Is my old intel i7 chip still good enough?

[tidi]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to make a new gaming pc since this one was built for me and is not working properly.
I found out that the main problem of my pc is that my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 220) is crap.
So I thought, lets add some cool new things, a little bit of extra RAM and a new graphics card and this baby will be running like a charm.
Then I was thinking about my cpu (a Intel I7 870 running @ 2.93ghz) and wondered whether this was good enough, since I've
never seen it running above 20% of its capacity. Any help here guys? I was told it was quite a high-end processor before the new Intel i7 series
but after looking at some benchmarking it seemed quite bad, now I'm wondering is it ok to stick to this cpu since they're quite expensive things
or will it really help me if I update it aswell when I'm updating my whole pc anyways.

Thanks in advance!
PS I'm also willing to (safely) overclock so if that'd be a good option do tell!

Also I was wondering whether it'd be smart to buy another NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 since they're quite cheap and run them both using crossfire since I think they're SLI compatible?

[PcTechViews]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to make a new gaming pc since this one was built for me and is not working properly.
I found out that the main problem of my pc is that my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 220) is crap.
So I thought, lets add some cool new things, a little bit of extra RAM and a new graphics card and this baby will be running like a charm.
Then I was thinking about my cpu (a Intel I7 870 running @ 2.93ghz) and wondered whether this was good enough, since I've
never seen it running above 20% of its capacity. Any help here guys? I was told it was quite a high-end processor before the new Intel i7 series
but after looking at some benchmarking it seemed quite bad, now I'm wondering is it ok to stick to this cpu since they're quite expensive things
or will it really help me if I update it aswell when I'm updating my whole pc anyways.

Thanks in advance!
PS I'm also willing to (safely) overclock so if that'd be a good option do tell!

Also I was wondering whether it'd be smart to buy another NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 since they're quite cheap and run them both using crossfire since I think they're SLI compatible?

The i7 870 is still a good CPU. Don't get the GT220, as you said they're crap and adding another one won't help at all. What's your budget for upgrading? Could you get something like a GTX560Ti?

[PcTechViews]

Also, could you add all of the specs of your PC (like the motherboard, psu, ram etc). It really helps when recommending new hardware
OCing the 870 shouldn't be a problem, especially with a good aftermarket cooler.

[tidi]

Also, could you add all of the specs of your PC (like the motherboard, psu, ram etc). It really helps when recommending new hardware
OCing the 870 shouldn't be a problem, especially with a good aftermarket cooler.

Thanks for all the help already, though I'm having difficulties with obtaining all my specs.. is there a good program for that? I tried checking everything through the Microsoft based info but it doesn't show all. Is the only way to get all the specs to open my pc?

[tidi]

Thanks for helping me! And I think I could afford the GTX560Ti, could I use this one together with my GeForce GT 220?

[PcTechViews]

Thanks for all the help already, though I'm having difficulties with obtaining all my specs.. is there a good program for that? I tried checking everything through the Microsoft based info but it doesn't show all. Is the only way to get all the specs to open my pc?

Use CPU-Z. It will show most of the specs.

[PcTechViews]

Thanks for helping me! And I think I could afford the GTX560Ti, could I use this one together with my GeForce GT 220?

You can't use 2 different GPUs together.

[PcTechViews]

You can open a thread in Overclock. There you will get more help on OCing your CPU.

[jason.cpcr]

Technically you can. Set the 220 as a physx card or just use it to drive a spare monitor

[PcTechViews]

Technically you can. Set the 220 as a physx card or just use it to drive a spare monitor

Using such a low end GPU for PhysX will actually degrade performance.