Thoughts on Mobo upgrade.

[Sintezza]

Hello Guys and Girls.

 

Lets start my own first topic up here.

 

I wanne ask your fair personal opinnions on what you personaly should do if you where me.

 

Okay so i have an FX8350, and Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 mobo.

My current motherboard is giving me some annoying latency issues between the realtek lan chip and audio chip, which causing playing online flash or java games, somethimes a bit stuttery..

Since there seems to be no solution for this. I´m planning to upgrade my mobo.

 

Since im sick and tired of cheaping out on motherboards, i decided that i wanne grab the Asus crosshair V Formula Z which cost €185,- and has an intel lan..

 

However, the Crosshair V formula Z is allready an older board from 2012 / 2013, and its still that expensive. offcourse its the best board i could get for AMD FX but still...

The thing which hurting my head currently is, that the newer Asus maximus 7 Hero or Ranger, are much cheaper then the older Crosshair V Formula Z, and offer more feutures, better audio quality, and probably a better "newer" intel lan chip.

 

Basicly my plan was to upgrade my current mobo now, and upgrade the GPU to a R9-290 later on.

But the lower price of those maximus 7 hero and ranger are kinda hurting my head atm.

 

Basicly i got my FX8350 cause i like to play arround with virtualization, and thats a task in which the FX 8 cores are so damm good, however lately i don´t realy play with it that much anymore.

 

Seeing those lower prices of the maximus 7 boards are a bit temping to maybe jump the intel route, offcourse i know that an upgrade to a 4770K or 4790K will cost me allot more money, then just the Crosshair 5 but still.

 

- The biggest question thats hurting my head basicly, would it still be worth it to invest €185 in that 2 year old crosshair board?

 

- And ofcourse the other way arround, would it be worth to save a bit more money and going the i7 route?

 

- Or would you guys just upgrade the mobo and the GPU for now, and wait till 2016 for unlocked Skylake?

 

So guys and girls, i would realy like to read your opinnions.

 

I need to dicide this week lol

 

Grtz Sintezza

[airdeano]

@Sintezza

 

short answer, no. the CHVFZ is not worth the investment over what you have.

unless you are overclocking the bejeeze out it with water cooled VRM it is just

another mainboard. i had a UD3 and it was not holding an overclock (VRM heating)

but the CHVFZ does very well. now that i have the VRM waterblock, then we can

see the bejeeze if it is there. was it worth the 2x UD3 cost? not really.

 

for the cost factor of an Intel NIC and mid-grade sound card, that's hold you over

than spending cost unrecoverable on 2x mobo two years from now. and hopefully

those will fix your woes. if not, then you have other issues.

[Sintezza]

@Sintezza

 

short answer, no. the CHVFZ is not worth the investment over what you have.

unless you are overclocking the bejeeze out it with water cooled VRM it is just

another mainboard. i had a UD3 and it was not holding an overclock (VRM heating)

but the CHVFZ does very well. now that i have the VRM waterblock, then we can

see the bejeeze if it is there. was it worth the 2x UD3 cost? not really.

 

for the cost factor of an Intel NIC and mid-grade sound card, that's hold you over

than spending cost unrecoverable on 2x mobo two years from now. and hopefully

those will fix your woes. if not, then you have other issues.

 

Thanks for the ansewr.

 

yes thats basicly the biggest question, i did latency tests, on my audio chip with a  with DPClatency checker, and if my lan chip is disabled, there is nothing wrong, but as soon as i enable the lan chip, after 2 minutes of playing a song, i get an latency error, caused by the realtek lan chip. thats what the logfile tells me

 

Still the anoying thing is, that it seems to let stutter my flash and java based games allot.

Sounds starts to stutter after a while, of playing a game like bombermania, and i get allot of lag.

 

Sometimes my audio crashed completely, cause of that, there is an Windows service which seems helping causing this called Audiodg.exe i googled it, and it seems a very well known annoying issue in Windows 7.

 

But next to that i also have those latency issues which i think is a seperate issue, also somethimes if i wanne close a java screen my usb mouse  seems to freeze for no reason, can only unlock it with my windows key on the keyboard again, which is realy wiered and anoying.

 

But i cannot think about anything else then my mobo muss be causing this.

I allready tried everything. lol

 

My english is very bad by the way dont botter about it, l skipped the night not sleeping.

[airdeano]

@Sintezza

get an el cheapo Intel NIC for giggles, you have the slot room and this will tell

you about your latency if the realtek NIC is the issue.

[Sintezza]

Hmm yeah that could be a good idea.

[Faa]

 Or would you guys just upgrade the mobo and the GPU for now, and wait till 2016 for unlocked Skylake?

