i7-2600 rig - futureproofing?

[raultherabbit]

Hi everyone,

 

I've been trying to piece together an upgrade for my pc.  

 

my setup currently is an i7-2600 cooled by a 212+, running on a Z77 gigabyte board with 16gb of ram, a gigabyte winforce oc GTX 760, and a single 2tb hard drive, running Win 7 Professional 64bit

 

I can pretty much still run all my gaming and programs on high/ultra settings at 1920x1080 resolution.  

 

My question is future upgrades.  I know my near future upgrades include swapping to an SSD for windows and a second larger ssd for my games, delegating my 2tb for music or whatever.  I would also like to be able to play games at 1440p as i have a monitor available to me for the taking.

 

Other than that I'm a bit torn.  I feel like the GTX 760 and 7200 rpm drive is my 'bottleneck' and a lot of the stuff i've read leads me to believe upgrading my cpu to a i5 3570k may not be terribly cost effective vs keeping my i7-2600.  I know i can OC the i5 to ~4.0ghz at that point and it's tempting, since i've already thought about going to watercooling just as a project to do.

 

but would it be a wiser way of spending money to wait until the GTX 800 series is out and grab an 870?  Should I just go SSDs?  i5?  i7?  I don't do anything that requires an i7 i think, i don't do much aside from some light 3d studio max for rendering, and everything else is gaming and random stuff.

 

so, opinions? 

 

 

[dragoon20005]

I say new GPU

 

then SSD

 

CPU and mobo last

[SkilledRebuilds]

I say new GPU

then SSD

CPU and mobo last

THIS.

[dizmo]

Your CPU should be fine, you'll see the biggest gaming increase with a card upgrade, and you'll see the biggest OS/general feel improvement with the SSD's.

What's your budget like? You can always swing for a 290 on eBay, they're quite cheap. Just have to try and weed out the mining cards.

Contrary to popular belief they're not ALL used for mining..

 

If you can afford the honestly not that much difference in price between an i5 and an i7, and you don't upgrade often, then I'd go for the higher end chip.

Who knows, maybe this will be the year dev's start to listen to Intel and they use more cores/threads.

It's always a possibility.

*crosses fingers*

 

As for waiting...you can wait forever if you wait for "the next best thing that's supposed to be coming soon".

If you're fine with what you have now, wait. If you want more performance now, upgrade.

 

Also, please. Stop using the phrase future proof.
There is no such thing.

[raultherabbit]

Your CPU should be fine, you'll see the biggest gaming increase with a card upgrade, and you'll see the biggest OS/general feel improvement with the SSD's.

What's your budget like? You can always swing for a 290 on eBay, they're quite cheap. Just have to try and weed out the mining cards.

Contrary to popular belief they're not ALL used for mining..

 

If you can afford the honestly not that much difference in price between an i5 and an i7, and you don't upgrade often, then I'd go for the higher end chip.

Who knows, maybe this will be the year dev's start to listen to Intel and they use more cores/threads.

It's always a possibility.

*crosses fingers*

 

As for waiting...you can wait forever if you wait for "the next best thing that's supposed to be coming soon".

If you're fine with what you have now, wait. If you want more performance now, upgrade.

 

Also, please. Stop using the phrase future proof.

There is no such thing.

sorry to grate your eardrums. i'll make sure to futureproof my other posts so I don't offend.

 

I'm not really interested in waiting for the next big thing.  You could have easily said "go 770" and back it up with some information regarding that, or 800 series, or an ATI card, and I would listen to your advice.  I only threw nvidia's next generation cards out there because i felt it might be a bit silly at this point to go 770.  Though there will probably be some nice deals on 770 or maybe even a 780 when the new cards come out.

 

I am fine with what I have now, for the games out now.  What I was looking for was maybe some advice from folks more in the know about a better direction than I was thinking for upgrades... and based on the advice i've gotten, i'll worry about a new gfx card before i bother going ssd.

