Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey guys. I'm currently looking into building a system successor this year in preparation for Skyrim (yes, I love Elder Scrolls THAT much).

I'm going to be keeping my 3x1080P monitor setup of course, so I'll be playing at 5760x1200. I've learned some things this past year, and now am aware that I really need to look out for VRAM. So I'm going with SLI GTX 580's 3GB edition (maybe 3-way SLI if I can). Probably the EVGA Copper Cool, since I'll be using water cooling.

Now, for the sake of expense, I need to know if at that resolution, spending the extra $500 for the 990x, instead of the 970 is worth it or not. Will I be limited in any way by the 970? I'll be over clocking the CPU either way, despite of my choice. But, right off the bat on stock speeds, is what my question is in regards to. Which should I go with?

Come, oh guru's of high end CPU's w/Surround! :bowdown

They're both 32nm hexacore chips, while the 990X is unlocked, I doubt you'll get it that much faster than you will the 970, to make the cost increase worthwhile.

Surround is a weird bag to play with. In tri-SLI on a single screen, scaling seems to be quite CPU dependent. In Surround, it's not as bad. It's still evident, but it has nowhere near as much impact as in a single screen system. Surround is just that demanding on the GPUs.

I dont think there's much of a point to upgrade from a 970 to 990x today unless you get a very good price for it, or if overclocking is a huge interest. As Shifter said, it's practically the same CPU but with unlocked multiplier and slightly higher frequence-settings from the manufacturer. The only real benefit compared to the 970 is that you'll be able to reach higher stable overclocking results, assuming that you know what you're doing ;) But at that level, the performance-increase in games is most often quite moot compared to various benchmarking-programs like 3dmark or whatever where you hunt points rather than actual fps.

Intel is however finally releasing the real successor to LGA1366 this winter, LGA2011. That's the right time to upgrade if you ask me, and that's when I'm upgrading from my good old 920 as well :) It probably means you'll have to live with your 970 for a month or two in Skyrim, but it should definitely be worth the wait.

I doubt the original game will be that heavy to run anyway since it's developed with consoles in mind, but the awesome graphic-mods will most probably start popping up right around the release of LGA2011-processors, and that's when you'll be needing that extra power ;) Hell, I can barely run Oblivion with all the crazy graphic-mods I have installed even today :rockout

Thanks for the insight guys. So it sounds like at the moment, 990x is definitely NOT worth the money. I'll be lookin' at the 970 in that case :)

Intel is however finally releasing the real successor to LGA1366 this winter, LGA2011. That's the right time to upgrade if you ask me, and that's when I'm upgrading from my good old 920 as well :) It probably means you'll have to live with your 970 for a month or two in Skyrim, but it should definitely be worth the wait.

Well, I don't have my 970 yet, I'm on AM3 right now. Why I was asking on this forum, because the surround resolution raised some questions. The idea is that I'm going to be upgrading relatively close to the week before Skyrim releases. As I'd like to play Skyrim with full DX11 features, everything maxed out to the brim (I can live without AA and vsync).

LGA2011 is Ivory Bridge, right? No sooner release from Intel? That's a bummer if so. I know I'm going to need to upgrade just to get Skyrim running the way I want on release.

Rumour has it that Ivy Bridge has been pushed back into 2012. That gives AMD a window for Bulldozer to come and rule the roost for a while. Of course, it might not happen.

To be honest, I'd stick with the AMD system you currently have, that 1100T is no slouch, and see what performance is like at the time.

My bet, at the minute, is that Skyrim will either run like butter on relatively 'modest' hardware (due to be being a game that has been PRIMARILY developed for the 360 - Bethesda have said that themselves!) or, being developed primarily for consoles, it will be a buggy, steaming pile of dog turd that will take the fans months to polish into a playable game even IF Bethesda release a mod toolkit.

...

However, if you're using Skyrim as an excuse for an upgrade... well, I can understand that. I've been guilty of that a lot - the tweaking/upgrade bug is a hard one to get over. ;)

Ahh, sorry! I somehow read this as if you were thinking of upgrading from 970 to 990x :doh My head is already asleep here, heh. But at least my point about 970 and 990x still stands. And yeah, I completely forgot about Bulldozer too which might be of interest as well whenever it arrives (Early August this time, hopefully!), but rumors so far are not very impressed with the performance :( Still a good idea to wait another month or two and see what happens on the market though! There's no rush yet.

I'm suspicious of rumours about AMD equipment since the rumours about the 4000 (Did we say 400 shaders? Whoops, we meant 800!) 5000 (Did we say 960/1024 shaders? Whoops, we meant 1600!) and 6000 (Did we say 2000 shaders? Whoops, we meant 1536!) series were way off base. If the CPU department has become as good at leak control as the GPU department in AMD, then what we've seen so far have been (at best) rough Engineering Sample benchmarks, and at worst, pulled out of the arse of whoever wrote the article/did the pictures.

That said, I doubt they're anything record-breaking that Intel won't top... but I suppose they might pull something magical out of the hat - the did with Athlon64, after all.

Ok, so having said all this, what would you guys do in my situation? I eventually do plan on upgrading my GPU's to the GTX 580 3GB editions, would that substantially increase performance? At the end of the year, I'm just looking for the highest FPS possible on Surround. i.e., get maybe 50 or so FPS on Crysis, maxed @ 5760x1200.

I'd leave it, save up, and go 3GB 580 SLI or (if something has replaced it and is better) whatever the replacement is.

I certainly wouldn't do a whole platform shift on the offchance it improves something. Wait and see, then jump if necessary. ;)

If you can wait until Sept or so hold out for the new SB-E (socket 2011, x79 chipsets.)

If not, I think a 2600K with a good mobo would be a good choice.