Bottlenecks & Recommendations

[DivideByZero]

So considering my motherboard has a 1150 socket, I am limited to older intel processors. 
I prefer to hold off on an overal revamp of my rig as of right now, since I find it to still run reasonably well on the games I play (Witcher 3, LoL (just tested, around 120 fps at 80%cpu and 30%gpu, with 90% or more RAM), indie games and upcoming Cyberpunk 2077). I am mainly looking for an upgrade which covers a 2/3 year gap and giving a bit of an improvement. 

 

[rares495]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

There's no reason to suspect that it will be useless in a year. Quad cores still dominate the market.

Remember when intel kept stating that quad cores are enough for everything? They have since introduced 6, 8 and 10 core chips in their mainstream lineup. That tells you everything you need to know about quad core CPUs.

[DivideByZero]

Just now, 191x7 said:

Haswell is a lot older than 3 years. You've built that at least 5 years ago, probably 6 to 7. 

 

You, pretty much, need a completely new platform.

Yeah, the motherboard I bought back then was of the older kind. 

[JoostinOnline]

1 minute ago, rares495 said:

Remember when intel kept stating that quad cores are enough for everything? They have since introduced 6, 8 and 10 core chips in their mainstream lineup.

So? I wouldn't build a new system that's a quad core, but that doesn't mean quad core gaming will die anytime soon. He's also got a GTX 970, so he'll be heavily GPU bottlenecked. I'm GPU bottlenecked on everything with my 4790k and 980 Ti.

 

4 minutes ago, DivideByZero said:

Yeah, the motherboard I bought back then was of the older kind. 

Unfortunately, that's what really limits your options. The good news is that you have a motherboard that can overclock unlocked CPU's. That's why I recommend the "K" variants.

[rares495]

9 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

So? I wouldn't build a new system that's a quad core, but that doesn't mean quad core gaming will die anytime soon. He's also got a GTX 970, so he'll be heavily GPU bottlenecked. I'm GPU bottlenecked on everything with my 4790k and 980 Ti.

 

Unfortunately, that's what really limits your options. The good news is that you have a motherboard that can overclock unlocked CPU's. That's why I recommend the "K" variants.

Yeah, so he should buy a CPU that will bottleneck his future graphics card. Wonderful idea.

[JoostinOnline]

32 minutes ago, rares495 said:

Yeah, so he should buy a CPU that will bottleneck his future graphics card. Wonderful idea.

1. It probably won't for a few years.
2. If there was a 6 core CPU compatible with his motherboard and RAM within his budget, I'd recommend it, but there's not.

Edited February 7, 2020 by LogicalDrm

[DivideByZero]

@JoostinOnline

Hey, to summarize what you guys have been saying:

 

To upgrade the performance I'd have to choose between:

1. Get a i7-4770k (and overclock)(and get more RAM)

2. Replace motherboard and:

- Get an AMD setup

- Get an Intel setup

 

I compared the i7-4770k with the current CPU, and it seems that the CPU mark rating is around twice as good. I think I'm going to look into the CPU upgrade only, just for the sake of exploration and comparison, are there any CPU's which are a bit more lower-end than the i7-4770k but still better than the current CPU (i3-4160)?

[JoostinOnline]

25 minutes ago, DivideByZero said:

@JoostinOnline

Hey, to summarize what you guys have been saying:

 

To upgrade the performance I'd have to choose between:

1. Get a i7-4770k (and overclock)(and get more RAM)

2. Replace motherboard and:

- Get an AMD setup

- Get an Intel setup

 

I compared the i7-4770k with the current CPU, and it seems that the CPU mark rating is around twice as good. I think I'm going to look into the CPU upgrade only, just for the sake of exploration and comparison, are there any CPU's which are a bit more lower-end than the i7-4770k but still better than the current CPU (i3-4160)?

Basically yes, although I don't think anyone would recommend a new Intel setup except in very rare cases. About 3 years ago, AMD created the Ryzen platform which is very competitive with what Intel has in terms of performance, but with the added benefit of compatibility across several generations. Intel still makes you upgrade the motherboard. The added flexibility has been turning most people towards AMD.

 

Unless you are willing to upgrade your RAM and motherboard, the two options I recommended are an i5-4670k or an i7-4770k.  Both are quad core CPU's that can be overclocked (compared to your dual core i3, which can't be overclocked), but the i7 has something called hyper-threading. This won't make much of a difference in older games (which is why that old video says "most games only use a couple of threads), but pretty much any AAA game released in the past couple of years will see a big difference. While we don't have any official requirements for Cyberpunk 2077, it will almost undoubtedly make a difference there.

 

PS: I apologize for my part in the debate, I let my frustration get the best of me.

[LogicalDrm]

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On topic. This is indeed question about going to platform upgrade vs upgrading on aging platform. The question is, do you need more power now? Or do you need it when Cyberpunk is released 6 months from now? If its now, then I would go for just getting better part that is needing upgrade. If you need it later, wait until we come to that point. Save some more. Since we are talking about upcoming game, we don't have any knowledge on how well optimized it will be, what component it will be stressing most and so on. So upgrading now can mean that you spend too much on something which isn't gonna have massive effect on your system performance.