Should I upgrade?

bm23

bm23

Active Member
I've just finished high school and I'm in the army for the next 2 years (because Singapore has mandatory conscription). During these 2 years, especially the next 6-12 months, I'll be working with 3ds max render for college portfolio, mainly architecture design. I'll definitely be working with autocad and 3ds max constantly when I get to college 2 years from now.
My current specs are
core i7 870 @ 2.93
8gb GSkill DDR3 1600
GTX 560 OC
120gb Corsair SSD
2TB WD Green caviar storage
560W Silver Stone PSU

Rendering is taking a very long time atm. My question is, should I upgrade? I'm looking at either i7-3770k or i7-3820, both OC (price is about the same over here). How long will that last me in term of rendering? I just started on 3D modeling so I'm not too sure how the hardware requirement progression is. I mean like for gaming, my current 870 is still maxing out all games and I'm quite sure it'll perform well for the next 2 years or so. I can afford the upgrade but I need something that will last me about 4 years before the next upgrade. I know for such tasks, a workstation CPU would be better but that's way out of my budget. If an upgrade is advisable, which CPU should i go with. Also, can you recommend a good MB for OC?

PS: Also, as far as I can tell, rendering for 3ds Max is very CPU-dependent. My GPU sits idle when rendering. I saw this guy on youtube who does fluid simulation and he's still running a 9800gt. Just to explain why I'm not concerned about GPU.
 
Yeah an i7 3770K would be better than a 3820, but both would own an 870. The 3770K overclocks much better than the 3820 and don't forget too that the LGA 1155 boards which the 3770K uses are a lot cheaper than the LGA 2011 boards which the 3820 uses. Definitely get an i7 3770K and overclock.

As for a motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H is good for overclocking and would work with a 3770K, so go for one of those.

Might also be worth getting more RAM too, go for 16GB possibly if you're rendering.

Graphics card and everything else should be fine. I'd say get a new CPU and more RAM though. :)
 
vistakid10 said:
Yeah an i7 3770K would be better than a 3820, but both would own an 870. The 3770K overclocks much better than the 3820 and don't forget too that the LGA 1155 boards which the 3770K uses are a lot cheaper than the LGA 2011 boards which the 3820 uses. Definitely get an i7 3770K and overclock.

As for a motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H is good for overclocking and would work with a 3770K, so go for one of those.

Might also be worth getting more RAM too, go for 16GB possibly if you're rendering.

Graphics card and everything else should be fine. I'd say get a new CPU and more RAM though. :)
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Thanks for the reply. How long do you think it'll be before I have to upgrade? Really looking for a long term investment here :)
 
bm23 said:
Thanks for the reply. How long do you think it'll be before I have to upgrade? Really looking for a long term investment here :)
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Sorry for the late reply. An i7 3770K overclocked with a great air cooler or liquid cooling should last you a good 2-3 years I reckon. How long would you ideally like it to last?
 
I'd like to have it for about 4 years (midway through college) if possible. There's a slight difference in "lifespan" in this case because i'm talking about rendering. There's no specific hardware requirement per se, unlike gaming. For gaming, there's a clear trend, you'd know exactly how much firepower upcoming games require and have a good estimate of your hardware lifespan. Rendering can very well be done with a pentium 4 but you'd probably have to wait weeks for a render.
 
Yep I reckon an overclocked 3770K would do you fine for 4 years. Are you panning on getting an aftermarket cooler and overclocking? If so, which cooler?
 
I already have a CM hyper evo 212 :) As for the MB, how's the Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H? I can't find the GA-Z77X-UD5H over here and the Z77X-UP5TH is 200 bucks more than the UD3H. Any other suggestions?
 
The UD3H is a great board, it's usually the one I recommend to people on here who want to buy Intel systems.

The UD3H should be fine for overclocking too with the 3770K and the Hyper Evo 212+. :)
 
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