Advice from you experts - Mobo and Memory

tedrodgers

tedrodgers

tedrodgers

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Joined
11 Oct 2011
Posts
122
hi all, first time poster so be gentle.

My current system consists of the following:

mobo - Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 rev1.0

ram - OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10666 Gold i5 1.65V CL9(9-9-9-20)

cpu - Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 8MB

gpu - nvidia 460gtx 1gb gigabyte oc edition


Im looking at doing abit of an upgrade, and the most important thing to me is making sure what i buy is compatible and works well together.

im a gamer so i need suggestions that will give me good performance. I recently played BF3 beta and got decent performance at high level detail but ive had my current kit for over a year now so fancy abit of an upgrade.

I think the cpu is ok? im really looking for maybe a mobo upgrade and ram, which will work well with an nvidia gpu and my i5 processor.

any suggestions?

thanks guys!
 
Honestly?

I cant see the point in a motherboard and RAM change, why?

You already have 4GB and changing the motherboard wont make things faster.

Only overclocking the CPU using a afternarket heatsink and then swapping out the GTX460 card for something with a lot more power will give you more frames per second or let you play at a higher resolution with the game details set higher.


The only reason to change the motherboard is to give you SLI support, where you can then buy another GTX460 and pair it up with your existing card. Assuming your PSU is up to it?

My advice is,

Sell the GTX460 and replace it with a GTX560ti/570 and fit a £30 heatsink and push the CPU faster.

What case and PSU do you have?
 
If you're keeping the CPU (which i would as it's still very capable) i would also keep the MB and clock the CPU.

I would then spend the money saved on a better gfx (e.g. 560Ti) card as that will get you better gaming performance coupled with a clocked CPU.

If you want to spend some more money you could buy 2 x 4Gb and sell your 2 x 2Gb so that it doesn;t effect your clock (or buy another matched pair of 2 x 2Gb and see what clock you can get with all the DIMM slots filled).

EDIT: stulid beat me to it (if i'm honest - i'm not surprised he's like the Scarlet Pimpernel of the forums - 'you see him here you see him there' :D)
 
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psu = Corsair 650W TX Series PSU - 120mm Fan, 80+% Efficiency, Single +12V Rail
case = Antec P182 Black SPCR Advanced Super Mid Tower

i already have a decent coolermaster cpu heatsink etc so oc is an option.

to be honest my issue is that i get random crashes in some games. i dont know if its due to the games themselves or my system not being configured properly or slightly faulty hardware, ive got some cash so i thought it was a good time to upgrade the core bits of my system.

I thought my p55 mobo is abit outdated? and im sure i can get much better ram , especially as the cost of ram is so cheap atm.

Im definately looking at getting a 560ti.

im running windows 7 64bit so ive actually got 8gb of that ram.

So im after advice on if the p55 mobo is outdated? and if so whats the new alternative?

and based on that decision whats some good fast ram (8gb) for it?

thanks for your advice so far guys!
 
Your P55 board isnt outdated, the only thing its missing is SATAIII if you wanted to add a SSD, if so then you will be maxing out the SATAII ports on the board, but it will still be faster than a harddrive.

Is your RAM voltage and timings set to what is written on the sticks manually in the BIOS? with 8GB of DDR3 currently at £45'ish and you using a 64bit OS, then this is a option. But seriously, gaming doesn't need this amount.

You have a good PSU, so consider getting a GTX570 for £250, overclock the CPU and just wait for next year's technology.

Can you measure that maximum length of graphics card you can install? to in sure HDD cages wont get in the way
 
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im not going ssd yet so the mobo sounds ok then.

i have set the bios settings manually and it looks ok. running at 9-9-9-20 x10 giving 1333mhz, strangley though if i run cpuid in windows it reports the ram as the wrong model and it says its running at 666mhz?!? ive ran memtest etc and no errors were reported, but if i run prime95 it bombs out not long after starting. Im not sure if prime tests cpu or ram though? so maybe ram is fine but my cpu is slightly faulty...

hence my thought of grabbing some 1666 ram as an upgrade. do you know what good quality ram would be compatible with my mobo?
 
ive got 4 sticks though.... if thats what you meant :)

anyway, im defo going to grab some better ram , so anyone any suggestions what goes well with my i5 and my gigabyte mobo?

thanks
 
The amount of sticks doesn't alter the frequency at which they run at.

double data rate (DDR) is different to dual channel memory which your CPU uses, thats why there are colour coded ram slots on you board to show which to fill in pairs to get a dual channel.

If you are really set on getting new RAM, then either of these,

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-299-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-290-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-311-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

These will give you the same amount (8GB) but only using two sticks, meaning you free up two of the boards slots for more in the future.

Beware of the Vengeance with the tall spikes, this can cause issues with big heatsinks that over hang the ram slots.
 
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