£500.00 upgrade for current setup

[PapaLazaru]

Hi chaps. My current setup is this -

In addition to the above, I have a 30BG Kingston V Series SDD for my OS, and a 500GB Seagate Barracuda for games / storage. These are both installed and being used.

I have Win7 home premium retail.

I also have a Thermolab Baram (still boxed) and a Coolermaster CM-690 II Advanced Dominator Case (still boxed).

The £500 is for anything else. I will get a new monitor as well but that is a separate issue.

I can unlock the CPU to 4 cores but am having trouble getting it stable so have decided I may flog it and the mobo on MM once I get some new stuff.

I have been mulling over a Phenom x 6 but cannot really justify one as I only really game and currently, there is no real need for 6 cores, is there?

I need to get rid of the HD as I swear it is on the way out so need another one to get my stuff onto asap.

I have kind of settled on the below -

Crossfire another 5770, get a decent quad, overclock it with the lovely new mobo and keep it all cool with the Baram in the lovely new case.

Is this a good idea, or what would you do differently?

I could supposedly keep the mobo but it does not offer crossfire support, but the money save on the mobo, I could flog my 5770 and just buy a single 5870.

So many dilemmas but any help would be great as I am aiming to fit this all together over the bank holiday weekend.

Sorry for the waffle.

 

[Jae-So]

personally flogging the 5770 and getting a single 5870 seems better unless the price difference is very big, but yeh the phenom 965 is a great buy, consider the 1055T as welll tho, not much difference in price

 

[PapaLazaru]

personally flogging the 5770 and getting a single 5870 seems better unless the price difference is very big, but yeh the phenom 965 is a great buy, consider the 1055T as welll tho, not much difference in price

It is quite bit more for a 5870 which is why I though of crossfiring another 5770 as I could only get £90.00 for my card. Would prefer a single GPU though to be fair. PSU should run two fine.

Or just keep the mobo, save £170 from not buying a new mobo, sell the 5770 for £90.00 and spend that £260.00, plus the £130.00 I was going to buy a new 5770 on, on a £390.00 5870?

 

[stulid]

sell the 5770 and Antec 300

buy a 5870, kept your existing motherboard, flash the latest bios onto it.

buy a hex core and harddrive

 

[Cookeh]

sell the 5770 and Antec 300

buy a 5870, kept your existing motherboard, flash the latest bios onto it.

buy a hex core and harddrive

Hex core is completely pointless for gaming, and puts out FPS's lower than duals and triples in some cases and nearly always lower than quads, because the games don't support that many cores so they just idle.

Id go for a 5870 (after selling case, and current 5770), keep the same mobo, get a 955 or a 965 (965 seems a little overpriced recently) and the Samsung F1 you had in your original idea

 

[Ryan-3]

Yeah, I saw that too. Mind Amd sort of gets dominated by Intels X58

But I like the 965 idea, but why not the 955? a lot cheaper

 

[PapaLazaru]

Cheers for the answers guys.

I much prefer the single GPU option as there is less to go wrong!

Sounds like a good plan with less things to sell.

So, I reckon 965 (or 955), 5870, new HD, sell case and 555. Job done.

About £500.00 for the above and I can probably get £150.00 for my case, GPU & GPU.

*EDIT*

Quick Q, should I reinstahl Win7 if I plop in the new CPU? If I had replaced mobo then would have for sure, but not sure with just CPU?