Gill01's Corner

Your colleague is being a bit dense here. 😬
I’ve personally had CPUs running continuously for eight years straight, and I know plenty of older models out there that are still going strong. Take a Pentium II, for example—that tech is about 16 years old and still functions perfectly fine (even if I haven't used it actively in at least 6 or 7 years, including when I handed it off to my neighbor's kids). Then there was an Athlon 3500+ from 2006 that I finally pulled out of a build last year; it wasn't broken, just too slow to even browse the web anymore, and it hadn't been sitting idle for years before that. It was a workhorse until it hit its performance ceiling.

At the end of the day, you can't really pin down an exact lifespan because most people simply don't push their hardware hard enough to find the limit.

Processors basically live forever 😁 That Sandy Bridge of yours will probably outlive all of us; your motherboard and everything else will give up the ghost long before that chip dies.

Sure, it's old school, but Haswell brought maybe a 20-30% performance bump, and I guess you made up for that with some overclocking.

fadedorca66 said:Sure, it’s an older architecture, but Microsoft chips delivered roughly a 20-30% performance boost, which you've essentially made up for through overclocking.

You're overstating things. Clock-for-clock in synthetic benchmarks, the jump was maybe 6%, and the Microsoft/Microsoft Refresh update added another 6%, bringing the total delta to about 12%. In actual gaming and real-world usage, there isn't a noticeable difference.

EDIT

Single-player mode, using a GTX 780 link
Most people are running monitors with a 60-75Hz refresh rate, meaning any FPS gains beyond that 60-75 range are practically invisible.

fadedorca66 said:Processors last practically forever. 😁 Your Sandy Bridge will likely outlive every one of us combined; before that chip gives up the ghost, your motherboard and everything else attached to it will have long since expired.

While it is admittedly an older architecture, Haswell offered perhaps a 20-30% leap in performance, a gap which you have attempted to bridge through overclocking.

Timothy Kim60 said:You are exaggerating quite a bit; when looking at clock-for-clock synthetic benchmarks, Ivy Bridge showed a marginal improvement of about 6%, and Haswell or Haswell Refresh added roughly another 6%, totaling maybe a 12% difference in raw clock speed comparison. In actual gaming scenarios and real-world applications, there is virtually no discernible difference.

EDIT

EDIT singleplayer games, using an HD7970 link
Most people are running monitors with a 60-75Hz refresh rate, which implies that any frame rate exceeding that threshold remains entirely imperceptible.

I was just on the verge of purchasing what I considered a "new processor," but based on your collective wisdom, it seems unnecessary. 😁

If I were to follow your logic, what exactly should constitute an upgrade in my current situation?

ASUS Extreme 4
120 GB SSD
2 x WD Hard Drives (Drive 1: 1500 GB; Drive 2: 500 GB)
i5 2320 (3.7 GHz)
Gigabyte 280 OC 3GB 384 bit
16 GB RAM
Cooler Master Gold 1000 W

Nothing much to say, it's a solid PC. Honestly, the RAM and power supply are total overkill.

Looks like you're really itching to get that money in your pocket 😬

Timothy Kim60 said:It’s a decent machine, I suppose, though the RAM and power supply are certainly excessive for this build.

One can never have enough RAM, can one? Furthermore, considering this graphics card demands at least 600 watts just to function, why bother being stingy when you can simply draw from a full kilowatt?

Brian Campbell36 said:RAM is never enough, and this GPU needs at least 600W. You won't miss a single kWh from your electric bill if you go bigger.

Nah, that card runs fine on a decent 500W power supply.
Anything else is overkill, especially RAM 😁. For gaming, you don't need more than that.

I guess all of that would just be pushing my 360W power supply to its limit.

crimsonstag84 said:All of that would be handled just fine by my 360W power supply.

Why on earth are you running your RAM at a frequency of 1333 MHz? 🤔

It isn't as if these components are so "ancient" that some cheap, off-brand power supply from an overseas discount site could somehow manage them. 😁
I am planning a full system upgrade sometime in 2016.

Some interesting data points here:
click
click

Brian Campbell36 said:Why are you running your RAM at 1333 MHz? 🤔

Because it was the cheapest option on the shelf back then, I guess.

And why on earth would newer high-end components be better just because they pull more power? 😬 It’s actually quite the opposite.

The future looks bleak for power-hungry builds 😬
If you look at how the Maxwell architecture is shaping up, we’re never going to need power supplies pushing past 400-500W for a single GPU again. Right now, those massive power draws are just outliers—think things like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 or high-end Titan cards. Even those won't stay at the top of the food chain for long; give it another generation or two, and even the high-end market will move past that level of consumption completely.

crimsonstag84 said:My 360W power supply could handle all of that.

If that NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 pulls 250 watts under full load, I’d love to know how your 360W unit is actually going to hold up.

Brian Campbell36 Looks like you've got some extra cash on hand—so why didn't you just go for a more powerful card from the jump? Something like an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 or maybe an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 🤔

Alexander Moore67 said:If an R9 280 pulls 250W under full load, I’d love to know how your 360W unit is going to handle it.

1. The R9 280 doesn't pull 250W. That's more what a 280X hits during a stress test (it sits closer to 200W while gaming). The R9 280 pulls about 170Where, which is similar to its GTX 760 counterpart.

For comparison, these are the results from a setup running a 2600K @ 4.5 GHz at 1.35V paired with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680.

2D ~100 W
DiRT3 ~245 W
Furmark ~260 W

The R9 280 is essentially equal to the HD7950.

As you can see from the link above, the guy using an i7 3770 with a 280X is pulling roughly 280-290W during gameplay. There was also another forum member using the exact same power supply as crimsonstag84, and he managed to run an i5 3570K at 4.2GHz alongside an R9 280X.

2. That specific power supply is rated at 360W only because that's what it provides on the +12V rail. If you look at the review, you'll notice it actually handled loads exceeding 430W. You can't just look at the printed wattage; there's a lot more to the math than that.

Larry Ortiz5 said:Brian Campbell36 It seems to me you have money to burn; why didn't you just opt for a more powerful card, such as a Radeon R9 290 or a GeForce GTX 970? 🤔

If I actually had the capital, I would have upgraded to an Intel Core i7 system immediately and sold off this entire rig
☕
Furthermore, I would have chosen a GeForce GTX 980 without a second thought, given that it lacks those frustrating bugs where you're limited to only 3.5 GB of VRAM like you are with the GeForce GTX 970
🍿

I am counting down the days until Monday so I can finally drop this beast into my machine; hopefully, a triple-fan setup will be sufficient to keep things cool, as from what I can gather, everyone seems to struggle with thermal spikes when using a Radeon R9

I simply find satisfaction in reinvesting in my hardware every few years. I have plenty of colleagues who are still running PCs that are five years old without ever having even replaced the thermal paste on their CPU or GPU; to me, that is the equivalent of driving a car for five years without ever taking it in for a single oil change

I don't think buying a GTX 980 makes much sense right now, since you can find an $1667... R9 290 for practically HALF the price, and it's only about 20-30% slower—plus it pulls ~70W more on average, which I guess isn't a huge deal for a high-end rig.

crimsonstag84 said:plus it draws about 70W more on average... which is negligible for a high-end rig.

Poor guy, maybe he's struggling with a 1kW power supply😬

Timothy Kim60 said:Poor soul, perhaps he is struggling because his power supply is only 1kw? 😬

It pains me to provide $200 more 🍿