Spec me upgrade £500 or £1000

MarkLP

MarkLP

MarkLP

Soldato
Joined
28 Sep 2004
Posts
3,128
Location
Devon, UK
Hello,

A friend is looking to upgrade their PC.

Currently have a DELL XPS system

Intel C2D 6700
2GB Mem
2 x 7900GS in SLI

He's looking to spend £500 on upgrading the RAM and Graphics card or £1000 upgrading the RAM, Graphics card, CPU and motherboard.
I haven't kept up to date with the latest hardware so if anyone would have a spare minute to spec something up it would be appreciated!

He wants DX10 and wants to run Crysis at max res!! :p

Would something along these lines be suitable?

£500:

Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA663)
(£30.54)
(£61.08)

Leadtek GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£352.49)

Total : £423.26


£1000

Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA663)
(£30.54)
(£61.08)

Leadtek GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£352.49)

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.16GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
(£199.74)

Asus P5Q Deluxe Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£140.99)

Total : £764.81


This all comes in under budget, Is there anything new on the horizon to wait for? or any another specs would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Mark
 
Nothing can play Crysys maxed out at max res... He can forget about it.

Will he be overclocking? Anyway, with £1000 you can really build a beast.
I would go for X48 board (I like Gigabyte), a Quad (Overclock these beasts as far as they go!) 4GB of RAM (2x2), a powerful CPU cooler and WAIT for next gen graphics cards to arrive in less than a month!
 
No, no overclocking at all. It will be 'as it comes'

Whats the next gen cards going to be? Will they be the same sort of price?
 
Well, if you can afford the GX2 you will probably be able to afford any new card really ~_^

There will be new and better choices for most price segments, with existing products probably ebing price slashed a bit or EOL (GX2 comes to mind).

BTW, if he WONT be overclocking, getting a high speed dual core may be better, there is a long debate about this, but i support the quad argument only with overclocking. Clockspeed is STILL king for most games.
 
Ok, So its better to wait the month till the new cards come out.

What will these cards feature? As I say I haven't kept up with any of the latest hardware so its like being a complete noob again!
 
ah i'm slightly confused now so Nvidia wont support 10.1 but I guess they support 10.0??

So basically on the graphics card its best to wait.

What about the other hardware that he wants!??
 
Go for more and faster RAM, and an E8400 + decent aftermarket cooler and overlock it way past E8500 speeds.

For example:

E8400 - £132.76
Noctuna NH-U12P - £42.29
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PK PC2-8500C5 (2x2GB) - £105.74
Asus P5Q Deluxe - £140.99 OR around £180 for a decent SLi motherboard

TOTAL: £420 - £460 (depending on moterboard choice) leaving a budget of more than £500 for a Graphics Card/Cards
 
just saying "no overclocking at all" is silly to the point of ignorance.

Its SOOO easy, and its free.

He'd be really foolishly stupid not to.
 
sushi_fiesta_57 said:
Go for more and faster RAM, and an E8400 + decent aftermarket cooler and overlock it way past E8500 speeds.

For example:

E8400 - £132.76
Noctuna NH-U12P - £42.29
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PK PC2-8500C5 (2x2GB) - £105.74
Asus P5Q Deluxe - £140.99 OR around £180 for a decent SLi motherboard

TOTAL: £420 - £460 (depending on moterboard choice) leaving a budget of more than £500 for a Graphics Card/Cards
Click to expand...

Agreed except replace the noctuna with a thermalright ultra extreme

if he doesn't want to overclock (read: doesn't want the best performance) then don't bother with an aftermarket cooler, and just get PC 6400 RAM.
 
Ok so something like the:

E4800
Asus 5Q Deluxe
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PK PC2-8500C5 (2x2GB)

and wait for the new graphics cards?
 
omg he has dell.

Just sell the Dell to some random person on auction for 30% more than equal self built system is worth ;o.

Get rid of the dell, I bet its worth like 600quid at least.

Then just get a new build for around ~1000.

E8500, 8800 GTX, 4gb of nice memory and fly.

I would also wait for the new GPUs. And you can consider taking 8gb ram already, 4gb is becoming the minimum default slowly.
 
I was under the impression that Dell XPS cases were designed to take the proprietary Dell motherboards that are BATX - in which case, wont replacing the motherboard be difficult without modification? I'm not 100% sure of this, but its probably worth checking...
 
on top of that the PSUs are proprietary iirc.

basically he needs to self build or buy another dell, the 2 are like deciding whether you want a golf gti or a transit van, not really comparable choices tbh.
 
Good analogy (which one is the transit van i wonder...?)! The newer dells are atx i think - i remember seeing a mod of a dell BATX case, and it didnt look like such an easy task, so a new case is on the horizon. As for overclocking, i wont confess to be an expert, and to be honest i was pretty intimidated - but it is pretty simple, and does provide a good boost. Whilst i wouldnt want to push someone into doing it (if i had just spent £1000 on brand new kit, i would certainly be more careful than on old gear), but it can save money...
 
PhoenixUK said:
E8500, 8800 GTX, 4gb of nice memory and fly.

I would also wait for the new GPUs. And you can consider taking 8gb ram already, 4gb is becoming the minimum default slowly.
Click to expand...

Don't buy an 8500, they're terrible value for money compared to the 8400
and 4gb really isn't becoming the minimum, most people run 32 bit OSes which don't even see that much, and 4gb makes overclocking slightly more stricky than two (it's still easy enough to warrant 4gb over 2) but 8 is just unnecessary and will be a pain to OC.
 
Ben M said:
Don't buy an 8500, they're terrible value for money compared to the 8400
and 4gb really isn't becoming the minimum, most people run 32 bit OSes which don't even see that much, and 4gb makes overclocking slightly more stricky than two (it's still easy enough to warrant 4gb over 2) but 8 is just unnecessary and will be a pain to OC.
Click to expand...

8400 I meant :), mistake there.
Im using 32 and I feel my 2gb aint enough, getting another 2gb next week, and if I had ~1000quid machine and vista64 I would definitely consider getting 8gb.
 
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