Advice requested on Upgrade

Colin The Grey

Colin The Grey

Colin The Grey

Associate
Joined
26 Jan 2007
Posts
44
Cuurently I have the following Motherboard/CPU setup.

AMD 64 X2 4600+ Skt 939
Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe
3GB DDR

I am looking to upgrade this to an Intel based platform with 2 or 4 GB Ram.

I currently have an EVGA 8800 GTX and a Creative Xi-Fi Fatality Pro so won't be changing them, but may be adding another 8800 GTX later for SLI. My PSU is a Corsair 520. I have 3 Sata Hard drives and 2 DVD burners, will prob replace one of those with a combi HD/Blu Ray when they are more reasonable in price. OS is Vista Ultimate 32Bit so would prob need to upgrade to Vista 64 to gain the most benefit from 4GB of ram.

I've been an avid AMD user for many years and am not up to date on the current Intel Dual / Quad core setups and the best options to go for - so I am looking for some advice on Motherboards and Memory, also not sure if I will need to replace the PSU.

Ideally an Asus Motherboard would be preferrable as I have used many Asus boards in the past with no problems, but looking at the boards available there seem to be many different variations just from Asus alone.

Budget is around £500 - £700.

Any advice would be much appreciated and I thank anyone who replies to this post in advance for their time.
 
Intel Core 2 Quad LGA775 Q6600 GO SLACR 2.40GHz Retail / Abit IP35 Pro / 2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500C5 DDR2 Dual Channel Kit, Tuniq Tower 120 Cooler - Bundle £381.95
(£448.79) £381.95
(£448.79)
Sub Total : £381.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £68.29
Total : £458.49

I personally think thats all you would need

Stelly
 
If you went SLI with 2x 8800 GTX you would need to replace that power supply, probably with something like the Antec Quattro 850w, as the Corsair 620w (higher version of yours) will do it but it's a little flakey. If you wanted SLI also you would need a 680i motherboard, however I would REALLY recommend waiting for the new Nvidia based motherboards coming out very soon (750/780/790i) which are SLI and a much newer technology than the quite dated 680i / 650i motherboard.

I wouldn't recommend SLI though, I would rather personally just sell the 8800 GTX later on and get a newer card, but that's my opinion. If you did that then you can choose a P35 motherboard, common and very good boards at the moment include the Abit IP35 range (IP35-E, IP35 and IP35 Pro), then Gigabyte P35 range (P35C-DS3R, DS3P and DQ6) and also the Asus P5K range (P5K-SE, P5K and then onto the P5K with WiFI ... Asus have about a billion P35 boards :-)). For that instance however I would personally recommend the IP35 Pro, however if you did not want to spend that much (£130~) on the board then I would recommend the Gigabyte P35-DS3P. Both of those boards come with dual 16x PCI-E lanes should you ever decide you wanted Crossfire. Since you would like an Asus board however, I would go for the Asus P5KC Combo.

Regarding RAM then, unless you are massively overclocking, then I would just get some nice PC2-6400 RAM. Such as the OCZ Platinum XTC stuff on "This Week Only", or alternatively the GeIL Black Dragon DDR2. RAM is RAM when not heavily overclocking, and as long as you can get it to run 1:1 with your CPU then you are fine and will see nice performance. If you are heavily overclocking then you might wish to look at some 8500+ RAM or consider Ballistix (Crucial) DDR2 which overclocks A LOT.

CPU wise - If you want one now, then I would suggest the Q6600 which is a very good chip and a very popular one at that. Just get something like a Tuniq Tower 120 with some MX-2 for cooling and you'll have no problem getting it to 3.2Ghz and then being well set from there, if you did want this CPU however make sure you get the Energy Efficient Edition as that is the G0 stepping and runs cooler due to lower power consumption. If you didn't want to spend that much on a CPU (£180 for the Q6600), then I would very much recommend the E6750 dual core CPU which is faster than a Q6600 in dual core applications and games, but of course not as fast in quad core games/applications but easily carries it's own weight for processing power.

Rouding off, personal opinion for you would be:

Asus P5KC Combo (£100~) -- mainly since you want an Asus board, otherwise the ABit IP35 Pro for £125~
Intel Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient Edition (£182~)
2x Geil Black Dragon / 2x OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-6400 (£86~ - £100~)
Tuniq Tower 120 + MX-2 (£40~)

That'll in total set you back around £440 and you have a very nice system with headroom to spare.


ps. sorry for the wall of text :-)
 
Last edited:
Many thanks for the advice Stelly and flibby.

After reading your posts I am looking at getting these:

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Asus P5KC Combo Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit
Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound

Only question I have now - would I gain any real benefit moving to 4 Gb and getting Vista 64?

I have 3Gb in my current machine and did notice a difference from when I only had 2Gb.

I am right in assuming that Vista 32 can't address 4Gb?

And if I do change to Vista 64 will I be able to import my mail etc from vista 32? I back up every week onto a removable drive using the built in windows back up tool, so would these backups be ok to restore into Vista 64?
 
Colin The Grey said:
Many thanks for the advice Stelly and flibby.

After reading your posts I am looking at getting these:

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Asus P5KC Combo Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit
Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
Click to expand...
No problem :-) And nice choice of parts!

Although just to note on the cooler, if you want you can get the original Tuniq Tower 120 which is the exact same model as the LFB version but doesn't have an LED fan included with it, but it's £10 cheaper - could save you a few bob if you weren't bothered about that feature.

Only question I have now - would I gain any real benefit moving to 4 Gb and getting Vista 64?
Click to expand...
I never noticed any difference, but with the RAM prices being as low as they are now it cannot hurt to upgrade to 4GB to be all set, never know when they will shoot up in price again... that's assuming you can afford to do that of course.

I am right in assuming that Vista 32 can't address 4Gb?
Click to expand...
Yes, that's correct.

And if I do change to Vista 64 will I be able to import my mail etc from vista 32? I back up every week onto a removable drive using the built in windows back up tool, so would these backups be ok to restore into Vista 64?
Click to expand...
Do you use Windows Mail? If you do you can backup all messages and folders through that. There is an option in the "File" menu called "Export", click that and then select "Messages" and it'll open up a wizard for you to follow to backup everything. You can restore that later on when you reformat by going the "File" menu again and using the "Import" feature which will also open up a wizard and you can import them back. When you do import them though, it doesn't overwrite you current folders and you will have to drag and drop the imported folders and/or messages back into the "Local Folders" area of your Inbox.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom