I have managed to raise enough money for an upgrade so that i can make things better for the next year. the problem is that i dont know what parts i can upgrade. My budget is £300-320
i can either get a:
i7-4820k + Gigabyte X79-UD3 but keep the same graphics card
OR
i7-3770k and maybe crossfire the 7850
OR
GTX 780 and keep the same CPU
If anyone has any recommendations, feel free to post.
Well graphics cards will effect gaming performance more than anything so that will be a key upgrade spot! You may wish to consider getting a 120gb ssd to store the OS and to use a a cache on, that will speed things up as well. Furthermore something with a few more cores may help in the future if games begin to utilise more threads. I recommend using the part picker website as this will ensure that parts will be compatible and you need to check that you have enough power from the PSU to get a beefier GPU.
Is this rig dedicated to gaming alone, or will the Hyperthreading on the I3 and I7 be absolutely necessary. Because you could upgrade both if you don't need HT.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Fz2hFT
That will allow you to change the MOBO out for an 1150 platform, grab the g3258 to overclock, and crossfire another 7850.
Or, if you can save another 25 quid you can grab a 4670k instead which will boost your performance a lot of the CPU side. That g3258 though really can't be beat for the price for gaming, its only £43.
when i was first building my pc, i actually used Partpicker UK as the basis for components and prices.
i know graphics power is important when gaming, and it can also be used when rendering and editing videos. The 7850 has served me well until now, and newer games are starting to push it rather hard and i dont know how long i will be able to last with it.
i know a faster CPU will push the budget to the point where i cant get a GPU, and getting a gpu will cause an oposite effect.
i'm more bothered about the CPU as i would be able to upgrade the gpu whenever in the future.
i just need reccomendations so i know where to start looking and investing into present and future hardware.
Seeing as there will be new graphics cards for both AMD and Nvidia in the next 6 months or so, I'd probably just upgrade to a 3570k or maybe 3770k. You could also consider locked versions of either processor, but I don't see the pont of that especially since you have a Z68 board.
LGA 1150 is pretty pointless. Devil's Canyon and Ivy Bridge are close enough in performance that I don't consider it worth it to get a new motherboard. Haswell-e should be coming out fairly soon, which it would probably be best to wait for that if you want to upgrade to a LGA 2011 since the lowest end Haswell-e CPU will have 6 cores.
Personally, I'm still using my 7950. While the 7850 is quite a bit weaker, I still think it would be best to wait until the next generation of cards (if possible) to get the best upgrade you can for the money. In terms of CPUs, unless you want to step up to a 6-core it is unlikely there will be any CPUs coming out in the near future that will be worth purchasing a new motherboard for.
What's your power supply? That's pretty relevant when it comes to picking a graphics card.
Anyway I came up with two options: one with a locked Ivy Bridge i5 to allow for a bigger budget for a graphics card, and one with the 3570k, but of course that ends up cutting into the GPU budget a little.
Here are some benchmarks comparing the 280 and 280x (The 280 is basically the same card as the 7950): http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1033?vs=1041
To be completely honest, I'd probably go for the first one with the 280x. It's a straight up better card than the 280 for not that much more, and while overclocking is nice it's not super important, at least to me. Also, bear in mind that the 3570k is only £25 more than the 3470, so if you can stretch your budget up by that much you can get the 3570k and 280x.
Still, I think in terms of GPU you're just better off waiting until a new generation of cards.
Also, LGA 2011 is out of the question. The cheapest 6-core i7 is over your budget by about £40, and there's (almost) no reason to go with a quadcore i7 and LGA 2011.