Your next major upgrade?

Richard Dower

So, what new technology is next on the cards for you then?...X48?, PCI EXpress 2.0?...new 65nm graphics cards from nVidia and ATI?

Perhaps the new 45nm chips from Intel?, moving up from dual core to quad core?

What are the key items we'll all want in the next 4 months?

Bigchrome

Just Got X38 and another kit of PC6400 ballistix (for free:o) So Yorksfield and then the R680

sdanseo

Ideally the price of an 8800GTX will halve between now and next month when I can afford one. And I want two, eventually

Richard Dower

Got a Gigabyte X38 myself, have a 4GB kit of G.SKILL PC2-8000 on order, very good price for 4GB which runs 1000MHz at 2.0-2.1V.

Next after that is 45nm Intel...i see no point in going Q6600 G0 stepping right now. I might think about the new nVidia cards when they drop, you know current GTS prices will drop like a stone pretty fast.

Not sure what else is on the horizon though, any cool heatsinks or fans to look for?, maybe some quality LCD's?

I've kinda tapped out my hardware upgrades and can't see how i can go higher.

highlydebased

Some better ram, and probably a decent heatsink also. This yoke gets incredibly hot....

HungryJoey

I'm starting to feel like my rig is old already and I havnt even completed it yet. Should I even bother getting 2 x 8800gts ( both for 340euro - I know a person who knows a person ) ?? By what you's are saying its all going old tech now?

Whats in the line up that I should be considering and whats all this talk about PCI-e 2.0 ??

Hj

TerrorFirmer

I think the 8800GT for me, beyond that, being the typical poor student limits me. But am thinking of going from my noisy and large desktop to a small, quiet shuttle.

HungryJoey

What card will the 8800GT be replacing ? What is the guideline prices of the 8800GT ?

Hj

KL901

I have seen them recently come to the market and in terms of pure read speed. I see one by Samsung 32Gb very impressive. I am debating if it would at present make more sense for my to go for a Raptor harddrive.

I have seen bench and reviews that put current drives write performance as etremely poor.

What do you thing is this acceptable for the extremely good read speed.

nibble

Richard Dower wrote: »

Got a Gigabyte X38 myself, have a 4GB kit of G.SKILL PC2-8000 on order, very good price for 4GB which runs 1000MHz at 2.0-2.1V.

Next after that is 45nm Intel...i see no point in going Q6600 G0 stepping right now. I might think about the new nVidia cards when they drop, you know current GTS prices will drop like a stone pretty fast.

Not sure what else is on the horizon though, any cool heatsinks or fans to look for?, maybe some quality LCD's?

I've kinda tapped out my hardware upgrades and can't see how i can go higher.

Water cooling, not hardware as such but still. Seriously it's great- lower noise, cooler running chips and best of all it's just plain fun.

Anti

New twin loop watercooling kit. 30" dell fp. New high end speakers. New case. More hdds.

I dont think i actually could need/want more at this stage.

nibble

Anti wrote: »

New twin loop watercooling kit. 30" dell fp. New high end speakers. New case. More hdds.

I dont think i actually could need/want more at this stage.

Give it a few months

zonEEE

Got new pc the other day :

E6750
2 GB
8800 GTX
320 HD
Xfi-xterme sound card

tman

For me I reckon a 22" monitor would be a nice improvement (have a 19" one already, but it's not quite big enough for using my xbox on as well...)
A sound card with breakout box to replace my Audigy 1 (not all that neccessary tbh, she's still doing a fine job...)
A decent 5.1 surround system
A new gfx card to replace my 8800GTS (not all that neccessary for the next while either)

I may also build myself a shuttle to go with a new 32"+ tv...

RuggieBear

tman wrote: »

For me I reckon a 22" monitor would be a nice improvement (have a 19" one already, but it's not quite big enough for using my xbox on as well...)
A sound card with breakout box to replace my Audigy 1 (not all that neccessary tbh, she's still doing a fine job...)
A decent 5.1 surround system
A new gfx card to replace my 8800GTS (not all that neccessary for the next while either)

I may also build myself a shuttle to go with a new 32"+ tv...

My last upgrade was basically the same as your wishlist.:)

22" is awesome compared to my old 19". You don't really realise it till you go bigger.
I got a x-fi fatality edition and surround 5.1 speakers.
And i went from a x800pro to an 8800 GTS.....won't be upgrading that for a while.

