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I-3 550 @4.2ghz

Ronson12

Ronson12

Ronson12

Associate
Joined
23 Jan 2013
Posts
188
Hi im am looking to upgrade my current gaming rig and was wondering if its possible to get something that will be a good upgrade for £200 or will i just not see much of a difference with that price in mind.

Right now my rig is:

I-3 [email protected]
4gig ddr3
Ati 6970
 
your i3 due to the OC is better than any i3 out today (they stopped people overclocking them after your generation) so sadly no you can't really upgrade it for £200.

What you could look at is beefing up either the CPU or GPU, you would have to decide what your games would react best to, an i5 or i7 for your system could be sourced for <£100 and hit 4GHz no problem which would give you 4 cores or 4 cores plus HT. Or you could go the GPU route and bag a HD7950 or GTX670.

Personally I would upgrade to an i7 860 for bout 80-100 (3.6GHz stock 4C8T) then save for a HD7950. Or buy the HD7950 then sell the free games with it and the HD6970 and then that plus the leftover from the HD7950 should pay for the i7.
 
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Hiya and thanks for the reply.

As far as im aware my socket is too old to use i5-i7? So if that being the case i would be well over the £200 mark.
I've been looking at th e£120 8320 piledriver is it?...i am an intel fanboy but with me been on a budget and the piledriver looking bang for the buck it looks attractive,the thing is i have no idea if my OC i3 @4.2ghz is lagging behind the 8320 or if its better.

Edit:sorry i just read up didnt realise you could get i7 on the 1156 socket.would this be better than a piledriver
 
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Your i3 is LGA1156, as well as the i3 and Pentium/Celeron chips that socket also got the i5 6xx/7xx series and the i7 8xx. Those chips are no longer made but can be found used at decent prices, the i5 6xx is just the i3 5xx you already have but with higher stock clocks and turbo boost, ignore that chip. The ones you would want are the i5 7xx (quad core with turbo) and i7 8xx (quad core with HT and turbo) both of which should do 4GHz or maybe more.

The i7 8xx was actually better for gaming on a single card than the i7 9xx that graced the LGA1366 socket as it had a lower latency memory controller. But anyway a first gen i5 7xx or i7 8xx is still a formidable chip even today and would be my budget choice.

AMD are currently in a bad position as like Intel with the Pentium 4 they have hit on a bad design and are trying to improve it. As such their current cores have about the same performance per MHz as a Q6600 did, their attempt at a solution is to crank up the speed and tack more cores on however if the game cant use those cores their wasted.

An 8320 is however a decent upgrade from your i3 and slightly better than the i5/7 I recommended however it will require a new board which means more expense.
 
Ronson12 said:
As far as im aware my socket is too old to use i5-i7? So if that being the case i would be well over the £200 mark.
I've been looking at th e£120 8320 piledriver is it?...i am an intel fanboy but with me been on a budget and the piledriver looking bang for the buck it looks attractive,the thing is i have no idea if my OC i3 @4.2ghz is lagging behind the 8320 or if its better.
Click to expand...
Actually why don't you just try picking up a 2nd hand i5 750/760...or i7/860 even for around £50-£60 (i7 860 may cost £10-£20 more)?

An AMD FX8 (with high overclocked) would still be slower than an high overclocked i5 750/760 in games that use 4 cores or less, but would may be be a bit faster in games that use 6-8 cores; the i7 860 on the other hand would most likely be not that far behind the FX8 in the 6-8 cores games.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Actually why don't you just try picking up a 2nd hand i5 750/760...or i7/860 even for around £50-£60 (i7 860 may cost £10-£20 more)?

An AMD FX8 (with high overclocked) would still be slower than an high overclocked i5 750/760 in games that use 4 cores or less, but would may be be a bit faster in games that use 6-8 cores; the i7 860 on the other hand would most likely be not that far behind the FX8 in the 6-8 cores games.
Click to expand...

i can't seem to find any at that price,the ones i've found seem to be £100-150(ebay) which is a bit steep for something so old and second hand
 
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You are not looking very hard then. There are loads of i5 750/760's on the bay for £50-90 with buy it now. I know because i am watching several while trying to decide how much to sell mine for.
 
pastymuncher said:
You are not looking very hard then. There are loads of i5 750/760's on the bay for £50-90 with buy it now. I know because i am watching several while trying to decide how much to sell mine for.
Click to expand...

would you be kind enough to post me the link to what you are seeing as i can only see 2 i5 and 3-4 i7 of varing prices
 
why not go for a sandybridge setup? cheap used 2600k/2700k and z68/77 board?

id also go for 8gb 1600mhz ram minimum and a 64bit windows,also a sata3 ssd if you don't already have an ssd

and a 7850/70 or 7950 sell your old rig
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Actually why don't you just try picking up a 2nd hand i5 750/760...or i7/860 even for around £50-£60 (i7 860 may cost £10-£20 more)?
Click to expand...

