A few questions..

Chives

Chives

Chives

Soldato
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Used one of those psu calculators the other day and it said I could get a 5870 and a Phenom X4 with my 400W Corsair PSU and have no worries PSU wise. Is this correct?

Now then I realise my system needs upgrading, so due to me only being a teen and thus having no source of income whatsoever , I only get new expensive things at christmas + birthday (which is just over a month away).
My question here is what should I upgrade my CPU or my GPU.

And also would it be worth looking at the phenom X6.

Thanks for answering my many questions :)
 
PSU calculators are often..dodgy at best. I wouldnt run that on a 400W PSU myself, no matter the brand.

Looking at your monitor, I'd initally say that a new graphics card might be the way to go. That way you can take full advantage of the resolution. On the other hand investment in a quad/hex core CPU might be worthwhile, and being AMD it'll all fit in the same socket anyway..

Should beware that the more you invest in one, the more you'll be bottlenecked by the other.


what sort of budget are we talking about though, and can you describe your gaming experience at the moment? (i.e. performance, settings/res you use)
 
tbh i wouldnt bother trying that, the psu wont have the connections required to power the 5870, and will be crap when it comes to overclocking, did you take in to account, fans, hdd, etc? first thing id get would be a decent psu, then graphics card.
 
Alex74 said:
PSU calculators are often..dodgy at best. I wouldnt run that on a 400W PSU myself, no matter the brand.

Looking at your monitor, I'd initally say that a new graphics card might be the way to go. That way you can take full advantage of the resolution. On the other hand investment in a quad/hex core CPU might be worthwhile, and being AMD it'll all fit in the same socket anyway..

Should beware that the more you invest in one, the more you'll be bottlenecked by the other.


what sort of budget are we talking about though, and can you describe your gaming experience at the moment? (i.e. performance, settings/res you use)
Click to expand...

Budget probably 100-200 Although I'm not really sure and remember this wont be until july 11 (my birthday)
General preformance is mehhh on new games , Res 1920x1200 and medium/high settings.
 
Spend the £200 on a 5770 and a 650ish W PSU. Sell old bits. For christmas ask santa for an X4 or X6 and another 5770.

Edit: Ah - that's if your mobo supports x-fire!
 
Looks like it only has 1 PCI express slot so I think your correct.

Perhaps a beefier single card is the answer then
 
Ok so this is what I have in my basket at the moment

AMD Phenom X4 Quad Core 9850 2.50GHz Black Edition (Socket AM2) -
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Supply

Does that look ok?
 
Chiiives said:
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3262#sp
Thats my motherboard.. I dont see any mention of supporting SLI/Crossfire :(
Click to expand...

Oh that's a shame. I guess the solution could be CPU and PSU now, and a 5850 for chrimbo. Thing is I suggested what I did so that you at least get some GPU upgradedness (new word) now. If you do the CPU and PSU now you wont really notice much of an increase in gaming perfomance, so you'll be waiting 6 months for that when you upgrade the GPU. That's especially true if you go for that CPU in your basket which is probably barely any better than your current one, and may even be slower in stuff that doesn't use more than 2 cores efficiently due to the lower clock speed. Need to be looking at something like the 955 as danewesley suggested to be worthwhile.

So given that, and going back to my original thinking, I'd still be tempted to opt for PSU and 5770 now, then instead of adding another 5770 later (with the CPU upgrade) sell the 5770 and get a 5830/50 (using the cash from the old PSU, CPU and 5770 to boost the santa budget). Get a paper round too :)
 
why? because the 955 is a better cpu now, rather than getting the cheaper option use the budget you have now for the best you can afford. that way in 6 months time by christmas you wont want a better cpu when you upgrade your gfx.
 
phenom I's are a bit ... useless.
you'll be lucky to get 2.8ghz out of that thing on your board.
athlon/phenom II's clock soooo much better (mine was an 80 quid dual core 555, whic i unlocked to a quad core and is currently sitting at 3.85ghz, on near stock voltage)
 
Chiiives said:
Used one of those psu calculators the other day and it said I could get a 5870 and a Phenom X4 with my 400W Corsair PSU and have no worries PSU wise. Is this correct?
Click to expand...

yes its perfectly correct, but you will have trouble using the system with no hard drive, no optical drive, no usb/ps2 devices connected, no fans, etc, etc

If you tell us what else is in it that would help, with that cpu/gpu and assuming 2 sticks of ddr2, 1x 7200rpm sata hdd, a dvdrw, 2x 120mm fans, and a keyboard and mouse im guessing around 350w-375w under full load

I just reworked my numbers and it actually looks like 395W with everything at 100% load, so I wouldn't advise it with a 400w psu
 
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ubersonic said:
yes its perfectly correct, but you will have trouble using the system with no hard drive, no optical drive, no usb/ps2 devices connected, no fans, etc, etc

If you tell us what else is in it that would help, with that cpu/gpu and assuming 2 sticks of ddr2, 1x 7200rpm sata hdd, a dvdrw, 2x 120mm fans, and a keyboard and mouse im guessing around 350w-375w under full load

I just reworked my numbers and it actually looks like 395W with everything at 100% load, so I wouldn't advise it with a 400w psu
Click to expand...


I filled in the calculator form correctly with every component of my system,

Rest of my system is a 5200rpm seagate HDD (500GB) . Mouse , keyboard , dvd drive.
 
I'm fairly certain the 400W corsair would be fine. A 400W Jeantech wouldn't be.

It's often difficult to find out what current graphics cards draw, as they tend to have "needs 800W psu" written on them instead of anything useful. I think the processor has a TDP of 125W, motherboard / hard drive etc will be under 50. As long as the 5870 doesn't use 200W there's no worries.

Unlike some brands, the corsair will actually deliver 400W, continuously, for years. I suspect it'll cope with peaks of 450 to 500W, though wouldn't count on it.

edit: Ah. Cancel my last, apparently the 5870 will actually draw 200W. Graphics cards are ridiculous these days. You'll need a better psu if you don't want the psu running right on its limit under full load, or if you want to overclock the phenom.

Amd's six core makes no sense for gaming. It'll make some sense for video encoding, though I'd check it's not soundly beaten by the intel quad's at this before purchase.
 
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