And now i'm thinking of getting something to fit into this

PogMoThoin

Just some things i'll be buyin before xmas

1; 22" monitor, never got round 2 buyin 1
2; 8800Gtx, when the price drops
3; Another 2Gb memory

There is no such thing as futureproof

uberpixie

HavoK wrote: »

I think the 8800GT for me, beyond that, being the typical poor student limits me. But am thinking of going from my noisy and large desktop to a small, quiet shuttle.

Shuttles are a fairly quiet, until you start gaming and the fans ramp up. Then it sounds like a very loud hoover:D. You might actually find your current desktop is infact quiter in games than a shuttle going full tilt.

That said crank the speakers up loud or get a good headset and you won't notice;).

Me I will prob flog my 8800GTS 320mb off for a fair price to a mate and get one of the new cards if ATI/Nvidia actually release something worth upgrading at Xmas.

Blazer

Waiting on my 30" Dell LCD at the moment.
Can't really upgrade more for the moment bar for the graphics card..depending on what Nvidia/ATI release in Jan/Feb.
Got a laptop just for the old lan parties as I was sick of lugging the big yoke in my sig below around.
Laptop spec.
Dell Inspiron 9400. C2D T7600 (2.33ghz+ 4 gigs of 667mhz ram, 7950GTX 512MB video, Blu-Ray drive.

So for the moment after the monitor arrival my upgrades will be finished for a long time I reckon.:o

TerrorFirmer

uberpixie wrote: »

Shuttles are a fairly quiet, until you start gaming and the fans ramp up. Then it sounds like a very loud hoover:D. You might actually find your current desktop is infact quiter in games than a shuttle going full tilt.

That said crank the speakers up loud or get a good headset and you won't notice;).

Me I will prob flog my 8800GTS 320mb off for a fair price to a mate and get one of the new cards if ATI/Nvidia actually release something worth upgrading at Xmas.

Never owned a shuttle before so wasn't quite sure how good they were in that regard, obviously common logic would tell ya in that small a case airflow would be limited etc but still. Was looking at getting a shuttle with a fanless cooler. I do play games, but mostly older ones at the moment, so nothing crazily intensive. The plan was a passively cooled cpu and gpu also, keep things to a bare minimum. I have an akasa cooler right now (this one here actually).... and I can hear my PC downstairs.

but it's tough having to choose between going for a lower performance and quiet or just splasing out on an 8800gt with my current machine. Of course nothing to stop me throwing a better cooler in my current machine but to be honest half the hardware in there is crap (msi mobo etc) anyway so I'm just waiting to do an overhaul after christmas..or invest in a shuttle.

uberpixie

HavoK wrote: »

Never owned a shuttle before so wasn't quite sure how good they were in that regard, obviously common logic would tell ya in that small a case airflow would be limited etc but still. Was looking at getting a shuttle with a fanless cooler. I do play games, but mostly older ones at the moment, so nothing crazily intensive. The plan was a passively cooled cpu and gpu also, keep things to a bare minimum. I have an akasa cooler right now (this one here actually).... and I can hear my PC downstairs.

but it's tough having to choose between going for a lower performance and quiet or just splasing out on an 8800gt with my current machine. Of course nothing to stop me throwing a better cooler in my current machine but to be honest half the hardware in there is crap (msi mobo etc) anyway so I'm just waiting to do an overhaul after christmas..or invest in a shuttle.

Replace the akasa with an Arctic Freezer7 Pro cooler for around €25 and that is prob a lot of the noise issue sorted. The Arctic is a clip in like the akasa so you won't have to remove the mobo to fit it and it's a good cheap quiet cooler for core 2 duos.

If you have a dualcore cpu, 2gig of ram add a 8800Gt to it and you can play any game out there well. (add another 1-2 gig on top for tuppence and you are set)

I loved my shuttle: it was by far the easiest build I have ever had. The shuttle comes pre wired, you just add in the cpu, harddrive and graphics card and turn it on:D.

With a shuttle you get noise regardless, I would just put in a good graphics card. Preferable a gfx card that take up 2 slots and pushes air out the back of the case.

Shuttles are great, I still have mine and must invent a use for it:D. Never had a problem with and many times ran it at full tilt for 8-12 hour gaming sessions all off a 240W PSU:eek:.