GPU first imo. You should only upgrade your CPU if you're held back by the CPU which I doubt you are. Don't think you need more cpu performance for VM's so a new cpu sounds like a waste of money.

Just quickly checking what features the crosshair has to offer; 

- Audio chip, Honestly it isn't that much better than onboard audio. I don't understand the hype around it.

- Better VRM - A few more MHz isn't 200$ worth it.

- Intel NIC - See below.

- Gamefirst thing - Doesn't deserve SSD space.

- Quad SLI - Like you're a lot with it.

- Rog connect - Overclocking your PC with your phone or tablet is kinda useless.

The Formula's feature set is kinda poor imo, Intel rog boards however are kinda minimal as well if you exclude the platform features. 

I'd recommend this NIC, uses the Intel 82574L controller which is nearly identical to what the Asus Rampage IV extreme uses (82579v): http://www.routershop.nl/intel-gigabit-ct-pci-e-gigabit-desktop-adapter/pid=27289

Everyone on amazon gave it 5 stars

 

[Sintezza]

GPU first imo. You should only upgrade your CPU if you're held back by the CPU which I doubt you are. Don't think you need more cpu performance for VM's so a new cpu sounds like a waste of money.

Just quickly checking what features the crosshair has to offer; 

- Audio chip, Honestly it isn't that much better than onboard audio. I don't understand the hype around it.

- Better VRM - A few more MHz isn't 200$ worth it.

- Intel NIC - See below.

- Gamefirst thing - Doesn't deserve SSD space.

- Quad SLI - Like you're a lot with it.

- Rog connect - Overclocking your PC with your phone or tablet is kinda useless.

The Formula's feature set is kinda poor imo, Intel rog boards however are kinda minimal as well if you exclude the platform features. 

I'd recommend this NIC, uses the Intel 82574L controller which is nearly identical to what the Asus Rampage IV extreme uses (82579v): http://www.routershop.nl/intel-gigabit-ct-pci-e-gigabit-desktop-adapter/pid=27289

Everyone on amazon gave it 5 stars

 

No indeed im not helt back by the cpu, im sure about that.

Cause wenn normal gaming like Need for speed, bioshock, BF4 and such offline, it works fine.

So the processor is not the issue.

The issue must be related to the motherboard somewhere. ( idid not try windows 8.1 real time yet)

For virtualization the FX8350 is still the better processor for me, i know that.

 

But still those lower prices of the new intel boards are kinda tempting.

But my FX8350 is basicly good enough to serv me the upcomming 2 years, also for gaming. 

Basicly a better GPU will give me more gaming performance, my 7870GHZ / 270x is starting to become a bit retared.

I think you both are right, that upgrading to intel right now, would not be worth it to me, offcourse i would gain gaming performance. But it would be a big investment, which overall probably is not worth it. 

 

I think its better to stay on my current FX and see what skylake in 2016 has to offer with theire unlocked cpu´s.

or maybe haswell-e. the 5820K will become a 6 core chip 12 threads, with a little less pci-e lanes 28 instead of 40, if its on the same price point as the current 4820K it could maybe be, an interessting chip for me, if it gets all the virtualization instructions, and offcourse "if" X99 chipsets will have full virtualization support on the chipset.

Still nice to see that Haswell 2.0 DC, intel decided to bring back the virtualization instruction vt-d, cause thats realy handy.

 

So i guess for me 2016 will be a year to look for the big upgrades

To bad that my X1 slot is covered by the GPU, i could offcourse use the X4 slot aswell, but then i will "probably" lose some bandwith on the gpu aswell, not realy a big deal but stil..

The second X1 slot is still realy close to the gpu, i think if i put an nic in theire, it will blok half my GPU fan.

Mobo layouts kinda sucks haha.

[Faa]

To bad that my X1 slot is covered by the GPU, i could offcourse use the X4 slot aswell, but then i will "probably" lose some bandwith on the gpu aswell, not realy a big deal but stil..

The second X1 slot is still realy close to the gpu, i think if i put an nic in theire, it will blok half my GPU fan.

Mobo layouts kinda sucks haha.

Not really you would lose bandwidth on the GPU, the x4 slots take their lanes from the chipset and the 16x slots from the CPU. About the cooling thing, well you can install it in the 2nd black 16x slot. The CPU offers 32x pcie 2.0 lanes so your gpu gets 16x and the nic 4x so you have 12x left. If you install it in the x4 slots you will have 16x left. You're not sli'ng/cf'ing at all so just install it in the black x16 slot.

