Need advice on new PC-hardware

[FFF_Rozo]

Hey all,

I\'m thinking about buying new hardware for my PC. It\'s over 3 years old now, time to upgrade...

I\'ve got this at the moment, all except the mobo were bought in Juni 2007:
Mobo : Asus P5QL-E (Socket 775)
Memory : Kingston Memory HyperX 2GB 800MHz DDR2 CL5 2pk
Harddisk : Western digital WD RE2 500 GB. 7200 RPM. 16 MB Cache | WD5000YS / ABYS 1
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
GFX-card : Asus 8800 GTS HTDP PCIe 320M

Because it\'s 3 years old, replacing a single item won\'t do the trick. Any suggestions?

Tnx

 

[FFFHugo]

go for a dual or quadcore with at least 3.0 ghz.
at least 4gb DDR3 ram
Solid State Disk work alot faster than normal hdd\'s but are very expensive.
for gfx cards i suggest nvidia 200 series or ati 5700 series with a gig of ram on it
what u can do is go to www.canirunit.com and it will tell you what parts of your pc need to be upgraded.

 

[FFFMayhem]

i just bought myself a new system for around £300-£350 bucks, that is without a GPU though. This is what i am using now.

GAGBYTE MA785GMT-UD2H mobo - linky here
AMD Athlon IIx4 630 @3.00ghz linky here
NZXT gaming case linky linky (if your case if fine though you can save money here) the case only comes with 2 fans and i bought the other 3 for around £20
4GB (2x2gb) DDR3 1333mhz RAM linky
700w Arctic power PSU click here
For now Robin hood was kind enough to lend me a GPU and HDD but the pc runs a peach, handles MW2 on full settings no probs. Most people will probably agree that my performance increased in-game ALOT with the new pc, can\'t really judge BO\'s as of yet for the probs that are going on, but i do seem to get less lag than most. All i\'m saving up for now is a SSD and a GPU, not sure whether to go for a GTX460 or a ATI 6850, there both around £150, but gunna wait for the January sales

 

[FFFHugo]

not sure mayhem if u need an expensive gpu like that mate. i use a nvidia 9600 and its powerfull enough for BO.

 

[RobinHood]

Mobo : Asus P5QL-E (Socket 775)
Memory : Kingston Memory HyperX 2GB 800MHz DDR2 CL5 2pk - If you\'re currently using 2 x 1GB DDR2 ram sticks you could simply drop another 2 x 1GB sticks in as your mobo has 4 slots.
Harddisk : Western digital WD RE2 500 GB. 7200 RPM. 16 MB Cache | WD5000YS / ABYS 1 - Upgrading this shouldn\'t make any difference to actual gameplay.
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 See below for CPU suggestions
GFX-card : Asus 8800 GTS HTDP PCIe 320M Not a terrible card, but dated now, ask Mayhem what frame rates his getting the with same card on his new setup

Because it\'s 3 years old, replacing a single item won\'t do the trick. Any suggestions?

Tnx

Link to your motherboard specs, if you look at the CPU support list tab you can see what upgraded CPUs you could get depending on what BIOS is currently installed.
Your 6700 has a CPU Bench of about 1651, possible upgrades include a used 2.4Ghz Quad Core Q6600 off ebay for approx £80 (CPU Bench of 2975) or maybe a  new 2.33Ghz Q8200 (CPU Bench 3259) for approx £105.

All depends on your budget, I\'d definitely upgrade the RAM no matter what.
Once you have that I\'m not sure what the next bottleneck is of the CPU or GPU, it might be worth seeing if you can borrow a newer GPU from a friend to test for an evening, if that doesn\'t show much improvement I\'d upgrade the CPU first, if it does show a big improvement maybe ugrade the GPU first. If you have the cash then just go and get both! Or if you have even more cash or find a good deals get 8GB of RAM. More RAM is better than faster RAM.

 

[Beetle]

Good info. I\'m hoping to pick up a new CPU after sometime after Christmas recovery. My CPU is An AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core processor 6000+ (overclocked to 3.2ghz). It\'s struggling a bit in BO .
Cheers

 

[FFFMayhem]

am3 or am2 bud?

 

[FFF_Rozo]

Thanx for the advice sofar.

This is the result of www.canirunit.com for Black-Ops. As you can see every component is around or on the minimum required

I can get 2x1Gb memory with exactly the same serialnumber as I have now for € 44,50 (£35). If I\'m going for 8Gb I definitely need a 64Bit OS.. Do I need a 64bit version of Vista, or will the 32bit be enough for 4Gb?

The revision of my BIOS is 0611, I haven\'t opened my case yet to check the revision of my PCB. The (web)shop where I\'ll probably buy my memory only sells Q8300\'s or above.

