New Build

[X66WeeD666X]

Hey there!

Back again with another question for you people who have been helpful in the past, if you would endulge me another time!

I'm looking to upgrade my rig and monitors, bout to move into an apartment and it needs a gift! Currently running 1x47" and 2x24"widescreens for monitors kicking them to 3x42" as soon as possible. To go with this i need a rig that can run BF3, without dropping below 60 FPS, or liveable with occasionaly dropping to 50 in heavy fights, preferably not though, in Resolution 5760 x 1200.

So current specs are.

CPU: Intel Core i7 x 980 @ 3.33GHz
MOBO: Asus Rampage III Extreme
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 15gb DDR3 1600mhz
GFX: Asus ATI HD7970
HD: 2 x 500gb "Brand forgotten" 10k RPM in raid mode
Power Supply: Thermaltake HX1000W
Cooling: Multiple fans and liquid cooling
Case: Antec 1200
Blu Ray


So any ideas?

Currently in 1920 x 1080 in BF3 on all low, no shadows or aliasing, i average 50-60 FPS.

My idea was change out the MOBO, CPU, HD and add in another 7970, my mate reckons i can get away with just slopping in another 7970 or maybe even 2 more of them.

Which option would be better? Would the second idea need more cooling?

What to do!? Any help is very much appreciated.

[steve_rogers42]

wait your getting ~50fps at 1920x1080 with a 7970 and a 980? OC the 980 to 4 if you have adequate cooling, the RE3 should handle it (godsake the Classy3 does it well enough)

hmm, well the next progressive step would be to more to a 2011 setup, as in a 3960X and a rampage IV, but thats if you want to throw money at a problem not to many of us suffer, but your case is a little special, granted. really you would need to look into 7970 scaling, and see if crossfire will really give you what you need and if thats the case, bump the clocks on the 980 and swap in another card along side the one you have.

done think there is a huge performance difference going to a 2011 setup, but it is newer tech.

[X66WeeD666X]

wait your getting ~50fps at 1920x1080 with a 7970 and a 980? OC the 980 to 4 if you have adequate cooling, the RE3 should handle it (godsake the Classy3 does it well enough)

hmm, well the next progressive step would be to more to a 2011 setup, as in a 3960X and a rampage IV, but thats if you want to throw money at a problem not to many of us suffer, but your case is a little special, granted. really you would need to look into 7970 scaling, and see if crossfire will really give you what you need and if thats the case, bump the clocks on the 980 and swap in another card along side the one you have.

done think there is a huge performance difference going to a 2011 setup, but it is newer tech.

Yep, i've run just about every kinda tweaking tip to get things to run better but she just doesn't get much better.

Ill definitely be looking into better cooling regardless, though the GFX temps under load stay around normal.

The advantage with doing that is ill be able to have a second computer cobbled together from the old parts and other computers i have here. But i would be worried that even after dropping that much money into it i still won't be able to get it run as mentioned above.

It could just be that i'm really bad at optimizing lol but i doubt it.

Judging from reviews about crossfire'd 7970's there does seem to be a large difference, and i've heard good things about the new processors.

[Rnegade]

Well for start you need to find your bottle neck.

How much CPU is being used during a BF3 battle / firefight??? What settings do you have BF3 on?

my i5-750 @4GHz with a single GTX570 runs BF3 on HIGH and gets 60fps in fire fights NO WORRIES, and with a 2nd GTX570 for some SLI action gets that on Ultra.

Either your drivers are letting you down or there is another problem. a HD7970 should be smashing BF3!!!

[X66WeeD666X]

Well for start you need to find your bottle neck.

How much CPU is being used during a BF3 battle / firefight??? What settings do you have BF3 on?

my i5-750 @4GHz with a single GTX570 runs BF3 on HIGH and gets 60fps in fire fights NO WORRIES, and with a 2nd GTX570 for some SLI action gets that on Ultra.

