October = Birthday = Upgrade = Boards Advice

jonski

Yup , it's October again , and the birthday money is burning a hole in my pocket . But this year I am really not sure what to do , current pc is playing everything I need it to play and I am not sure I can upgrade it in any way that wouldn't , either a: cost a fortune , or B: not really be that much of an upgrade .

Down to business .

CPU Type DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 3015 MHz (15 x 201) 6000+
Motherboard Name Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 (2 PCI, 3 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
System Memory 3328 MB (DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM) 4 gig
Video Adapter ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series (1024 MB) XFX HD 5770 1GIG Factory overclocked
Monitor SyncMaster T200/T200G,SyncMaster Magic T200/T200G(Digital) [NoDB] (H9XQB14743)
1 terabyte Hard Drive
Windows 7 Ultimate


The motherboard supports http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=2287 but I am wondering if there is any point in buying any of these ?

Only €200 or so to spend ,

Any advice appreciated

John

seraphimvc

i have the amd 6000+ amd, just upgraded it with 5770+4gb ram and i am so happy with my current state :pac:

if you really wanna spend that 200e then go for a: bigger screen, b: gtx 460 is quite a bargain atm.

the untitled user

Well a quad core would probably be useful enough. Games (especially console ports) are gradually beginning to shift towards exploiting more cores and threads (example), but then again you'll only really see an improvement in performance if you're graphics card isn't the bottleneck. If you had a 5800 series you'd definitely see an improvement in certain games by getting a quadcore, but I'm not sure how much you'd see with a 5700 series.

Another thing to consider of course is an SSD, would help improve boot times, system responsiveness and loading times.

A graphics card would also be a good spend, but in certain games you'll find yourself bottle-necked by that dual core CPU anyway, I'm just not sure to what extent.

marco_polo

Bah there is a €99 940 AM2+ 940 Quad on Pixmania that I was going to link to but it your board does not support either of the the Phenom II AM2+ quads in existance .

I would invest in the CPU firstly and get at least a decent Athlon II X3 CPU. I presume you GPU is a 5770 (or 5750?) so I don't think a 460 is a really a worthwhile upgrade in terms of 'win per euro' , when there is a bettter performance benefit to be gained with a better CPU and/or SSD.

Maybe something like

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/242216 + http://www.ebuyer.com/product/233209

jonski

marco_polo wrote: »

I presume you GPU is a 5770 (or 5750?)

I forgot to put in the full details , it's the XFX HD 5770 1GIG Factory Overclocked

Solitaire

Just checked, if you have the BIOS updated to F15D you can use the full range of AM3 CPUs, but the mobo itself doesn't support 125W+ CPUs except the 125W version of the X4-945, which is darn rare anyway (almost all 945s are 95W revisions). Annoyingly, while it can take the recent X4-955BE refresh (95W!) said CPU is rare as hell

jonski

Maybe I should hold off and put the money in my paypal a/c and add to it when I can , then look for a motherboard/chip/ram bundle ?

Solitaire

You could, but an X4-945 or similar should tide you over nicely for a good while

jonski

Solitaire wrote: »

You could, but an X4-945 or similar should tide you over nicely for a good while

Starting to panic now with the current talk of min sys requirements for COD Black Ops , was hoping to hold out until Christmas and get a board cpu ram bundle but I am not seeing any on the web and can i run it is saying "no you can't " . I had expected this http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/2932511/art/amd/phenom-ii-x4-945-3-ghz-2.html to be cheaper , guess I am out of touch ?

Solitaire

Stick to HWVS, pix has been fairly bad of late. Not much movement in AM3 prices anyway though