PC update questions

alan_simon

Hi Guys,

Im looking at replacing the guts of a rig i've been using for a while, its a great performer but I think the parts are just getting a bit outdated.

Im currently using a Gigabyte G31M-S2L board with an e8400 at 3.0 ghz, 2gb OCZ PC2 - 6400 (400mhz) RAM x 2 and a Ati 4870 512mb graphics card.

Money's a bit tight but I'm looking at picking up an ASUS M5A78L AM3+ 760G board with the new AMD FX-4100 3.6 12mb CPU, 8gb of Kingston DDR3 1600mhz Ram and most likely the new Ati 7750 1gb GDDR5 graphics.

Any body have any experience with these? Would it be a big performance boost over what I have? I can get all the above for just under 300, at the mo that's all I can afford to put towards updates. Any feedback much appreciated

I game a bit, mostly strategy (Total War, Starcraft 2, Skyrim etc.) and though I play at 1920 * 1080 I don't need everything at ultra high settings, as long as it looks pretty enough . I never do movie editing or anything particularly resource heavy otherwise. I use Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

Serephucus

Your planned upgrade:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €286.17 + €30 shipping
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€32.63
ASUS M5A78L, Sockel AM3+, ATX|€56.91
AMD FX-4100 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+|€99.46
Club 3D Radeon HD 7750, 1024MB GDDR5, AMD Radeon HD 7750, PCI- Express|€97.17


What I would suggest:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €275.67 + €30 shipping
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€32.63
Club 3D Radeon HD 7750, 1024MB GDDR5, AMD Radeon HD 7750, PCI- Express|€97.17
ASRock H61M-HVS (B3), Sockel 1155, mATX|€40.33
Intel Core i3-2120 Box, LGA1155|€105.54


I'm not sure what the 7750 is like, so I can't say if it's the best value, but I'm fairly positive that it wouldn't be much of an improvement over your current setup. The i3 would give you about a 20% bump though.

I'd maybe save up a bit more / sell your old hardware. You're not going to see much improvement with what either setup TBH.

Eboggles

€300 euro eh? Try this: A bit over budget though.

Total build cost: €334.43 (inc delivery Free!)
Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz LGA1155 3MB €116.03
ASRock S1155 Intel H61 DDR3 mATX €42.74
Corsair Memory 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333MHz 240-pin DIMM CL9 €40.24
Asus ATI Radeon 6850 HD 790MHz 1GB PCI-Express HDMI €135.42

If you could scrape a bit more money together and wait a few weeks, you could get a better graphics card for Skyrim. With €300 for Mobo, CPU, RAM and graphics its a tight squeeze. Starcraft and Shogun should be ok but if you could scrape a bit more, get something like a 7850/7870 when they're released.

Oh, and by the way, Bulldozer = Fail.

alan_simon

Thanks for the replies guys, yikes never realised there was such a difference between AMD and intel! I assumed the dual core i3 would be demolished by a quad core.

Im definitely leaning more towards an Intel chip then, is there much of a difference between motherboards? Same for the RAM chips, is the GB all that matters? Im aware of things like mhz and latency but i'm not 100% on there direct effect on performance. I could spring for a mobo, i3 and the RAM and maybe hang on to the 4870 for a while, pick up one of the 7 series.

alan_simon

Would there be a considerable difference between an i3 and an i5? There's about 40-50 euro price difference between the two, would it be worth it in your opinion?

Thanks again for the advice

Serephucus

With RAM, no, it's basically just capacity these days.

As regards motherboards, that's dictated by CPUs, and there's only really two types (as far as they affect motherboards) that you have to worry about - overclockable CPUs, and non-overclockable CPUs.

If you plan on upgrading to a faster quad core down the line, odds are you'll be going for an overclockable one, because the difference between the i5 2500 and the i5 2500K is about €10, but gives you a huge jump in performance. If you're going to go for a non-overclockable board, then you could use up to an i5 2400. You can of course use a 2500K in a non-overclockable board, but obviously it wouldn't be reaching its full potential.

tl;dr - if a 3.1GHz quad core is fast enough for you, look at a H61 chipset board. If you want something faster (5.0GHz quad core) look at a Z68 chipset board.

(wow, that was over-complicated, sorry.)


RE: i3/i5 - well one is a quad core, the other is a dual core. I'd go for the quad myself. From what I'm told, a quad core makes a noticeable difference with Skyrim, and I know from experience it helps a lot in GTA IV and Crysis 2.

alan_simon

Thanks for the reply. I had a bad experience OC a rig before, ended up burning out a PSU and ruining a Mobo (entirely my own fault) so I'm a bit wary of OC-ing. So id be looking for a cheap and cheerful Mobo and Ram, and spend the money on a CPU and graphics card?

Cheers

Eboggles

alan_simon wrote: »

Would there be a considerable difference between an i3 and an i5? There's about 40-50 euro price difference between the two, would it be worth it in your opinion?

Thanks again for the advice

For your budget? You might as well put an extra €40 towards graphics, and besides you can always get a new ivybridge i5 later on in the year. Games don't really use four cores at the moment, so we won't see the benefit yet.
But in saying that there is a good bit between them, mostly seen in strategy games, but you'd get more performance from an i3/6870 against an i5/6770.

Serephucus

For your budget, I'd agree: sink the money into a GPU rather than a CPU.

As a side-note: OCing these days is criminally easy. You have a grand total of two settings to change - CPU frequency (in 100MHz increments) and CPU voltage. That's it. RAM timings, chipset voltages, uncore frequencies, multiplier dividers... nothing, all gone.

As I say, probably doesn't apply in this price bracket, but just something to mention.

alan_simon

Thanks for all the help guys, reckon Ill go for the i3, 8gb ram and a cheap Mobo. With the Graphics cards will there be a huge difference between the new 7 series and the 6 series cards? Id probably for a 6870 or something similar, but if the 7 series are going to be a huge performance increase I might hold out

Serephucus

Not sure. The 7970 is a big improvement in a lot of places over the 6970, but the 7770 over the 6770 isn't at all. Wait and see, I'd say. Dabs has free delivery on orders over €90 though, so there's nothing stopping you from ordering the CPU, motherboard and RAM now.

Oh, and as for the motherboard, I'd get this:

http://www.dabs.ie/products/asrock-s1155-intel-h61m-ddr3-matx-7LCF.html?q=asrock%20h61&src=16

It's very similar to the one Eboggles posted, but for an extra €8, you get an another PCI-E x1 slot, and DVI-out.

alan_simon

I think thats a plan so. Ill order that mobo, an i3 and the RAM, and ill give the graphics card a month or so.

Cheers for all the help guys, much appreciated!