Upgrade from P5N-E SLI for <=£100?

dlknight

dlknight

dlknight

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Afternoon peeps,

Currently running a P5N-E SLI and was initially looking at upgrading my current RAM (2Gb OCZ Platinum XTC Rev 2.0 DDR2 RAM) to the OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Platinum Series DDR2.

However I was wondering if it would be worth upgrading my current motherboard to maybe Intel P45/X38/X48 or the NForce 7? I mainly use my rig for playing games like COD4, TF2, Left 4 Dead, Crysis.

Might also like to go for a ATI crossfire or NVIDIA SLI board so that I still have the option of running two video cards at some point, DDR3 support could be an option too.

So the big question is can this be done for around £100 or less ? :D

Cheers

WhiteKnight
 
I think you'd benefit more from upgrading to 4Gb ram. a new cf/sli mobo will set you back >£100 so I'd just stick with P5N-E for now, it's still pretty decent for dual core chips plus you can always get another cheap 8800GTX for sli.
 
steve258 said:
I think you'd benefit more from upgrading to 4Gb ram. a new cf/sli mobo will set you back >£100 so I'd just stick with P5N-E for now, it's still pretty decent for dual core chips plus you can always get another cheap 8800GTX for sli.
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Hmmm, got me thinking I might be able to push my CPU a bit further too if I go for the 1066 DDR2 :cool:, Cheers Steve.

lukeharvest said:
It isn't <=£100 but is regarded as one of the best P45 boards, and it isn't that much over your budget

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-001-BS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1155
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:D was already dribbling over that, never had a Biostar board but always liked the look of them.

WhiteKnight
 
Personally I wouldn't bother, it's an adequate board for running an E6300 and changing motherboard is a lot of hassle (I only do it when moving to a different CPU socket!)

I'd recommend dropping some more RAM in there and save up for when i7 gets a bit cheaper to make it a worthwhile upgrade.
 
HI,

I may be wrong, but does this board not support up to 800Mhz RAM only? Maybe there is a BIOS update that fixed it?:confused:
 
gozo said:
HI,

I may be wrong, but does this board not support up to 800Mhz RAM only? Maybe there is a BIOS update that fixed it?:confused:
Click to expand...

It should be fine with PC8500 as you can unlink the RAM from the CPU and set the ram to run at 1066Mhz manually :)
 
P45 is allegedly a better overclocking chipset than the premium X48 boards but I doubt theres much in it. X48 has full support for crossfire ie. 2 x16 lanes vs 2 x8x8 lanes on P45. Crossfire is still excellent on P45, you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference.

That said, if I was definitely intending to crossfire and I was on a tight budget I'd go for one of the better X48 boards listed in b grade section at the moment. Just bear in mind that it could come OEM.

But if I was going to stay on a single gpu set-up or just wanted the option to go dual spu somewhere down the line then I'd just buy a brand new P45 board as they retail at around £100 if you look around.

I ran a Biostar TP I45 for a while which was excellent both for overclocking and crossfire performance.
 
i upgraded from the p5ne-sli to the p5n72-t premium and it has made such a difference

managed to get it for ~115 which for a 780i board was great

[they put the wrong price on the website and only realised once id bought it, went up by 70 quid a week later]
 
My P5N-E, IP35 Pro, and Rampage Formula X48 mobos all overclocked an E8400 to 4.2GHz and made absolutely no difference to performance or max clocks.

Unless you intend using a quad-core processor (which 650i mobos sometimes struggle with) I would stick with the P5N-E.
 
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