Upgrading time for the monster

[Dweller_Benthos]

So, I've been thinking for a few months now about upgrading the monster rig (pics & specs here) since I'm getting better performance out of the machine at w@&k that has a newer CPU but much less firepower in the graphics department. So, I want a new CPU. Of course, that means a new motherboard and might as well do the memory while I'm at it. Then, I can either just sell the old mobo/cpu/mem to a used place or plug it into a new case and sell that. Anyway, looking at the available options, this seems nice:

Mobo / CPU

Memory

Hoping to get a little future proofing there, with the Asus board and the core i7 3770, should beat out my current core i7 960, which was OK at the time, but even the 2600 I have in the machine at w@&k is noticeably much faster when running games like Minecraft or Kerbal Space Program.

Any thoughts? Those are the best deals I could find on Tiger, which we have a business account with, so I can use the company account and pay my boss off over time. The other combo deals they had weren't as nice and didn't have the features I need, like lots of USB ports. I can get separate items, but I don't see anything better for the price.

[Art Blade]

Asus has always been a good and reliable brand, the intel i7 family are excellent processors, and Kingston RAM is known as a decent brand, too. Sounds like you're in for a good deal there  :) :-X

[PZ]

Indeed; sounds like you have it all worked out D_B.  Although I've never used anything other than the Intel processors, they have never failed me (yet)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Thanks, yeah I think this combo will do for a while, month or two at least, lol. Just need to get the courage up to get in there and install the stuff. The case is easy enough to w@&k in luckily.

[mandru]

I think it's a great choice D_B.  >:D   Especially since it's the exact same mobo and CPU (i7 3770 only where yours has an "S" mine is a "K" what ever that means) that I'm waiting for the shop doing the upgrade for me to finish up.

I really like the mobo's dust covers for every possible socket and lead connector, interior fans for efficient cooling and the fact that it's a military grade board.  Another exciting thing about that Sabertooth mobo is that on the back side (or is it bottom side?  :-\\ ) there is an almost completely undocumented Thunderbolt interface that will allow a super fast (chainable like USB I believe) connection to a thunderbolt drive or drives like the Multi-TByte ones Apple sells.  I wasn't able to explain it well enough to the computer shop techie to get a tap in port connected externally on my rig but where you are doing your own rebuild you should be able to take advantage of it if it suits your fancy.  ;)

I used to have a techie friend that I could bribe to do w@&k for me with fresh out of the oven stromboli and dipping sauce.  It's too bad you don't live nearby D_B.  I would have made you an offer to do my rebuild that would have been hard to refuse.  ;)

[Dweller_Benthos]

I might have taken you up on that mandru. Tearing apart a system completely like this is a bit of a job, and while I'm at it, I'm going to move my card reader from the bottom bay to the top bay so I don't have to get on my hands and knees with a flashlight (really!) to see what slot I need to use. At least in the upper bay it will be a little more accessible.

Looks like your 3770K will be slightly faster than my S model, you can go here:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html?select=desktop

to look at different Intel CPUs and see what differences there are. Yours has a slightly faster clock speed and bus to core ratio (whatever that is) has a higher max TDP (again whatever that is), mine runs slightly hotter, but mine has virtualization and trusted execution, again, whatever those are. Considering the price for a 38xx or 39xx CPU is much higher, by almost double, the 3770 looks like the deal to go with.

I sent the order this morning, total about $720 or so. Not too bad and I think a decent upgrade, now maybe Minecraft won't stutter so much and Kerbal Space Program will run smoother.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Upgrade complete, see pics here

http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=2284.msg54696#msg54696

[mandru]

D_B, have you looked into the Sabertooth's Thunderbolt connectivity features?  I know that it is possible to use a T-Bolt access card in one of the three PCIe slots to access that functionality but from my understanding those slots have a lot less connectivity speed than the full potential of the hot connection that's on the back (or is it bottom?) of the mother board.

Since we are getting the same mobo I was curious if you had info on that.  I'm also thinking about somewhere in the future possibly getting a T-bolt drive and wondered if there were serious advantages applicable to game speeds but I didn't buy this card for that reason alone.

I know that solid state hard drives can speed up gaming load times too but with my imperfect understanding of how it all works I'm not sure of how to go about comparing the two technologies to see how they stack up against each other.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting, that's the first I've heard of Thunderbolt, I don't think the Sabertooth has it natively, at least I don't see a mention of it anywhere. Since I never heard of it until now, I don't know much about it, just what I've scanned quickly on the Asus site. Looks like a replacement for USB 3, but I don' t know how it would stack up against a SATA 6Gbs SSD, which I have. I don't have many games on it (minecraft only) since even one game would pretty much max out it's storage, being that it's only 250GB. A large 1 or 2 TB drive hooked up to thunderbolt does sound like a speedy way to run a game, but you'd have to get a drive that can sustain that kind of throughput in order to take advantage of the bus speed.

Looking here https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products most of the stuff is still MAC only, don't know if you can take one of those external hard drives and just reformat it for PC. Picking one at random, http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10573#a5 the price is a little steep yet. They seem to be aimed towards the MAC heavy image editing or video editing person.

[mandru]

Thanks for the quick response D_B.

Most of the info I have about the Thunderbolt interface comes from this Wiki article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_%28interface%29

It mentions a bit transfer rate of 20GBits per sec in the side bar but under the section "Description" in the body of the article it says "4 lanes of output data at no more than 5.4 Gbit/s per lane" so that is slower than your 6GBs SSD.  It's also a display driver but I'm not sure what that means.

A Google search for the term "Asus Sabertooth Thunderbolt" is providing hits to verify the T-Bolt header on the Z77 motherboard.  It's supposedly "lower left of the board topography" whatever that means.  ???

I'm sure I remember seeing a promo video on Newegg (where an interviewed Asus Rep discussed the T-Bolt feature) that was posted there to give tech stats at the time the board was being hyped for launch but I've not been successful in relocating it.

As to the exorbitant price for the drives I think the current T-Bolt hard drives available are all so expensive for the simple fact that until now they have all been Apple related products.  Hopefully the open source PC market will crack open now that T-Bolt has arrived on the scene for the non-sheeple market.  ;)

[Dweller_Benthos]

A quick check of the specs page here

http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/SABERTOOTH_Z77/

Shows no sign of Thunderbolt, where this board has it plastered all over the place

http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V_PROTHUNDERBOLT/

If the Sabertooth had thunderbolt on it, you'd think they would be crowing from the rooftops about it. Maybe they planned to have it and didn't get it in?

[mandru]

Again I appreciate your quick response D_B and what you say is entirely possible.

If it's not there it's not there.  Where you had the spec sheet to guide you as you set up the connectors to the various peripheral ports if it had been there it would have been documented.  I wasn't doubting you rather I was still being swayed by pre-release hype.  :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

I didn't think you were wrong, because I only looked at the connectors I needed to install the board, and mostly ignored the rest, it was quite possible I had missed something. There is a nice USB 3.0 connector on the board, but I had no use for it, my card reader has a USB 3.0 port, but it's just a pass through to a port on the back of the board. Kinda clunky, but it works.