Hey guys, So I have been looking at building a new machine for myself as mu current one just isnt getting the performance I would like. My current machine is still a great computer but its lagging behind when it comes to 3D modeling in Autodesk Mudbox. I would like to be able to model terrain at 64,000,000 poly's but can only get a stable 32,000,000 polys. past that, I get lag and crashes. Also in CPU intencive games for example Battlefield 3, I get a bottleneck at the CPU. The graphics card uses 85% of the CPU on its own and games like Battlefield 3 need a little bit more than 15% CPU Usage.
This is my current system is
Intel DP45SG Extreme series Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU Stock clock
8Gb's of 1333 Mhz DDR3 ram (Mixture of 2 different types)
Nvidia EVGA GTX 560 GPU Overclocked to 931 MHz Memory 2300 MHz
3Tb's of 7200 RPM HDD
700 Watt Coolmaster Power supply
In Win Stealth Bomber case.
Now do not get me wrong, This computer is still a brilliant computer. It runs any games I throw at it, most up to Battlefield 3 at max settings. The overclock on the GPU is really good for no overvolting overclock but ever atempt at overclocking the CPU has failed. I believe its down to one of the ram sets I have in there. The Kingsten Hyper X ram stock 1600 underclocked to 1333 is fine, should easily overclock but I also have some budget Kingsten ram with stock 1333. Now here is the main problem, The motherboard is fussy, It will accept say that pair of Kinsten Hyper X but an exact same second pair wont go into the second channel, I have bought Hundreds of dollars of ram trying to find some that works and well. Ram in this system dies a lot well, Already lost 2 sets.
When overclocked, programs will randomly crash at CPU speed of 3GHz, At 3.2 the system will just crash. Not to mention the system is hot all the time at stock due to the climate here in New Zealand. CPU Idl temp of 57 C, GPU idles at 64 C. So the main issue is the CPU/Ram caused by the mother board. Inbuilt network card has already died in the motherboard so im comming to the conclusion I need a new system. Even though it still runs really well. I can live without overclocking the CPU if bottlenecking wasnt an issue, but to get better GPU performance I cant just drop a 680 in there.
So I was looking at a new system. I would love to go EVGA with dual Xeons but money is an issue and I cant justify spending $12,000 on a system. That leads me to an Ivy bridge E 3930K, Asus Rampage IV and a GTX Titan when it is released. But I was looking at benchmarks, Autodesk is very CPU intencive and it seems that my Q9550 has better performance in Autodesk than any I7 series CPU. I wouldnt have the same performance in Autodesk software but I would not have issues with Bottlenecking in games
A quick note is all the models I make goes into Cryengine 3 SDK so I need the best of both worlds at as low of a cost as possible. so the real question is, Should I go forth and buy a completly new system? or just put op with what I have until CPU performance increase further?
On a side note, I will be jumping between New Zealand and Australia over the next year or so and having a desktop in Australia is not an option so I need a powerful laptop. I was looking at Sager laptops, Dual ATI 7970m as the extra $500 for a dual 680m GPU is not worth it. But then I factored in shipping costs and tax and found I would be selling my arms and legs to get it over for the US. So any sugestions of a dual GPU, Laptop available in NZ or Aus? Would be much apreciated, (No Alienware)
Thanks
anon