Either your drivers are letting you down or there is another problem. a HD7970 should be smashing BF3!!!

Yeah this is what i thought it should be like! Ill post back tomorrow night with answers to your questions. Bedtime now!

[steve_rogers42]

I would be watching your load on your cores, are you running the 980x without HT or with, and the gpu at stock frequencies? you will need to go through and watch what drops the most when you loose frame rates and look into optimising it.

im going to be surprised if its the processor, might require an OC (the guides in the sticky are quite excellent) but i dont think you should need to fork out for a new system just to get a stable +10fps. should be able to squeeze it.

[ewanqbl]

Hello world! My 1st post.

Ok, I am baffled, you are getting 50-60FPS with low on a 7970 on 1920x1080? You should be getting that on High, with flying color.

Disable HyperThreading, that could negatively impact the performance of your CPU under BF3. And the 980X should be more than enough to run BF3.

I'm running it under an AMD 960T quad core@3750mhz/2600MHz North Bridge, with a XFX 6870 980/1200 mhz overlock, at 1600x900 resolution and doing just fine with it at High, without significative frame drops. Something is definitely wrong if you are getting just those frames under low with a 7970. On the other hand, if you are under Eyefinity, that might be something else.

[steve_rogers42]

I dont think its the HT at all.

Dare say its the drivers for the 7970 not being matured, so if thats the case, update your drivers and try running different settings, there are a few posts in this section of the forum going on about performance tweaking for ATI cards.

give that a shot and come back to us <3

[X66WeeD666X]

Ok sorry haven't much of a chance to be near computer! Only test i've been able to run so far is on SW:TOR and BF3.

Driver Version:8.921.0.0 (Stock ones that came with card)
Driver Date:2/12/2011

GPU O/C'ed to:
GPU Clock MHz 970
Memory Clock MHz 5700
Fan Speed: 70%

Heat temps in degs Idle;
GPU Temp: 47
Memory Temp: 36
Power Temp: 36
GPU Usage: 0-1%

1920 x 1080 All settings to high except shadows, stayed above 60 FPS except for in Warzones, fleet, however i did notice what looked like dropping under 60FPS however it reckons it never did.

Heat temps in degs Averaged and peaked in SWTOR;
GPU Temp: 73-75....81
Memory Temp: 47-48....48
Power Temp: 47-48....48
GPU Usage: 70-100%

Kicking the resolution to 5760 x 1080, had to drop everything to low or off because i was barely scratching a stable 40 FPS, it is now stable at 60+, however it did only add 1 degree to the whole heat levels.

RAM Usage: 4.95gb under load, 2.22gb idle.

For the life of me i can't remember CPU usage, will have to update that.

Tested in BF3 as well, same heat levels, same ram usage, same O/C'ing, however was running in all low or off and was averaging 45-55 FPS in both 1920 x 1080 and 5760 x 1080 resolutions.

Yes my CPU has hyper threading, no i have no clue how to turn it off, ill have a search!

Uhhh, what else can i do to help?

Edit:
Just tried over clocking the CPU and bringing the ram upto its right level (1600mhz) and no settings above stock CPU levels and ram at 1333mhz and it wouldnt boot past bios.

Have turned off hyperthreading to see what happens.

Edit:
CPU Usage in SW:TOR and BF3 before and after hyperthreading remains the same, holding on all cores at full load at around 30-50% usage.

Have noticed considerable load time decreases without HT.

[X66WeeD666X]

Decided to go ahead with the upgrade, will post back here tonight with the details of what im looking to put in.

Figure im gonnan eed extra grunt for that kind rez.

[X66WeeD666X]

Ok so got the upgrade down...know exactly what i want...hopefully! lol

CASE: Cooler Master HAF-X
MOBO: Rampage 4 Extreme
CPU: i7 2700k 3.5ghz
GPU: A secondary 7970
CPU COOLING: Corsair H100
GPU COOLING: Would love to move to a full blown water kit but i think thats way above my level.....anyone got any ideas here then?
MONITORS: 3 of Samsung Series 6 40inch UA40D6000SM

Uhhh custom making the desk for the apartment im moving to

Dropped the SSD cause i still just cant justify the Price to GB ratio.

