I built my first PC last year, and thought it would be chill to jump on the 1440p bandwagon. I'm planning to get the $300 X-star and a 280X, but I have some questions:
1. Is the Radeon 280X powerful enough for a 1440p res? Is it a good match?
2. Will my Athlon 750K @4.1 GHz bottleneck a 280X?
3.Is 500 watts enough for my Oc'd 750K and OC'd 280X?
Current Build:
-Athlon 750K @4.1 GHz
-MSI FM2-A75MA-E35
-Radeon Sapphire 7850 @ 1050 MHz
-4x2 GB Kingston Blu
-Cooler Master CM 690 III
-Cooler Master Siedon 120V
-1TB WD Blue
Sorry for all my questions, but I'm a curious person.
2. Yes. There will be some measure of a bottleneck. And in demanding games, that bottleneck will be quite significant. In lower games, in might not matter so much. I would always advocate balanced components.
In certain games I experience some bottleneck issues with my FX6300 and Sapphire R9 280X Toxic. mostly in arma 3 and my modded Skyrim, I have OC'ed it to 4.5 Ghz but I still experience some bottleneck in those games. but those games are CPU intensive.
Thanks, Inaki. Metro LL would be another given example that I could think of. Performance cost could be as much as 30%. So it is significant at times, but not always.
Yeah before I OC'ed my CPU I was getting really low frames in Arma 3, and I still do with the OC sometimes, and its mostly multiplayer so on good servers I get good framerates and vice versa with bad servers. I have not played Metro LL I want to but just havent bought it yet.
*EDIT: Arma 3 is not really optimized for AMD and takes more advantage of Intels higher single core performance.
Depends on what quality you want, for Ultra settings i'd rather go with a custom cooled R9 290 because it is not much of a price leap and it definietly is a leap in raw power, and Yes, you will have cpu bottleneck, except on those games that support Mantle. like BF4.
In my humble opinion I would wait with what you have and begin changing bit by bit the rest of the components, For example, an 8350 + MOBO is sometimes cheaper than an R9 280x and will continue to drop in price. The 7850 is a good card for 1080p and you will see a leap in performance. you can then buy a higher W PSU or RAM and then the graphics card. consider also buying an SSD if you want extra performance ( That's what I would do and Its what I call "Do a Frankenstein")
I don't know where you live but for the next few days micro center is having a sale on the 8320 for 99... couple that with a decent 990fx board which u get a 40 discount if you combo with the processor and you get an amazing deal which would probably be better than an apu based cpu. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202384159879110&set=pb.1646318794.-2207520000.1392481473.&type=3&theater