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Hey guys, currently I have:
EVGA X58 Motherboard
EVGA GTX 780 ti
Intel i7 975 @ 4.1 Ghz
Generic 1000 Watt Power Supply
2X6 Gb of Ram GDDR3
Windows 7
I want to add another 780 ti and maybe upgrade the ram. My question is would adding another 780 ti bottle neck my rig or would its performance be bottle necked by the old-ish Motherboard? Could my rig handle it as far as power consumption? What type of ram should I get? Thanks for any help/advice you can give.
-DarkSilhouette
Your system should handle everything right now. What are you looking to make perform better? Unless you are playing games on multi monitors then a gtx780 i7 and 12gb of memory is more than enough to handle every game out there and if you are having issues with a certain game then it is software related. Example games like Watchdogs is so poorly coded it runs terrible on any system no matter what you upgrade. It is possible that your windows is running processes in the background slowing your computer down. To test this try downloading and running Razer game booster.
Save your money and tweak the settings in your bios and overclock everything if you want more speed. SLI is hit and miss, runs great on some games, does very little on others and some games although show better benchmarks you will get graphical errors or micro stuttering. The more RAM you add usually the timings increase thus leading to a less responsive computer. I usually dont like more than 8GB becuase the timings on the ram start to shoot up and I cant oc as far. 1000Watt is more than enough if you decide to do gtx780 SLI.
I have half the power of your system and run all games on there highest settings. I cant imagine you are having any problems.
If you really have an itch to upgrade...
I would say your bottleneck is your old generation intel x58 motherboard and i7 processor.
If you decide to upgrad the RAM than look for high speed AND low latency memory. Dont be fooled into getting high speed memory when the timings are crazy high like 12 12 12. This type of memory will show good loading times but will be laggy. I have had goodluck overclocking Corsair Vengeance/dominator series and Mushkin Redline RAM.
Goodluck, let us know what you decided and the results you found.
Thanks for all the advice. I don't really have a problem with my computer now, I am running BF4 at 60+ fps solidly. Rarely drops below that and it would have to be on a full 64 man server while levloution is happening. I am mainly looking to upgrade because of whats coming out like, AC: Unity, Evolve, Far Cry 4, etc... and I want to see these games in all their glory. Hence the reason i was looking for another video card. Both the MB and CPU are roughly 5 years old. I know these components aren't built to last forever and am pretty sure they are starting to show their age. I also would like to OC my rig (the cpu already is, went from 3.4 to 4.1) but I dont think i have the cooling power in my rig to handle it. Also I would have no idea what im doing. I am not in the least bit tech savvy. Again, thanks for the advice.
Wait untill those games release and if you have issues with them then upgrade. You might be surprised that they run just fine especially if they are reusing the older game engines. If a company states they are using a new game engine that is when upgrades may be needed.
If you are daring then look into overclocking your gtx780. This yields huge improvements and its free!
A lot of the engines that are going to be used for the next little bit have been released and the standard has been set (Cryengine, Frostbite, ...) You're set. Your PSU and RAM are good even if you do upgrade. I might invest in a SSD. But other than that, you're in a good position unless you decide to go 1440p or a 3 way monitor setup and even so, you'd be doing well.
To make my reply as simple as possible, I would recommend something like a i7 4770k (this isn't the minimum to run this obviously haha) if you want to upgrade to SLI and such. If you went the route of upgrading your cpu you would probably upgrade your MOBO to a current gen though for sure. Keep in mind OS usually locks to your mobo so you would probably have to buy a new copy of windows... unless you bought the full version and not just the OEM one... unless I am misunderstanding that windows locks to each MOBO. Also, going down to 8gb (2 x 4gb) of some newer ram wouldnt be a bad idea. I know Gskillz, Corsair and such have good kits for this. Sorry, my advice isn't very organized.
From what I can tell A) you 780ti is already being bottlenecked by your motherboard B) I would wait until the next generation of intel processors come out.
Having more than one 780ti is absolute and utter overkill. As previously mentioned, if you're going to upgrade then upgrade mobo., CPU and RAM. Otherwise, your computer is stellar. Depending on your budget, an i5-4670k is enough for gaming with 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM and a decent ASUS motherboard. If you have the money, get an i7-4770k or i7-4930k and buy a NZXT Kraken X60 or Corsair H100i to OC that betch.
the only thing you could upgrade is your mobo and CPU, an I5 4690k (Devils canyon/haswell refresh for cpu) and keep the ram you have. The GPU is more than enough for 1080p and 60fps on high-ultra on most games so no need to buy another one.