Looking at the CPU Support List, the only CPU\'s I can use without a new BIOS are the Q9300, Q9550 rev.C1 and the Q9650. If I\'m going to upgrade my CPU, it\'s probably going to be the Q9300 (CPU Bench=3573)

 

[RobinHood]

I can get 2x1Gb memory with exactly the same serialnumber as I have now for € 44,50 (£35). If I\'m going for 8Gb I definitely need a 64Bit OS.. Do I need a 64bit version of Vista, or will the 32bit be enough for 4Gb? 4GB would be fine with 32bit, if you\'re going with any more I\'d recommend switching to 64bit. You may be able to re-install the same version of Vista you have (i.e. home premium) with the 64 bit version and use your same serial. If you wan\'t me to confirm that I can find out. If you end up buying a new version definitely go with Win 7 64bit no matter what.

The revision of my BIOS is 0611, I haven\'t opened my case yet to check the revision of my PCB. The (web)shop where I\'ll probably buy my memory only sells Q8300\'s or above.

Looking at the CPU Support List, the only CPU\'s I can use without a new BIOS are the Q9300, Q9550 rev.C1 and the Q9650. If I\'m going to upgrade my CPU, it\'s probably going to be the Q9300 (CPU Bench=3573) The Q9300 is a great CPU if you can get a good price on it. I had one in my last system before I upgraded to the i7. If you\'re a tinkerer you can invest in an aftermarket cooler and pop a moderate overclock to it of about 3Ghz pretty easy I\'d have thought. I had mine running at 3.6. But even at stock it would be pretty good.

Although the main reason why I listed the ones for £100 or less is that the Q9300 is still about £150 in the UK, if you\'re considering spending that kind of money you way wish to consider an i5 setup and get a new mobo and cpu combo as the i5 760 is only £150 in the UK (same as Q9300) yet has a CPU bench of about 4554 (27% faster), but then you\'d need a new 1156 socket mobo (£60) and DDR3 ram instead of DDR2 - although you can get 4GB or DDR3 RAM for about £50-£60 now. I\'m not sure what your budget is so I don\'t know what your balance of bang for buck and future upgradablity needs to be....

 

[FFFHugo]

you can install a 64bit os (same version) with the key u already got. the key is only version and language related. doesnt matter if u use 32 or 64 bit.
once you go over 4gb ram u need 64bit. otherwise it wont recogneise all the ram. I think 32bit wont go to 4gb either. it will tell you you got 3.5 or something like that.

 

[CannonFodder]

Check here for cpu scores http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/3DMark-Vantage-Overall-Performance,2416.html

 

[RobinHood]

For comparative purposes I\'ve been using http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to compare them. It\'s not definitive but good for a rough guide to comparing them.
The Tom\'s hardware chart might be better as they\'re directly related to 3DMark and gaming.

 

[FFF_Rozo]

I decided to treat myself to a new computer this X-mas. I\'m looking for a new:
- Motherboard
- Memory
- CPU
- Graphicscard (Maybe 2 for SLI/Crossfire)
- CPU Cooler?

My budget is around £600-£700, hopefully this will last me another 3 years or so. I use my PC for gaming and software development and I\'m not into overclocking.

Suggestions?

 

[FFFShooter]

Check previous replys in the thread for help and ideas.

 

[RobinHood]

You can get a great PC for that much.
Are you in a rush or could you wait until until the end of Jan as the new Intel Sandy Bridge processors are due for release in the new year. Personally if you\'re not desperate for a system I\'d probably wait to see what they have to offer.

Have you got a decent PSU already?

 

[Messa]

Hey all,

I\'m thinking about buying new hardware for my PC. It\'s over 3 years old now, time to upgrade...

I\'ve got this at the moment, all except the mobo were bought in Juni 2007:
Mobo : Asus P5QL-E (Socket 775)
Memory : Kingston Memory HyperX 2GB 800MHz DDR2 CL5 2pk
Harddisk : Western digital WD RE2 500 GB. 7200 RPM. 16 MB Cache | WD5000YS / ABYS 1
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
GFX-card : Asus 8800 GTS HTDP PCIe 320M

Because it\'s 3 years old, replacing a single item won\'t do the trick. Any suggestions?

Tnx

I have recently (2 weeks ago) sold my 8800GTX and bought a 560Ti Twin Frozr and my 3dMark scores went from 7000 to 17000+.

Had the GTX for over 2 years and had it in my head it was still quick, but apparently not !

CPU I would recommend AMD over intel unless budget isnt an issue, AMD always wins hands down the performance/cost comparison.

Not many games support a six core so I would get a fast 4 core AMD, a \'Black Edition\' will allow you to overclock easily, they are the cream of the production line.

To keep costs down but to greatly increase performance I would keep your HDD but ebay another of the same type, and then set them up in a RAID0 array, I was amazed when I went from single to RAID0 drives at how much faster my PC was.



http://www.ebuyer.com/product/264357

OMG Just seen the age of this thread, 0_o