4 years on and going strong.. upgrade help

Macspower

I'm not sure if many of you are still here but I got great advice back in 2008 and built this machine

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=55073916&postcount=13

Since then I've upgraded the hard drive to a 1tb as the old one packed in. Apart from that she's going strong.

Anyway it's prob due an upgrade at this stage.. what would you do with it now to give it all the bells and modern whistles?

Used now mainly for video and photo editing with photoshop work and still some gaming.

thanks for any help offered

Craig B

Whats your budget? And your prob better off getting a new system as thats all outdated.

Macspower

Craig B wrote: »

Whats your budget? And your prob better off getting a new system as thats all outdated.

I'll spend whatever is necessary... is any of the stuff I have reusable for a new system then?

Monotype

Nah, all those people there in the original thread are dead now.

To be fair it really depends on your use of the PC. If you were to play games a lot, a new graphics card would work wonders.

If you wanted to speed up program load times, a re-install of Windows 7 onto a new SSD new make a big difference.

If you're doing any CPU heavy work, you'd have to replace the lot. A completely new system would much faster here with better power consumption and efficiency.

If you haven't done so, an overclock on the CPU would help you along a bit too. You could get a new heatsink to keep things cool and if you choose one compatible with several sockets, you could keep it for another system.

Xenoronin

Honestly, that's a pretty solid machine you have there. Is there any particular reason you want to upgrade?
If it is running grand, able to do everything you throw at it, i'd almost leave it be to save yourself a lot of money.

If you just want to spruce it up a bit,
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=56865&agid=1145
That is a very nice SSD which if you install windows on, boot times will decrease dramatically. You'll need to use your current HD for bulk storage though.

Maybe even put in some more RAM but 4gb is probably enough in that machine. However, is that 2 sticks of RAM at 2gb each or just one big 4gb stick? If it is one big stick you aren't making use of the duel channel thingy but I'm not an expert on exactly why this is a good thing. I think it is extra bandwidth to the RAM if you have two sticks of RAM in certain ram slots.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/800+Mhz/10028/4GB-Kit+DDR2+Corsair+Twin2X+DHX+CL5%2C+PC6400+800.article

You'd need windows 64-bit to make the most out of a RAM upgrade though.

You'd be surprised how well that 8800gts would hold up to today's cards, as long as you don't max out the settings. (usually not having Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering on will be enough)

Maybe look into getting a nicer monitor? (though this will probably degrade performance of your graphics hard when reaching higher resolutions)

Macspower

Xenoronin wrote: »

Honestly, that's a pretty solid machine you have there. Is there any particular reason you want to upgrade?
If it is running grand, able to do everything you throw at it, i'd almost leave it be to save yourself a lot of money.

If you just want to spruce it up a bit,
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=56865&agid=1145
That is a very nice SSD which if you install windows on, boot times will decrease dramatically. You'll need to use your current HD for bulk storage though.

Maybe even put in some more RAM but 4gb is probably enough in that machine. However, is that 2 sticks of RAM at 2gb each or just one big 4gb stick? If it is one big stick you aren't making use of the duel channel thingy but I'm not an expert on exactly why this is a good thing. I think it is extra bandwidth to the RAM if you have two sticks of RAM in certain ram slots.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/800+Mhz/10028/4GB-Kit+DDR2+Corsair+Twin2X+DHX+CL5%2C+PC6400+800.article

You'd need windows 64-bit to make the most out of a RAM upgrade though.

You'd be surprised how well that 8800gts would hold up to today's cards, as long as you don't max out the settings. (usually not having Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering on will be enough)

Maybe look into getting a nicer monitor? (though this will probably degrade performance of your graphics hard when reaching higher resolutions)

Thanks,

I have 2 sticks of Ram in it. 2gb each. I'm still running xp but have been planning to do windows 7. I just didn't want that stupid vista thing on it.

I have a decent Monitor ... well it was the best I could get at the time a dell 2407WFP. how does this compare with modern stuff?

So an SSD and win 7 with a bit more ram? I also upgraded the cooler to a Silent Knight.

what about overclocking? Might not be needed if the above gives me a little more

Craig B

If you want an amazing system by today's standards then get this, its a full system upgrade.

Item|Price
ASUS DRW-24B5ST Retail|€20.23
8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800U CL9|€47.65
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€111.29
Seagate Barracuda 7200 1000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€80.28
ASRock Z77 Extreme4, Sockel 1155, ATX|€129.53
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€214.42
Corsair Enthusiast Series Modular TX550M, 550Watt|€81.36
BitFenix Shinobi Midi-Tower USB 3.0 black, ohne Netzteil|€53.86
Sapphire HD 7850 OC 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express|€233.65
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€991.26

Change the PSU to this

cherryghost

tbh if its casual gaming topped with mostly video and photo editing, I personally don't think it warrants a splash on a new machine. Overclock your Q6600, and if you get a custom cooler, overclock it some more.

