Whats what these days?

jongeeone

jongeeone

jongeeone

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I have been out the PC scene for a long time, discovered the Motors forum and havn't looked in since ;)

Anyway, i may be looking to upgrade soon - PC is starting to get a bit rough around the edges and could do with a bit of treat.

Currently i have errrr...

E6300 (2.8Ghz)
Gigabyte DS3
2Gb PC8500 OCZ XTC SLi
7900Gs (650/1420)
Couple of random HDD's, nothing special.

Now, i would be looking to upgrade CPU/Mobo at first and try and keep the RAM/GFX - is this even possable?

I'm aware DDR2 is old hat now, and it appears the i7 is now in.

Could you just give me a run down on whats what, whats good and whats not!

Thanks
 
Not really fussed, just looked to see whats what these days - and then i can decide what i want to spend!

Waiting for BF3/COD MW2 to come out - so somthing capable of them!
 
My PC doesn't really struggle at all.

Can't get anymore than 400FSB out the DS3. I flashed the BIOS a while back and it just no no too anything more than 400.

Im guessing OCing is still the same days as it was with the Conroe series?
 
i7 is the newest tech out at the moment so would be a good future proof upgrade for you to make, but it doesnt use DDR2 (as far as Im aware) so you would need to upgrade to some rather expensive DDR3 as well as new mobo.

If you just want it for gaming then get a high end Core 2 Duo like an E8400 and a good P45 board. Will be able to use your current ram and P45 boards tend to overclock pretty well, but just check first! That CPU would be fine for pretty much every game out now, and with the money you've saved from not going i7 you could get an ATI 4870 or 4890 graphics card, absolutely amazing power for the money! :)
 
DDR3 seems reasonable cheap now compared to when it came out... £70 for a set, which is peanuts compared to at first.

Is it worth going quad?

I could just buy a Q6600 - but it wouldn't be much of an upgrade :S
 
Depends what your doing with your PC? Most apps, programs, games etc dont use 4 cores and a quad is just going to waste. If however you do lots of CPU intensive work such as video encoding them a quad is your best move. For most people, gaming and general usage (music, video, intenet, office work etc) a dual will be fine.

And yea, DDR3 is not as bad as when it first came out, but still a lot more than the price of a set of DDR2. It just comes down to money in the end. An i7 setup would be great if you can afford it, its just a lot cheaper to upgrade what you already have though.
 
guys im gonna be using cubase 5(uses all cores), photoshop, watching 1080p films (8800gtx no hardware hd acceleeration), and also playing games, and emulators.

what would you recommend, i am swaying towards the overclocked i7 bundle, as many of my emulators need fast cpu's.

i am still not 100% sure?
 
Ducky Spud said:
Depends what your doing with your PC? Most apps, programs, games etc dont use 4 cores and a quad is just going to waste. For most people, gaming and general usage (music, video, intenet, office work etc) a dual will be fine.
Click to expand...

2007 called, it wants its upgrade advice back.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...Evil-5-Core-i7-reigns-Phenom-strong/Practice/

Those are Resident Evil 5 processor benchmarks; see where the Wolfdale you told him to buy ranks? I had to look for it too, with it hidden away, way way waaaaaaaay down the list, behind all those quad-cores which you would have us believe confer no advantage.

i7 920: 101.4 fps

e8400: 58.7 fps

Time to face facts; Dual is dead.
 
wow those benchmarks are crazy, but then aint all console ports cpu dependant and hardly ultilize the full power of the grahic card.

considering the fps with the i7's i suppose cpu intensive stuff liek my emulators would simply be crushed and made to look easy compared to my amd 6000 dual core.
 
Stick with what you have because battlefield 3 etc is a long long way off.

Not much on the horizon that requires much over a core 2 duo @ 3.2 + 4 gig ram and gtx 260 as far as I can see.

There's a lot of life left in your current setup.

Better off selling 2Gb PC8500 OCZ XTC SLi / 7900Gs (650/1420) and get yourself 2x2gb ram and a decent graphics card upgrade.

Rapido! said:
i7 920: 101.4 fps

e8400: 58.7 fps

Time to face facts; Dual is dead.
Click to expand...
That is ONE game like gta4 is better on a quad that is hardly a reason to upgrade.
 
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Haha, I also wanted to quote that! :p

Thats one game though. You not see the massive CPU Comparison in Custom PC a few months back? Did pretty much every CPU available thats actually worth bothering about. Showed in games dual core is just as good as equally clocked quad... but theyre a lot easier to overclock due to less heat!! Quad still rules for media benchmarks and such though. And i7 just beats pretty much everything!
 
horse said:
so for multiple applications along with games the i7 is the way to go?
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For processor intensive applications, yes. Gaming, even the new AMD Phenom II's perform ok.

Agree that OP is better of just upgrading RAM & GPU. Lots changed/improved sine the GeForce 7 ;)
 
I would say that your current processor will be fine for a while yet, but I think a lot of newer games (Like Resident Evil 5) coming out will be optimized for quad cores...

The only reason I went for i7 was because I wanted to have the latest tech, tbh I don't really need it for what I use my PC for.. I just wanted it!!!

Like hp7909 said, a lot has changed since 7 series Geforce...

If you were to just upgrade your GPU and RAM you will get a really nice performance boost indeed...
 
Rapido! said:
Time to face facts; Dual is dead.
Click to expand...
Fool.

AMD is well worth a look for gaming these days if you upgrade the cpu/ram/mb. i7 dominates for encoding and number crunching.

Overclocking is quite like the c2d days, but with different names for things and slightly more to adjust. Things also run a hell of a lot hotter
 
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