[jimbilly211]

Hello everyone and thanks for taking the time to check this out. Also I'll give a big thanks to all those that helped me build this computer from this forum got tons of help and ideas and just want to say that my computer has been running like a dream for over a year now.

Now I only have a couple of problems and really they are not worth moaning about but I feel like I missed out and should of gone a different way. It just doesn't perform to my liking.

Here are the specs.

990FX Sabertooth Motherboard
AMD FX-8150 Zambezi CPU
want to say like a corsair 650 power supply
XFX Radeon HD 7950 Double Black Edition GPU
Corsair Vengeance 8g dual RAM
Running Windows 7 64 ( I'm not a fan of 8)

OK here is the deal I am thinking of Upgrading the Ram, Motherboard, and CPU.

As far as Ram goes I'm looking for a good 16g dual rather than 4 or 8.(unless the price for the quad is impossible to beat)
For my CPU I am looking at Intel and specifically the Intel Core i7-3930K.

Now I want/need your help with a Motherboard and the RAM. The sabertooth was OK had to RMA it 2 times before one worked. However the BIOS system is awesome and I'm afraid of BIOS without the simple downed version it has. Lastly I am also wanting an after market cooling system so if you could throw an Idea my way on that too would be great!

Build upgrade is roughly 1,200 USD.

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Welcome Back.
you do have pretty good core components there for a gaming rig, the weakest link for gaming being the GPU. If this is mostly an upgrade to get better gaming performance your best bang for the buck is to just upgrade the GPU. If the upgrade is for a different task, please let us know.

[iammykyl]

Welcome Back.
you do have pretty good core components there for a gaming rig, the weakest link for gaming being the GPU. If this is mostly an upgrade to get better gaming performance your best bang for the buck is to just upgrade the GPU. If the upgrade is for a different task, please let us know.

[jimbilly211]

No you are correct. It is for pure gaming. At the time that GPU was about the best bang for the buck why is it now the weakest link?

[jimbilly211]

I'm at a loss.

[iammykyl]

Having more than 8GB of RAM would make a difference for video/photo editing but will not help with gaming, Might show fractanally in benchmarks but you would not see it on your screen.
Your CPU will till support a high end GPU. Even if you went Intel, the i5 3570K is regarded as the sweet spot for gaming. The following is an older article about configuring a balanced system. The parts are a couple of generations back but the principal holds true today, lots of reading but worth it.
> http://www.tomshardw...view-31966.html

MB. The Sabertooth is a fantastic board but really aimed at the avid over-clocker and duel graphics. My personal choice is the Asrock Extreme4, Has everything required for a gamer.

Cooler. Just so builders are aware, Where a CPU is supplied with a cooling solution, from both AMD and Intel, and you choose to install an after-market one, and/or over-clock, any damage caused is not covered by the warranty, also applies to video cards.


GPU. Even if you GPU can pumpout 150 fps and you are using a 60Hz monitor, all you will every see is 60 fps or less if the min frame rates drops down. Of course you need a top end card to sustain 60 fps, or turn down the settings.
Sorry, a bit long winded.

[jimbilly211]

As for the ram if I record games as I play including online will more help the lag I suffer.
The biggest issue with the gpu is that I feel side by side mine looks fine.
And the cooler I know about the warranty and all it's just I moved to a new area with high heat and costs too much to cool the house to my usual 70 comfort this leads to high room temp.

[iammykyl]

As for the ram if I record games as I play including online will more help the lag I suffer.

If you are referring to lag in the game playing and you have heaps of background applications running, you may benefit from more RAM, otherwise no,
> http://www.tomshardw...grade,2778.html
Lag can be from other factors, keyboard, a mechanical PS/2 one has less lag than USB. Ethernet has less than wireless and on-line, you have no control.

If referring to lag in recording and much lower fps, more RAM will not help as most processing is done in the GPU and little in the CPU,
"With the dedicated graphics card you have a few overheads A additional load on the gpu with it sending the framebuffer and B bandwidth, the framebuffer( 24bit bitdepth per pixel normally. So at 1080p (24bits===3Bytes)*1920*1080 = 6220800 Bytes === ~6MB ) is coming back off the GPU over PCI-E to memory(ram) on a per frame (some times less) basis which is slow. Then it has to be saved to disk."
I have seen often the advice to record to a separate disk, which makes a lot of sense.
Have you tried Afterburner for recording, > http://event.msi.com...er/download.htm

I live in Brisbane no air conditioning, summer, often 33C + for weeks, sometimes 38C +. This is my test Machine, bit old but often abused. a Noctua NH-U12P running for 3 years without a hitch, never seen the temps over 50C. Pretty quite even with 4 fans running in a Antec P182. So Noctua are the coolers I use.\