 

Thanks folks for the advice!  I actually though i'd be better off going ssd, but this has made me rethink my ideas. 

[raultherabbit]

GPU first, try and OC your 2600 (I OC'd my 3770 to 4.0 without any problems), and like the others (CPU+Mobo last)

my motherboard does let me play with fsb and multiplyers even though its a locked proc.. i thought if i messed with the settings it would just not change a thing.  I will experiment with this some.  Thanks!

[dizmo]

sorry to grate your eardrums. i'll make sure to futureproof my other posts so I don't offend.

 

I'm not really interested in waiting for the next big thing.  You could have easily said "go 770" and back it up with some information regarding that, or 800 series, or an ATI card, and I would listen to your advice.  I only threw nvidia's next generation cards out there because i felt it might be a bit silly at this point to go 770.  Though there will probably be some nice deals on 770 or maybe even a 780 when the new cards come out.

 

I am fine with what I have now, for the games out now.  What I was looking for was maybe some advice from folks more in the know about a better direction than I was thinking for upgrades... and based on the advice i've gotten, i'll worry about a new gfx card before i bother going ssd.

 

Thanks folks for the advice!  I actually though i'd be better off going ssd, but this has made me rethink my ideas. 

Excellent.

 

You asked if you should wait for the 800 series, when it isn't even out yet. There's no way any of us can tell you if it's worth waiting for, or even that much of an improvement over the current generation.

ATI hasn't existed for years

A 770 won't be that big of a difference from your 760. You can get a 780 for $419, that'd be a better choice.

[knight_40k]

Going from the i7 2600 to a i5 3570k would be a lateral move. Since you are currently happy with your GTX760 I would recommend waiting on a new GPU until you need one. This leaves you with more time to save until you replace your mobo/cpu and GPU and 1440p monitor. Basically you are left with upgrading to an SSD which I definitely recommend, the rest of that stuff can wait IMO.

[raultherabbit]

Excellent.

 

You asked if you should wait for the 800 series, when it isn't even out yet. There's no way any of us can tell you if it's worth waiting for, or even that much of an improvement over the current generation.

ATI hasn't existed for years

A 770 won't be that big of a difference from your 760. You can get a 780 for $419, that'd be a better choice.

 

 

I haven't owned an AMD card since the ATI 9800 XT.. so it's been a while, heh.  One Day I'll remember to call them AMDs.

 

I kinda figured/hoped that folks on a good enthusiast tech board might know more than me about upcoming products, but yeah you're right... I did ask about products that do not exist yet so my bad.. and I'll hold off on the 770 then.  the price of 780s are still just a little bit pricier than I wanted to shell for right this second, but perhaps if I luck out there will be a sub 400 card before the 800s come out.

 

Thanks for the advice... and i was teasing about the last comment about that dirty F word.  I'd forgotten how much i hate that word until i posted.  

[SymphonyX7]

I say new GPU

 

then SSD

 

CPU and mobo last

I second this somewhat. The GTX 760 can barely run the latest games on ultra and achieve 60 FPS at 1080p at the same time. Usually you're forced to lower down to high settings if you want 60 FPS on the latest AAA games. 

Also, since you have a Z77 motherboard, you might want to take a look at a small, but very fast SSD (i.e. Intel 330 60 GB) to be used as a cache via Intel RST. You can still keep your 7200 rpm drive and enjoy a performance boost on your most frequently accessed apps. This 

CPU and motherboard should be last. I don't think you'll be needing an upgrade until Skylake arrives in 2016. In a GPU limited scenario where the games are on the highest graphics settings, the difference between the latest i7-4770K and i7-2600K is rather small, surely not worth the upgrade. Check this out: http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1164&page=13

Personally, I'd probably wait a bit longer until the new GPUs from AMD and Nvidia arrive. It's only a half a year wait. Surely you can bear with "slightly lower than ultra" settings for a few months. I'd go get an SSD first, GPU second, then CPU + mobo when Skylake arrives.