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Obligatory Questions Answered: + Show Spoiler + What is your budget? ~$300
What is your monitor's native resolution? 1920x1200 (x3, gaming on middle monitor)
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? StarCraft II & Heroes of the Storm
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Software Development
Do you intend to overclock? No
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? No
Do you need an operating system? No
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? No
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. Intel
What country will you be buying your parts in? Australia
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. Scorptec.com.au (I realise MSY are cheaper but I enjoy Scorptec's service)
Current Rig: + Show Spoiler + CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K @ 3.7GHz RAM: 16GB G.Skill @ 1333MHz GFX: EVGA GTX 670 2GB M/B: GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 PSU: ANTEC 750W HDD: 4x WD 500GB @ 7200 w/RAID0+1 SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD OS: Windows 7 Premium 64 MOUSE: Logitech G3 KEYB: Filco Majestouch - Cherry MX Browns MAT: SteelSeries QcK StarCraft 2 Edition LCD: 3x 24" LG Flatron @ 1920x1200
Hey all,
I've been using my current rig for quite a while now and it's served me okay but I'm kind of sick of having to use low settings for just StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm. I can run all other games perfectly fine, but as we all know, StarCraft II and Heroes are persnickety about CPU - I figure that's what I need to upgrade.
The good news is that I see there are still plenty of CPUs on the market for my socket (LGA1155). The question is, what CPU out there will get me a consistent 60FPS performance with pretty settings (no less than High)?
Also, if I've misjudged my scenario and someone things it's something else bottle-necking my system, I'm open to hearing those theories as well, however, my GPU has very good benchmark results online with StarCraft II so I don't think that's the problem.
Any help is much appreciated.
EDIT: Turns out I'm pretty fuckin dumb. I was not noticing the CPUs on the market are LGA1150 not LGA1155... I guess I'm fucked?
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United Kingdom20157 Posts
The question is, what CPU out there will get me a consistent 60FPS performance with pretty settings (no less than High)?
First off, most of the graphical settings won't actually affect your FPS when it's low. Aside from physics, effects and reflections, in sc2 you'll find that minimum FPS between low and extreme settings when CPU bound (pretty much all the time whenever FPS is at all low) is the same.
Aside from that, there are not much better CPU's available. You should verify that your RAM is running in dual channel mode (sc2 actually cares about RAM performance) and consider OCing CPU to ~4.4-4.8ghz if possible for that extra ~19-30% performance.
We'll have a new major CPU generation in 3 months or so (Skylake, 6'th gen core) so it would be pretty silly to buy the current gen now, after it's been out for 23 months. You might want to upgrade to a skylake+OC setup then.
Also, the constant 60fps thing is just impossible to say. Load varies so much with maps, the amount of units, the type of units, what they're doing etc. On some maps at the start of the game with my CPU and RAM, i have 800fps, yet there are also 1v1 replays out there (one in particular with two maxed armies, lots of ravens, air units fighting over a field of missile turrets) that easily take it below 30fps with physics on, even to the teens maybe.
It's impossible to compare performance in sc2 without a strict benchmark - i usually do runs with a replay, using a specific player camera, selecting a command center/nexus/hatchery instead of letting the player selections take over and then repeating a time section ~3-5x. That gets results that are repeatable and accurate within 1% fairly easily (0.1% if you do it very well). Without doing something like that, you can ask a question such as "what FPS do you have in a midgame zvp" and either 50 or 140 could be the correct answer with the exact same hardware, just depending on what was happening in that game.
If there's a performance benefit from a third core for sc2, it's minimal. You mainly need a core for the main game thread and then at least one other core for the other tasks that can be split across cores~ there's functionally no faster CPU for it than quad core unlocked i5 (you already have, but one major gen out of date) but there is actual RAM scaling too (able to account for a ~5-10% performance gain)
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Thanks a lot Cyro. I was hoping to just upgrade my CPU, but I think I'll end up having to get a new mobo and CPU together.
That's unfortunate, I hate mobo upgrades!
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United Kingdom20157 Posts
Yea, you'd have to do that. Skylake isn't a bad time. I think coolers should generally support lga1155 (your socket) and 1151 (skylake) so you could maybe buy one now, crank up the CPU by 15-30% and then re-use it with a new mobo and CPU for Skylake
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I'm interested in what you wrote about ensuring my RAM is dual channel mode. I won't ask you what that's all about since I'm capable of Googling, but what sort of performance impact would you estimate that has on SC2?
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Okay so I did a bit of reading - I geuss I can assume by the fact that I have 4 dimms full; I'm running dual channel mode, is that right?
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United Kingdom20157 Posts
Oh sorry, forgot to mention that you can easily check that from the Memory tab of cpu-z. It'll say "Dual" next to "Channel#".
I have not measured the performance difference, but there was a solid >5% performance change between 1600c9 and 2200c9 with my RAM. For single channel vs dual, it could be a big difference (like 10%+) or no difference at all (if it's not bandwidth limited at all, but likes low RAM latency)
You're probably running dual though, especially if you have 4 sticks in there. The most common way it's messed up is not taking 10 seconds to read the quick setup guide in the motherboard manual and only having 2 sticks, using the wrong slots
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Honestly if you OC'd that 2500k, it'd last you for a while longer. I can understand if you aren't comfortable with doing that, as some people aren't, but it's free performance. Not overclocking your unlocked CPU is like not modding your Wii or PSP. It's almost wasteful. I'm assuming you would be buying a newer unlocked CPU and another high end motherboard if you upgraded, I would hope you wouldn't waste that too.
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United Kingdom20157 Posts
When you consider that now - 4 years and 4 months after launch - OCing would get more of a performance gain than outright buying a new CPU, yea it's kinda silly :p
with Skylake on the horizon though, there will probably be real gains there even if not OCing (but OC then upgrade+OC is where it's really at :D)
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On May 06 2015 11:45 Cyro wrote: When you consider that now - 4 years and 4 months after launch - OCing would get more of a performance gain than outright buying a new CPU, yea it's kinda silly :p
with Skylake on the horizon though, there will probably be real gains there even if not OCing (but OC then upgrade+OC is where it's really at :D) I'm not saying that OCing would give more performance than outright buying a new one, but it would make a bit of a difference for what he has now. It pains me to no end to see that someone has an expensive motherboard and an unlocked cpu with an expensive watercooler just to have the most expensive parts. If you're going to go all out for all of that, why waste performance ya know?
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United Kingdom20157 Posts
Ya :D
happens all the time
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