£350-£400 Budget

paradisiac

paradisiac

paradisiac

Soldato
Joined
22 Mar 2009
Posts
7,754
Location
Cornwall
hi, me again.
finally everything has ended on a well known auction site, leaving me a budget for now of £350-£400 to do some upgrades.
my current use is gaming and movies. with everything i am doing now i cant say my pc is struggling, but im sure it could do better. so basically my options are upgrade mobo, ram, cpu, or upgrade the graphics cards. i have been looking at possibly an i3 or i5 build, 2xHD5770 or a HD5850 but any other suggestions are welcome.
my current setup is:
Q8300 @ 2.8GHz, P5Q-E, A Data DDR2 1066+ Extreme Edition (4x1GB), 9800GTX+, Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB, Hitatchi HDT721050SLA360 500GB, Maxtor STM3500418AS 500GB, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, 42" LCD TV.
and anything that is replaced can therefore be sold to raise some more cash for any other possible upgrades.

cheers.
 
i dont think its really worth changing any of your parts except the graphics card if its struggling. the i3 is a dual core by the way.
 
not so much at the minute, but more and more applications and games will in the future, but i dont know much about the i3, except overclockers have got them overclocked bundles at 4.00ghz which is pretty good.
 
unfortunatly the OC bundles dont fit in my price range. if i were to upgrade the graphics card, what would be a good move? what i was thinking is i might be able to stretch to an i5 build:

i5 661 3.33GHz
GA-P55-US3L
2x2GB DDR3 1333MHZ CL9

£317.30

and then next payday or if i manage to sell my setup, get a HD5770 or greater depending on the budget then.
 
There isn't much point in stretching for an i5-661 build - an i5-750 build would be cheaper, more future proof, and better.

Having said that, in some of the current games, that i5-661 should rip through them better than the i5-750, although generally you are GPU limited in games anyway until you hit really high FPS.
 
I would get a faster 45nm quad E0 stepping and clock it and ditch the 9800 as it was a rebrand release.

Sell your current cpu and with a 3.6-3.8ghz core2quad and a 5850 your rig is good.

You won't see any performance increases worth the huge £££ needed for a new motherboard etc unless you go full out and get a 4ghz i5/i7 bundle.
 
mglover070588 said:
I would get a faster 45nm quad E0 stepping and clock it and ditch the 9800 as it was a rebrand release.

Sell your current cpu and with a 3.6-3.8ghz core2quad and a 5850 your rig is good.

You won't see any performance increases worth the huge £££ needed for a new motherboard etc unless you go full out and get a 4ghz i5/i7 bundle.
Click to expand...

dont really want to spend the money on another 775 cpu, i cant really justify that, would rather go for an i3/i5 so i can then get ddr3 and be a bit for future proof, but if i would be better off just getting a graphics card, then how high can i go before the current ram/cpu/mobo will cause a bottleneck?
 
A hell of a long way to be honest. Until you're getting to really high frame rates (well above 60FPS normally) there won't be a CPU bottleneck.
 
managed to scrape some more money together so an i7 build is looking good.
is this spec :

i7 920 D0 2.66GHz
GA-EX58-UD3R
TEAM XTREEM 6GB DDR3-1866 TRI CHA 999-24

£469.63

or is there a better combo for around that price, then if i manage to sell my current setup and my internet pc that should free up another £300-£350 for graphics.
 
right well the i7 route is the way im going to go now, is that setup a good price? i do not plan on doing anymore upgrades, other than either a HD5850 or 2xHD5770 cards so not worried about it being limited to 4slots for ram, as i cant see anything needing anymore than 6GB.
 
6gb ram is fine, and a i7 build is brill, but if you dont plan to convert loads of things or render then your prob best with a i5.
 
thought about the i5, and it is £100+ cheaper, but i think in the long run i will regret not just going the extra little bit for the i7, will all have that niggley feeling my system could be better.
 
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