£500 upgrade

[dave_beast]

I have £500 and want to upgrade, for gaming, rendering, video converting, benchmarking etc.

Currently running a Q9400 at 3.6ghz that's ok, but starting to be noticably slower than current chips.

If you we're me would you wait for SB? Either for SB itself or to see where 1156/1366 i7's go?

 

[dave_beast]

For your uses I would certainly wait for SB if you can.

It will be more powerful clock-for-clock, clocked higher at stock and (with a K series CPU) overclock very well.

Your £500 should get you a K series i5, a mid-end board and 4GB DDR3 and some money spare to buy a decent graphics card.

May I ask what your current graphics card is?

XFX6870 Black Edition, with plans to possibly CFX sometime in the future...

 

[dave_beast]

Am thinking along the lines of the i7 2600k, can add some £ to the cost if needed.