^^^^ this.

Im still running an i5 760 which with a decent cooler i am now running at 4.0ghz which is more than enough for any application or game i run.

I upgraded to this from an i3 540 and the difference in gaming is well worth it.

And yes there are loads for a decent price, just do a search on the bay and save that search and then you will be emailed everytime a processor is listed.

Saves all the hassle of buying and setting up a new system and installing windows again.
 
wazza300 said:
why not go for a sandybridge setup? cheap used 2600k/2700k and z68/77 board?

id also go for 8gb 1600mhz ram minimum and a 64bit windows,also a sata3 ssd if you don't already have an ssd

and a 7850/70 or 7950 sell your old rig
Click to expand...

thanks ill also look see what i can get that for second hand,just looking round on ebay as we speak.
the only time i can see lots of i5's is if i put i5 1156 in to ebay search but then there mostly all i5 650 dual core
 
you can try i5 750 760 and i7 860,there might be others

the one's I mentioned are different socket 1155 socket,but they clock higher and run cooler,they won't fit 1156 board though you'd need a z68/z77 motherboard
 
yea thanks,i just typed in sandybridge 2600k on ebay but they are showing £200,maybe im just crap at searching but everything seems over the top in price or cheap from hong kong
 
it's hard to upgrade from your current chip @4.2ghz

you could go for a true quadcore with hyperthreading that the i7 860 has or a non hyperthreaded chip like the i5 750

then there's no guarantee they would clock as high,maybe 4ghz idk

I think 8gb and a64bit windows would help your current setup though,i struggled with my i3 540 and 4gb on l.a.noire,switched to 8gb and it was smooth but you also need 64bit windows to use it all,32bit only lets you use 3.5gb of memory

you might even benefit from just a faster gpu,without changing other stuff
 
Ronson12 said:
yea thanks,i just typed in sandybridge 2600k on ebay but they are showing £200,maybe im just crap at searching but everything seems over the top in price or cheap from hong kong
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Ah...the 2nd hand market prices might be different in HK comparing to UK.

But anyway, rather than buy it now, you might need to win in auction to be able to buy at decent price.
 
wazza300 said:
it's hard to upgrade from your current chip @4.2ghz

you could go for a true quadcore with hyperthreading that the i7 860 has or a non hyperthreaded chip like the i5 750

then there's no guarantee they would clock as high,maybe 4ghz idk

I think 8gb and a64bit windows would help your current setup though,i struggled with my i3 540 and 4gb on l.a.noire,switched to 8gb and it was smooth but you also need 64bit windows to use it all,32bit only lets you use 3.5gb of memory

you might even benefit from just a faster gpu,without changing other stuff
Click to expand...

how much of the overclock do you think i will loose if i jump to 8gb memory though,because if i could see a decent gain from just 64 bit and 8gb then im all for that as its cheaper i would then later sell the 6970 and go for a 7950 maybe?
 
shouldn't affect your oc,maybe a touch more cpu/vtt

I ran my i3 540 with a 7850 stock though not oc'd and it stuttered badly in that game,stuck 8gb in and it was fine

you would notice more smoothness less or no choppiness in games,esp multithreaded games atleast that's what I found

heres my 3dmark11 score I did,you might score higher due to your cpu oc

5227 points

7850. I3 @ 3.0 - Wazza300

if you only play a few games id just upgrade the gpu first and take it from there,add more memory/64bit windows later if it struggles
 
right thanks for the help,my memory that came with the bundle iirc was like £20-30 so with that in mind i can get some nice memory.

i had to RMA the memory after a year and found out it was only cheap stuff,thought it would have been more expensive lol.its served me well though.

its corsair XMS3 1600.
would some Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit be a better choice maybe?

heres a screenshot if it helps
how to do a screenshot on a pc
 
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