Advise needed for temporary 939 upgrade.

[Zaphrod]

Hi all,

My gaming rig is a bit long in the tooth and the UT3 demo really put the point home. I currently have a Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-D with an opteron 146 which I am no longer overclocking due to artifacts appearing now at almost any speed. I have a 7800gt and what I would like to do is buy a 8800gtx and get the best CPU that this board will take but I am unsure as to what is still available and what is the best of the lot. Again this is meant to be an economical and temporary upgrade so an FX57 or whatever at £500+ would not be suitable, I am looking cheap. If this is not really feasible what would be the best value upgrade for me? Say in the region of £600 including the graphics card.

I currently have
Coolermaster Wave Master
Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-D
Opteron 146 with Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower
2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR PC4000
GeForce 7800GT 256MB
all the other peripheral gubbins

I would like to use as much from above as possible but get a decent boost in performance and as I already mentioned an 8800GTX is what this should be based around so if upgrading to the fastest 939 would still be a CPU bottleneck then what is the option on Motherboard/CPU that would make use of my other parts such as memory and heatsink?

Thanks

 

[Zaphrod]

Ok, having a little look around I am now seriously considering the e2180 and a new motherboard so now the question has become what value motherboard can I use with this CPU and my current ram and get a decent OC, alternatively if my ram is not suitable recommendations on RAM and Motheboard. If I set a budget of £600 I have so far:

e2180 = £58.74
OCUK 8800GTX = £299.61

which leaves £241.65 for anything else, 2GB ram if necessary and motherboard, maybe a new heat sink if required but I would hope my Zalman would still do the trick.

Any thoughts? improvements for the cost.

 

[Zaphrod]

Looks good and quite cheap too, thanks. Whats the gigabyte board like for overclocking? What about the Heatsink, is there any real benefit to buying a new one or will mine do the job? if so which one would you recommend?

 

[Zaphrod]

By heatsink I presume you mean the one for your CPU. Your current one won't fit but you get the standard one with the CPU, but I'd recommend the Arctic Freezer 7, keeps my CPU at extremely respectable temps and its cheap.
]

Why wont my current one fit? Zalman says it is suitable for Core2duo, it is a problem with the motherboard?

Nice OC what kind of memory are you using? Any chance the OCZ will do that well?

 

[Zaphrod]

I currently have a Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R power supply, I don't know if that is sufficient. I have 4 hard drives and a DVD-RW also. Might need to consider something better but maybe I will try it and see then buy another if its not enough.

 

[Zaphrod]

Well, I have gone with ManCuBuS' suggestion .. thanks, but with Value PC2 8500 memory instead of the branded 6400. We'll see if that was a good decision or not.