Anyone got any other suggestions on how to full tweak this new comp out? I've read through some of the stuff in this forum...has helped alot for my knowledge bank peoples! So thanks!

[steve_rogers42]

That mobo and cpu wont work together bro.

If your only getting ~60 and less frames a sec and not pushing 80%+ on the CPU the CPU is not your issue.

I think its ram and graphics more than anything else.

For the RE4 its a x79 chipset, so 2011 socket, so you'd want a 3930X...

I go another 7970 before anything else to make sure, then look at an ssd before going any further, atleast those things can be moved across to your new system when you build it.

[X66WeeD666X]

That mobo and cpu wont work together bro.

If your only getting ~60 and less frames a sec and not pushing 80%+ on the CPU the CPU is not your issue.

I think its ram and graphics more than anything else.

For the RE4 its a x79 chipset, so 2011 socket, so you'd want a 3930X...

I go another 7970 before anything else to make sure, then look at an ssd before going any further, atleast those things can be moved across to your new system when you build it.

lol Righto! Thanks for the heads up there. Damn, that was a fail haha

I'll definitely be transferring to a new case, my old computers need some love in the case department.

I've just upgraded the ram to this

http://www.computeralliance.com.au/part ... Part=12851

Go better? Go more? using computer alliances websites for reference cause of the pretty pictures.

If i where to drop in another 7970 and a few SSD's to give me enough room and forget about the rest except for maybe more cooling reckon this would give me the performance i desire?

With the i7 2700K what would be a good board for it? Seeing alot of good vibes about the AsRock?

[steve_rogers42]

im not to sure about corsair ram modules of late, their early ddr3 was about as useful as a 8mb hdd...

12gb should be ok, i get along fine with a set of 6gb mushkins @ 6-6-6-24/1600 so lower timings and higher mhz = better performance.

i think another 7970 coupled with maybe a decent cooler if your overclocking the 980 would go a long way. a slight tweak OC to get it over stock wouldnt hurt but i'd be looking at graphics cards with a large amount of vram and high clocks.

i7 2700k? hmmm the high end asrocks might be ok, the extreme4 would be ok-ish, you may want o look at specialty boards and see if anything has come out that suits your needs. personally i wouldnt run multi gpu's on an 1156/z69 board.

[X66WeeD666X]

im not to sure about corsair ram modules of late, their early ddr3 was about as useful as a 8mb hdd...

12gb should be ok, i get along fine with a set of 6gb mushkins @ 6-6-6-24/1600 so lower timings and higher mhz = better performance.

i think another 7970 coupled with maybe a decent cooler if your overclocking the 980 would go a long way. a slight tweak OC to get it over stock wouldnt hurt but i'd be looking at graphics cards with a large amount of vram and high clocks.

i7 2700k? hmmm the high end asrocks might be ok, the extreme4 would be ok-ish, you may want o look at specialty boards and see if anything has come out that suits your needs. personally i wouldnt run multi gpu's on an 1156/z69 board.

So throw in another 7970, better water cooler in the H100 for the CPU? SSD to boot.

http://www.computeralliance.com.au/part ... Part=13451

Would that be a decent upgrade from my current ram? So going from 9-9-9-24/1600mhz to 11-11-11-31/2400mhz? Or maybe finding what you have and getting that in there?

http://www.computeralliance.com.au/part ... Part=12908

Hows this go for a SSD? Are they easy enough to install? Like the old style HDs?

When it comes to cooling the GPU, if i buy a after market air cooler, you have to take the cowling off the GPU and fix the new air cooler to the board with thermal paste and screws? Does the same go for water cooled methods for GPUs? When it comes to cooling, other than the fans on the case im a noob lol