As long as you can live with it's compromises, they are great little rigs.

L31mr0d

Have a few options here.


1. Buy a 24" monitor for my sig rig and throw the 8800GTX from my HTPC into it for SLI then buy a DX10.1 Nvidia card for my HTPC.

2. Buy a 24" monitor for my sig rig. Replace the mobo with an intel X38 or newer. Buy 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Sell 1x8800GTX and buy a DX10.1 card for it.

I'll probably go with option 1 as i'm saving to take a year or more off work and go traveling

Blazer

L31mr0d wrote: »

Have a few options here.


1. Buy a 24" monitor for my sig rig and throw the 8800GTX from my HTPC into it for SLI then buy a DX10.1 Nvidia card for my HTPC.

2. Buy a 24" monitor for my sig rig. Replace the mobo with an intel X38 or newer. Buy 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Sell 1x8800GTX and buy a DX10.1 card for it.

I'll probably go with option 1 as i'm saving to take a year or more off work and go traveling

I'll mind your pc for your while you're gone

TerrorFirmer

uberpixie wrote: »

Replace the akasa with an Arctic Freezer7 Pro cooler for around €25 and that is prob a lot of the noise issue sorted. The Arctic is a clip in like the akasa so you won't have to remove the mobo to fit it and it's a good cheap quiet cooler for core 2 duos.

If you have a dualcore cpu, 2gig of ram add a 8800Gt to it and you can play any game out there well. (add another 1-2 gig on top for tuppence and you are set)

I loved my shuttle: it was by far the easiest build I have ever had. The shuttle comes pre wired, you just add in the cpu, harddrive and graphics card and turn it on:D.

With a shuttle you get noise regardless, I would just put in a good graphics card. Preferable a gfx card that take up 2 slots and pushes air out the back of the case.

Shuttles are great, I still have mine and must invent a use for it:D. Never had a problem with and many times ran it at full tilt for 8-12 hour gaming sessions all off a 240W PSU:eek:.

As long as you can live with it's compromises, they are great little rigs.

See that's where the issue lies, I'm torn between just getting an 8800gt and something like the freezer pro, or just going shuttle. But again I'm not overly happy with my current machine anyway, on paper its OK but the components are cheap (msi mobo, 2160 processor, 2gb cheap ram). What's a good shuttle to pick? I was looking at a few but none of them jumped out at me. I can use the optical drive, processor hard drive, ram and sound card from my current build so shouldn't be much cost beyond the barebones itself. I have an X1800XT but that's so loud and throws out so much heat I'm keen to ditch it soon. I don't use any cards apart from the pci-e and one pci for my x-fi so expandability isn't much of an issue. Notice alot of them have 250w psu's. How strong are the rails? Questions, questions...

uberpixie

HavoK wrote: »

See that's where the issue lies, I'm torn between just getting an 8800gt and something like the freezer pro, or just going shuttle. But again I'm not overly happy with my current machine anyway, on paper its OK but the components are cheap (msi mobo, 2160 processor, 2gb cheap ram). What's a good shuttle to pick? I was looking at a few but none of them jumped out at me. I can use the optical drive, processor hard drive, ram and sound card from my current build so shouldn't be much cost beyond the barebones itself. I have an X1800XT but that's so loud and throws out so much heat I'm keen to ditch it soon. I don't use any cards apart from the pci-e and one pci for my x-fi so expandability isn't much of an issue. Notice alot of them have 250w psu's. How strong are the rails? Questions, questions...

Have a look at:http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=340367

Socket p35 shuttle with 400W PSU.

Sounds like what you are looking for: but for €436 which is par for course with shuttle and their latest flagship rig.

400W will be plenty: ran by 240W to its absolute limit with the parts I had in it: A64 3500+, 1 gig ram, X800XT PE, 1 harddrive, 1 optical. Still runs after 2 years of heavy gaming. AFAIK they under rate the PSU. What ever they use are rock solid.

Personally I wouldn't be too worried about the cheap parts in your rig: as long as they are dacent quality.

Custom PC did a piece on a £500 rig Vs £1500 rig. Performance difference was very little between them.

Overclocking was the only thing that made a bit of a gap: but defo not £1000 worth of a performance difference.

