Pairing a gtx 1070 with an i7 920 ? Or how to sqeez the best perfomance out of an old system

[Hans-Linus]

Hi guys, 

 

i would really appreciate your input: 

 

At the moment i run a pretty old System ( 2009 ): 

 

- Mainboard: ASUS P6T

- Prozessor: Intel i 7 920 @2,67 GHZ

- Ram: 6 GB DDR3

 

and a old AMD Radeon Series with 2 GB

 

OS is Win10 64bit

 

I am thinking of building a new System but that wont happen til next year. 

And i wanted to start a little projekt where i probably switch the graphicscard. 

I wanna game - but not hardcore - 60 Hz is enough for me. 

But i got a new Panel comming (21:9) with a resolution of: 3440x1440

 

So i am thinking about buying a new graphicscard. 

My main cause of concern: 

The Mainboard only supports PCIe 2.0 x16

 

So how big of a bottleneck-problem do u think i got with PCIe 2.0 x16 in real life applications and games. 

 

Did anyone put a modern card in such an old System ? 

like a gtx 750/950 or 1070 ? 

Are there interesting AMD alternatives ? 

 

i am happy to hear about your experiences (also compatibaly wise)

 

Cheers

 

[Himommies]

I would get a used 980ti 

[Droidbot]

It'll bottleneck, but that is the problem of the processor, not the bandwidth available.

 

 

However, the 1366 platform is INSANE with its support of Xeons. And Xeons are everywhere, as servers get decommissioned by businesses all the time. Xeons go for just $30 or so and yet can OC to about 4Ghz on some boards, which should keep the 1070 in check until you get a platform upgrade.

[Jurrunio]

PCIe 2.0 X16 is enough for any card (in games). Dont worry. Thanks to hyper threading as long as your i7 has clocked high enough it is still relevant.

 

1440p ultrawide is somewhat hard pushed for a GTX 1070 unless you sacrifice some graphics. Maybe a 1080? It's a price increase from about $450 to about $550, but the performance punch is significant. Very good deal imo.

[Guest]

The 1070 would be a huge bottleneck for the i7 920 because it wouldn't be able to keep up with the 1070. The 1070 would be demanding more power from the i7 920 which would be able to provide it. I think your better off waiti and building a new system that has current gen specs that would be able to handle 4K resolution, but not to say that your old system does have the potential to be upgraded. 

[deguzi]

I say if you're planning to get a 1070 regardless with your new pc upgrade next year, might as well get it now and get some performance increase. Wouldnt hurt. 

[Intelfreak]

If you want to keep that system alive for year more or so.

 

Here is what you do or can do.

 

Either overclock that I7 920 to around 4 GHz and if you are using stock cpu cooler get a better one. These chip gets hot then they reach around 4 GHz so good cooling is needed, but can be done with a good aircooler. If you want it be even more fun, find a 6 core Xeon like Xeon X5650/5660/5670 and still get a good cooler and oc it to 4 GHz+. Then you will still have a desent cpu for gaming. If you are going for at Xeon, make sure your motherboard has the newest bios version.

 

Xeon X5650 can be found dead cheap on ebay. Dont be afraid of the low stock clock. They overclock great. If you dont want to oc, you will need to find a higher clockket xeon then else your are gonna suffer in some games by the low clock speeds like GTA V.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-X5650-CPU-2-66GHz-12MB-6-4GT-s-Hexa-6-Core-Server-Processor-SLBV3-/112565328200?epid=82160987&hash=item1a356a9948:g:hwUAAOSwIZBZvEcx&autorefresh=true

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-X5650-2-66GHz-12MB-SLBV3-CPU-/172784547216?epid=82160987&hash=item283ac2f590:g:4-IAAOSw-3FZHO8H

 

Get your self 6 GB of ram more so you have 12 GB in all. 6 GB is not much today and will deffently helt you in games if you get 12 GB in all.

 

GPU whise if you dont overclock your CPU GTX 1070 and above is a waste of money. stock stick to max a GTX 1060 then. If OC a GTX 1070 is a good mach. If you get a Xeon with 6 cores and oc it to 4 GHz or more a GTX 1080 is also an option.

 

Oh and if you dont have a SSD. Get one, you wont regreed it for games (note: SSD does not make your games runs faster, but game load will be much faster than from a standart harddrive) and OS. that will make your pc feels much more snappy and fast.

 

Here is my old system with an I7 920 and GTX 970 SLI and after a small upgrade an I7 980X and a GTX 1080 TI. Note my CPU´s are clokket pretty high (specially I7 980X and runs on a high voltage as well) cause i an not afraid of if a cpu dies so can i get a cheap xeon on ebay any way and over time i have leaned that X58 platform is hard to kill if you know how to oc properly. It can last a long time even when hign oc´ed.

 

I7 920 system

 

I7 980X system and as it runs today.

 

[luigi90210]

Overclock your processor and get the 1070. 

[Hans-Linus]

guys thanks a lot for the great feedback ... you have given me a lot of options and i will try some of them !

 

Thx 

[asand1]

 

 

[Hans-Linus]

so i dont know if anyone is actually interested in this, but since there were many really nice comments here i wanted to give just a quick update. 

 

I decided to go with a Zotac GTX 1060 6 GB and i think it was the right decision. 
I also updated my Monitor to an Dell UltraSharp U3417W.

Which for me makes sense since i am not a high end gamer and i dont need a refreshrate over 60 Hz since i - for myself - wont even be able to see or utilize any differenz with a panel >60 Hz. For me a nice and high resolution is much more interesting than a crazy fps/Hz over 100.  

 

I didnt do Benchmarks - i just have day to day experiencereports and the resume is simple: 

everything runs extremly smoothly. 

games from lol to doom are fun to play and i dont have had any issues til now. 

So i dont think that my CPU is a bottleneck at the moment.

 

so for me this was the perfect choice and a the right performancetweek. 

it also shows that even a core system i built about 8 years ago is still able to hold its ground.

in the end the only difference i think to an 2017 system is connectivity since i dont have thunderbolt 3, usb 3.0 or nvme drives - but to be honest for the things i do the pc (casual gaming, and yeah internet browsing) does not need these features. 

and the money i saved since i didnt have to rebuild my pc i could spend on a really nice ultrawide monitor (which is a really nice thing to have i think)

 

so thanks again to all your comments. they really gave me very interesting perspectives and helped me to ask myself the right questions to find out what i actually need and want my system to do. 

 

Cheers

Hans-Linus