1. ASUS P8P67 PRO 2.MSI Z170A So.1151
• RAM
  1. 16GB HyperX Savage red DDR3-1866 2. 16GB G.Skill RipJaws V DDR4-3200
• GPU
  1. MSI Gaming 4G GTX 970 2. Radeon Sapphire HD 7870

 

Those are my two computers and they are in the same gen (same mb aswell )
I can definately tell you that the 2 cpus have a lot of air there is no bottlenecking, but your cpus are a weaker version so your old cpu might get problems with shomething like ARMA III or any CPU intensive game! even the new i5 might have problems in a worst case scenario in games like arma, but i dont really know a cpu that is not getting wrecked by arma

the GPU intensive games are no problem at all as you might expect i dont think you "old" CPU will have any problems at all so you can stick with it a little bit longer

 

If you get some microstuttering display you CPU GPU RAM and VRAM usage and see wht is close to 100%

I had microstutters in ARK: Surviavl Evolved ... what a surprise who doesnt have ;D, but the game was running fine otherwise so i did some investigation and my 8 GB ram were at 7.5 -7.8 GB used! i got me a 16GB kit and there was 80% less stuttering.

 

later i upgraded to a MSI Gaming 4G GTX 970 from a Radeon Sapphire HD 7870 and now all my components are at 30 -70% usage on gaming sessions on both of my PCs the i5 runs games up to witcher3 on pretty high settings and my i7 runs any game i got on decent fps on max settings.

 

The new CPUs aren´t really that much better in gaming you can still play almost any game with a i5 at 3-3.5GHZ most games with even less.

 

as long as the cpu and ram usage is under 60-70% and at ok temps while gaming without any stuttering. there is no reason to change anything.

 

even if its gets hot, get some new thermal paste on the cpu and try again! works 90% of the time.

IMO you can stick with it a bit longer! as both computers are pretty much the same strength (sandy is even a little stronger still!)

[ybriK]

You won't experience MASSIVE bottlenecks, by that I mean insane amounts of stuttering. You're good to go even for doing some light video/photo editing.

http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html

https://youtu.be/DxGge0tR4IM?t=780

[N.E.A]

You won't experience MASSIVE bottlenecks, by that I mean insane amounts of stuttering. You're good to go even for doing some light video/photo editing.

http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html

https://youtu.be/DxGge0tR4IM?t=780

You nailed it.  that video says it all.