The high end rig was 3 times the price and was no where near 3 times the performance of the £500 rig.

My own example is this: I spent over €2000 on a cutting edge rig in August, my mate built a socket 939 m-atx rig using a X4200+ and a cheap X1950XT 256mb he got for a steal on komplett.

His rig cost €600.(a "tie me over for 1 year" rig)

We both play on 17" LCDs: performance from both was smooth as silk in bioshock. Same res,same details. His machine will also play supreme commander @1280x1024 on high settings well.

Who's the bigger fool?:D

Cheap parts only matter in synthetic benchmarks: which are a load of bollocks anyway.

If you just want to build a shuttle, go build a shuttle. Don't use the excuse of cheap parts

KamiKazi

Another 8800gtx, 2 more gigs of ram and whatever cpu is the best when im upgrading. And possibly a few more hdd's

TerrorFirmer

Yeah the quality is fine, and stock performance is perfectly fine, but, given the 2160's weakness it's true value lies in overclocking. Which I can't do much of with this board (max 2.3Ghz from 1.8 so its hard to bridge the gap between budget and performance when i'm this handicapped), and in turn, with a better board I'd really want better ram too.

Also, my budget choices show, maybe not in the first 12 months but definitely thereafter, for example I can't use the new quads, dodgy support for 800mhz ram, etc, didn't matter last year but does now. Same with your friends machine, good now but fairly limited in what new paths he can take whereas your machine will prob sail through the next few years with partial upgrades.

So rather then get newer components, I'm thinking I'm just going to get the shuttle and maintain a good balance between performance, space and noise! Whats overclocking like, incidentally?

uberpixie

HavoK wrote: »

Yeah the quality is fine, and stock performance is perfectly fine, but, given the 2160's weakness it's true value lies in overclocking. Which I can't do much of with this board (max 2.3Ghz from 1.8 so its hard to bridge the gap between budget and performance when i'm this handicapped), and in turn, with a better board I'd really want better ram too.

Also, my budget choices show, maybe not in the first 12 months but definitely thereafter, for example I can't use the new quads, dodgy support for 800mhz ram, etc, didn't matter last year but does now. Same with your friends machine, good now but fairly limited in what new paths he can take whereas your machine will prob sail through the next few years with partial upgrades.

So rather then get newer components, I'm thinking I'm just going to get the shuttle and maintain a good balance between performance, space and noise! Whats overclocking like, incidentally?

Clear case of never skimp on the motherboard, I always hate hindsight:eek:.
(mistake you never make again)

Shuttles are known to be ****e for overclocking. Go stable mobos that don't overclock: much like basic MSI boards:(.

Granted my mates system is a dead end: it was never meant to be a future proof machine. He just wanted to get the XFX extreme pc m-atx chassis becaused it looked cool and was a bit different instead of building an expensive, boring pc;).

For €600 it's a bargain and will tie him over nicely for the next year for the type of gaming he does.

If you really hate the mobo, replace it for a good cheap overclockable p35 or go whole hog and get an X38.

What speed ram do you have?

That said, you have a dual core CPU: slap in a 8800GT like you are thinking of, this will make much more of a difference in games that an overclock on the cpu.

That is you set for the next year.

awhir

HavoK wrote: »

Yeah the quality is fine, and stock performance is perfectly fine, but, given the 2160's weakness it's true value lies in overclocking. Which I can't do much of with this board (max 2.3Ghz from 1.8 so its hard to bridge the gap between budget and performance when i'm this handicapped), and in turn, with a better board I'd really want better ram too.

Also, my budget choices show, maybe not in the first 12 months but definitely thereafter, for example I can't use the new quads, dodgy support for 800mhz ram, etc, didn't matter last year but does now. Same with your friends machine, good now but fairly limited in what new paths he can take whereas your machine will prob sail through the next few years with partial upgrades.

So rather then get newer components, I'm thinking I'm just going to get the shuttle and maintain a good balance between performance, space and noise! Whats overclocking like, incidentally?

buy 2 cheap low rpm fans,a quite cpu cooler (artic freezer),8800gt = a pritty quite pc

bretttp1

New Mobo (bye bye trusty skt 939) new cpu and 8800gts me thinks, just got another 500gig HD, but at the rate I'm filling these HDs I'll need another one soon :eek: