Upgrading

deceit

I have a
e6400, asus p5e3 x38 ddr3 workstation board, corsair 4gb ddr3, ati 4870 512mb, 2 150gb raptors, 780watt psu.
I'm thinking of upgrading just my cpu as it lets the whole system down and spend about 300 on it.
Would I see much better increase if spent a little extra and got a core i7-920, 6gb ram, 4870 1gb and x58? At the moment i'm just using it for blueray on my 28" pc monitor but would like to get back into gaming on it again soon.

Solitaire

Core-i7 will blow that €300 so far out of the sky... :eek: And its not that good for gaming unless OCd anyway. Godly for apps, but the admisson fee is painful to say the least

So... OCd AMD something-or-other + top-end AM3 mobo comes in under €300 (you can keep the DDR3 ). Other than that its either E8500/8600 (cheaper, high clocks) or Q9550/9650 (quad, decent if you already have an X38 setup). X4-940BE would also blow the budget (new mobo and DDR2).

And there isn't much difference between 512MB and 1GB versions of the HD4870 - both are good cards, the latter might give you a bit more legroom at 1900x1200 and above but its hard to justify if you already have the 512MB version... but if that monitor you have is 2560x1600 or something just as silly then you might have to think about dropping in a second HD4870 for CF, but it'll be limited at those mad resolutions with a 512MB framebuffer )

deceit

Solitaire wrote: »

Core-i7 will blow that €300 so far out of the sky... :eek: And its not that good for gaming unless OCd anyway. Godly for apps, but the admisson fee is painful to say the least

So... OCd AMD something-or-other + top-end AM3 mobo comes in under €300 (you can keep the DDR3 ). Other than that its either E8500/8600 (cheaper, high clocks) or Q9550/9650 (quad, decent if you already have an X38 setup). X4-940BE would also blow the budget (new mobo and DDR2).

And there isn't much difference between 512MB and 1GB versions of the HD4870 - both are good cards, the latter might give you a bit more legroom at 1900x1200 and above but its hard to justify if you already have the 512MB version... but if that monitor you have is 2560x1600 or something just as silly then you might have to think about dropping in a second HD4870 for CF, but it'll be limited at those mad resolutions with a 512MB framebuffer )

Thanks for the advice, I have decided to stick with the pc i have for the moment and just upgrade to a E8500/8600 or a Q9550. Would an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro be sufficient for these of would I have to upgrade the fan also. I was thinking of selling existing parts and putting the rest toward it to fund the extra for the i7. I just looked into Amds am3 range and think will have too build a second pc now as finally have a reason to own an amd machine again .

Solitaire

Would an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro be sufficient for these

Certainly - its the best mini-tower out there. Maybe if you were to push the Q9650 to its utter limit (say 3.8GHz+ ) you might want to upgrade (the Arctic would work, it would just be a bit hot in there... )

finally have a reason to own an amd machine again .

Amen. Same here, gonna let the Win7 beta run its course and see how the Core-i5 shapes up first (oh, and because I'm skint right now )