The Q6600 is still a great processor that'll do what you need. The only real downfall is the transcoding takes a bit longer than what the current generation of processors can do.

smileyj1987

cherryghost wrote: »

tbh if its casual gaming topped with mostly video and photo editing, I personally don't think it warrants a splash on a new machine. Overclock your Q6600, and if you get a custom cooler, overclock it some more.

The Q6600 is still a great processor that'll do what you need. The only real downfall is the transcoding takes a bit longer than what the current generation of processors can do.

I couldn't agree with you more , i think all the people speccing a new machine are a bit mad . To me it would be a GPU , SSD and aftermarket cooler because it won't be much of an upgrade for the price of a whole new machine .

Monotype

Given that you have a heatsink already, I'd say go ahead with overclocking. Most people easily go from 2.4GHz to 3GHz with that CPU, often into the early 3s without too much effort.

I don't think new RAM is really that necessary either. 4GB is still good by todays standard. If you see a good deal, then by all means pick up some more. DDR2 is double the price of DDR3 so I wouldn't rush to buy some for minimal performance gain.

In my opinion:
1) Overclock
2) Get an SSD - 128GB is a nice figure. Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 are the best two to go for. These are SATA 6Gbps drives. Since it's just 3Gbps that you have, you'll be limited a little but you still get the very fast access times. You can always carry it to a new system anyway.
3) New graphics card - 6850 or 6870 if you want to play everything, 7850 if you want max out stuff or 670/680 if you fancy spending a lot of money and prefer nVidia flavour... although with the high end cards you mightn't get the best out of them unless paired with a faster CPU.
4) Get Windows 7 64-Bit. If you're a student, you can get it from software4students.ie for cheap.

Xenoronin

That motherboard is only PCI-e x16, will that throttle the graphics by much? I remember seeing a great comparison link somewhere on this forum before.

Monotype

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/23.html

PCI-E 1 or 2? I'll just check now...

PCI-E 1 x16 is actually still enough.

Edit: P35 chipset is PCI-E 1.1. Should be still okay for this generation for the most part, but you probably wouldn't be going for the top end card anyway.

Xenoronin

I'm actually amazed by that graph... it almost says that there is no reason for them to have been upgrading the bandwidth on PCI-e at all :O

Monotype

There's some degradation alright at PCI-E 1 x8 and PCI-E 2 x4.
There's quite a few new motherboards around that have a second PCI-E 2 x4 slot, so yeah, it is something to be a little concerned about.

IrishMetalhead

I think this would be a good starting point:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €282.83 + €18.99 shipping
HIS HD 6870 IceQ X GDDR5 1024MB Native HDMI 2xDVI 2xMiniDP|€146.55
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€111.29
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 13 Pro(Sockel 775/1155/1156/1366/754/939/AM2/AM2 +/AM3/AM3+/FM1)|€24.99


if you wanna max all your games out then go with either of these instead:
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/2048+MB/57689/HIS+HD+7850+GDDR5+2048MB+DVI+HDMI+2xMini+DP.article
or
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/2048+MB/59046/HIS+HD+7870+GDDR5+2048MB+DVI+HDMI+2xMini+DP.article

or if money is no issue and you want to future proof it completely go with either of these:
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/2048MB/59050/MSI+N670GTX-PM2D2GD5+OC%2C+GeForce+GTX+670%2C+2048MB+DDR5.article
or
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/2048MB/58058/EVGA+GeForce+GTX+680+Superclocked%2C++2048MB+DDR5%2C+PCI-Express.article

But thinking about I think the 670 & 680 would be bottle necked by the cpu but i'm not sure to be completely honest.

Monotype

You could avail of the free delivery (and cheap 830) from dabs.

XFX 6870|€152.65
Samsung 830 128GB|€101.08

IrishMetalhead

heres the heatsink on dabs aswell:

http://www.dabs.ie/products/arctic-cooling-freezer-13-pro-cpu-cooler-7H0S.html?refs=4294946930&src=3

Cuddlesworth

Xenoronin wrote: »

I'm actually amazed by that graph... it almost says that there is no reason for them to have been upgrading the bandwidth on PCI-e at all :O

Other things use pci-ex as well. SSD's in a array can push the bandwidth limits well beyond any gfx card.