€350 upgrade

dreamers75

Stuff i have:


Asus P5KPL 1600
4gb 1066 ram
E6850
Sapphire 4870
Antec 700 Watt
Antec Sonata 3 case
Some hard drives 2 sata 1 IDE

Missus giving/letting me have 350 for pc upgrade. Not touching GPU i will get a 5870 next year when its 230ish.

The ones in bold are the primary targets, i have some ideas what to get but I7 is way way out of my price league but i dont want a quick fix. I am a very patient person and will wait for I7 to come down in price if thats what it takes.

But oh people of the forum, for 350 what coudl i get that improves what i have considerably? Old stuff going into Kids pc and the circle of life continues

AlmightyCushion

You could go with core i5. The i5 750 is a great processor and should make it into your budget. Not sure how much a good mobo and ram would be though.

batman2000

Well the i5 is about €185 http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=492762
The Mobo is €87.50 http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=486112
RAM €88 http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=363359
Total €360 plus shipping (approx €13)

dreamers75

batman2000 wrote: »

Well the i5 is about €185 http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=492762
The Mobo is €87.50 http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=486112
RAM €88 http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=363359
Total €360 plus shipping (approx €13)

I will never ever ever ever buy a Gigabyte motherboard ever again!!! imagine buying 3 of the same motherboard and none of them working!!!


Dunno about going I5, if i wait i could go i7 for that price in 6 months i hope.

Leman_Russ

If you are willing to keep the case and the other grubbins and just upgrade the CPU, mobo and Ram, here is what you do:

CPU: Core i5-750. The best Price/Performance there is ATM. Overclocks to 4GHz just by looking at it! Although you will need to buy a nice aftermarket cooler. The stock fan is just awful.

Motherboard: GA-P55-UD3. Excelent motherboard. Look it up to find out if it has the right amount of connectors needed/wanted etc etc.

Ram: Good Old Fashioned Kingston ValueRAM.

To total it up:
i5-750 £146.62
GA-P55-UD3 £102.45
Ram £37 x2 = £72
Shipping: £10
Total: £331.07

Yeah, I know it's over budget and you still need a new CPU Cooler, but if you have to drop a stick of ram and buy it later. You will not be disapointed with this

Also You don't like Gigabyte?

Also, don't bother waiting for i7 to drop. All i7 does is Hyperthreading, which is just a big con unless you need it. And if you don't know if you need it or not, you don't need it :P

AlmightyCushion

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Also, don't bother waiting for i7 to drop. All i7 does is Hyperthreading, which is just a big con unless you need it. And if you don't know if you need it or not, you don't need it :P

It also gives triple channel memory but both of these don't really offer people much unless you use programs that use more than 4 threads and need as much memory bandwidth as possible.

Leman_Russ

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

It also gives triple channel memory but both of these don't really offer people much unless you use programs that use more than 4 threads and need as much memory bandwidth as possible.

You are thinking of the LGA1366 Socket Chipset. i7 comes in the LGA1156 Socket as well, and only supports Dual Channel memory.

The only difference between the i5 and i7 cores are:
i5 is only on the LGA1156 platform at the moment
i5 does not have hyperthreading.

Effluo

Op what are you doing with this pc?

Right now your build is very sweet and if i had what you have i wouldn't bother with an upgrade!

http://www.seafieldhotel.com/ (weekend break?) yes that was a bit random, Nice place though! lol

If not though then i'd concentrate on the "pc experience" what kind of screen do you have? Get a second screen, Maybe get a 5.1 surround system?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/174359 32" full hd

A new desk, An expensive wireless keyboard and mouse, Get a HTPC

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055718825

There are so many great things you could do with €350
Your pc won't go much faster though!

batman2000

dreamers75 wrote: »

I will never ever ever ever buy a Gigabyte motherboard ever again!!! imagine buying 3 of the same motherboard and none of them working!!!

Wow, three failing, I've built a few with Gigabyte and no problems. Guess it might have been a bad batch. Did you use anti-static protection.?

/off topic slightly, apologies

PogMoThoin

Just get a Q6600, a good cooler and 4GB more of ram (while its cheap, its rising in price everyday) and overclock that quad to 3-3.2.Ghz which should be fairly easy with a P5K (see sig). Don't opt for a 45nm penryn quad as they came out with the next generation of chipset and won't oc as well with that mobo. There is nothing I struggle to play with a 3.2Ghz quad

I'll post a thread in tactical shooter forum tomorrow telling the advantages of a ramdrive in ArmA II. I bought 4GB more of ram, created a virtual hard drive on the ram and loaded some of the .pbo's into it and its done wonders for my game, no more delayed textures when spawning and constant steady frames

dreamers75

Effluo wrote: »

Op what are you doing with this pc?

Shooting people in the face online mostly and some avi to dvd conversions tbh the E6850 does a dvd in about 50 minutes so not an issue.

Blazer

I'd upgrade just the CPU and forget about anything else.
Your ram is fine, nothing wrong with it...
If possible get a Q9 series quad core. If your existing board supports it.

Effluo

Why upgrade the cpu?

There are only a handful of games that can use more than two cores and is there any that won't run fully optimised on a 3ghz dualie?

Prob not.

Save, buy a weekend away, get a SSD or just improve you general gaming experience with a new projector/ 32 screen/ second screen/ Amazing audio system.

Your pc won't get noticeably faster but it could get a heck of a lot more fun!!!

PogMoThoin

Effluo wrote: »

Why upgrade the cpu?

There are only a handful of games that can use more than two cores and is there any that won't run fully optimised on a 3ghz dualie?

Prob not.

Save, buy a weekend away, get a SSD or just improve you general gaming experience with a new projector/ 32 screen/ second screen/ Amazing audio system.

Your pc won't get noticeably faster but it could get a heck of a lot more fun!!!

Because he's an avid ArmA II player and this game runs so much better on a quad. We've got our own Boards.ie Arma II server which he helps fund, be foolish not to upgrade cpu when the game itself is cpu heavy.

As I said above, the best gain in Arma II is making a ramdisk on Your ram, this gives even better benefits than an SSD, hence recommending 8GB

Effluo

Ohhhhhh Arma II...

That's unfortunate

dreamers75

Present mobo has a max 4gb limit

PogMoThoin

dreamers75 wrote: »

Present mobo has a max 4gb limit

Ah, that paints a different picture

Blazer

Effluo wrote: »

Ohhhhhh Arma II...

That's unfortunate

ah well the op never stated that he needed to play arma
That's a game changer right there

dreamers75

Berkut wrote: »

ah well the op never stated that he needed to play arma
That's a game changer right there

Arma is fine for me everything on high, i have a 1600x1200 Monitor it keeps me nicely "limited" in games.

PogMoThoin

Just buy a quad dude, 4GB ram is loads

BadCharlie

Thats a good chip, i would just over clock it and buy a video card. If you can crossfire then even better but im not sure u can with that MB. The HD5850 overclocks to the 5870 speed and u can get them for around €250. Sell your own 4870 card to fund the 250.

CrinkElite

I have an E6600 clocked at 3.2ghz with a Radeon 4890. I cannot get a decent frame rate in GTA4 even with the settings low.