 

I think its better to stay on my current FX and see what skylake in 2016 has to offer with theire unlocked cpu´s.

or maybe haswell-e. the 5820K will become a 6 core chip 12 threads, with a little less pci-e lanes 28 instead of 40, if its on the same price point as the current 4820K it could maybe be, an interessting chip for me, if it gets all the virtualization instructions, and offcourse "if" X99 chipsets will have full virtualization support on the chipset.

Still nice to see that Haswell 2.0 DC, intel decided to bring back the virtualization instruction vt-d, cause thats realy handy.

You use VMware right? For Intel its VT-x or AMD-V. Pci passthrough; Intel its VT-d and AMD Vi.

Most hypervisors like VMware don't have VT-D/AMD Vi support. The only one I know of is Xen, that's just an OS you install on a drive and then you can use it like you usually do in Windows using VMware. Unlocked intel cpu's always had vt-x by the way. If you're still interested in Intel, this deal sounds interesting http://tweakers.net/aanbod/677598/*nieuw*-intel-core-i7-4770k.html

It's sealed and new, dude has a 100% rating. Also he sells a sealed 290x for 340 eur: http://tweakers.net/aanbod/678319/*nieuw*-xfx-radeon-r9-290x-4gb-oc-led-+-battlefield-4.html

Btw you can get Windows 8 legit for 12 eur here: https://www.g2a.com/windows-8-professional-32-64-bit-cd-key-global.html

[Sintezza]

 

Not really you would lose bandwidth on the GPU, the x4 slots take their lanes from the chipset and the 16x slots from the CPU. About the cooling thing, well you can install it in the 2nd black 16x slot. The CPU offers 32x pcie 2.0 lanes so your gpu gets 16x and the nic 4x so you have 12x left. If you install it in the x4 slots you will have 16x left. You're not sli'ng/cf'ing at all so just install it in the black x16 slot.

 

You use VMware right? For Intel its VT-x or AMD-V. Pci passthrough; Intel its VT-d and AMD Vi.

Most hypervisors like VMware don't have VT-D/AMD Vi support. The only one I know of is Xen, that's just an OS you install on a drive and then you can use it like you usually do in Windows using VMware. Unlocked intel cpu's always had vt-x by the way. If you're still interested in Intel, this deal sounds interesting http://tweakers.net/aanbod/677598/*nieuw*-intel-core-i7-4770k.html

It's sealed and new, dude has a 100% rating. Also he sells a sealed 290x for 340 eur: http://tweakers.net/aanbod/678319/*nieuw*-xfx-radeon-r9-290x-4gb-oc-led-+-battlefield-4.html

Btw you can get Windows 8 legit for 12 eur here: https://www.g2a.com/windows-8-professional-32-64-bit-cd-key-global.html

 

 

Thanks for that.

 

Hmm that 4770K for €240 is not a bad deal i suppose.

[Faa]

Thanks for that.

 

Hmm that 4770K for €240 is not a bad deal i suppose.

What about the 290x? Its new as well but he doesnt have warranty for it

Found a used 290 for 200 eur with warranty: http://tweakers.net/aanbod/691264/sapphire-r9-290-4gb-gddr5.html

That stock cooler runs quite loud but you could get an AIO for it or Arctic coolers.

[Sintezza]

What about the 290x? Its new as well but he doesnt have warranty for it

Found a used 290 for 200 eur with warranty: http://tweakers.net/aanbod/691264/sapphire-r9-290-4gb-gddr5.html

That stock cooler runs quite loud but you could get an AIO for it or Arctic coolers.

 

€200,- for that 290x is realy cheap.

Doesburg das vlakbij hmmmm haha

 

Tomorrow i gonne install windows 8.1 on a sepperate HDD, real time.

Cause maybe its an Windows 7 based issue

i found a topic about it, it seems like pain in the ass.

Thank god i dont have crackling issues, but it do have stuttering and what not.

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/48379-dpc-latency-causing-audio-stuttering-crackling.html

[Faa]

€200,- for that 290x is realy cheap.

Doesburg das vlakbij hmm haha

The 200eur one is a 290

[Sintezza]

The 200eur one is a 290

 

lol ah gosh, anyway 290 is the reference to get.

the 290x gets to hot anyway lol

[Faa]

lol ah gosh, anyway 290 is the reference to get.

the 290x gets to hot anyway lol

Yeah the performance a 290x adds isn't worth the heat but with an AIO it's all fine. AMD's price/performance is kinda freaking awesome, cheapest used 780 I found was 370-400 eur and it isn't even better than the 290. I avoided the 780ti, not because its more expensive but just because they consume a good amount of more power and therefore more heat/noise than a 780.