Annual Upgrade Advice

Sherpa · 5 Jul 2009 at 22:29

Good evening,

It's about time for my annual upgrade. At the moment I've got:

An Asus P5N32-E Sli
A Q6600
7GB of DDR2
2 x XFX 9600GT XXX edition
2 x Raptor 74GB (RAID0)
1 x Raptor X
An OCZ GameXStream 850w PSU

I'd like to keep the HDD and power supply.

I'd like to upgrade with a budget of ~£500. What would be the best starting point? Upgrading the graphics side of things, maybe to a 2xx series, or going for an i7 and upgrading the GFX at a later date?

At the moment I have a Thermaltake BigTyphoon but have the parts for a water cooling rig (DDC-1 pump, XSPC 120.3 RAD and seperate Res) left over from the rigs previous incarnation. If I went i7 would water cooling it be a good idea?

I game mostly (generally COD4) and would like to get ArmA2, I'd also like to be prepared for Modern Warfare 2. My display is a Panasonic TH-42PZ70 at 1920x1080.

Cheers all

Sherpa

Minato · 5 Jul 2009 at 22:32

could get an i7 920, and a gtx 285 for around £450, the rest of your system looks fine.

siumatfung · 5 Jul 2009 at 22:34

motherboard and ram??? lol

Minato · 5 Jul 2009 at 22:36

whoops!! my bad, disregard what I said completely lol. you could go for a Asus p6t, i7 920, and some corsair ddr3 ram, and upgrade gfx later, especially since gt300 cards will be due in a few months.

Microwave · 5 Jul 2009 at 22:37

Maybe just get a decent graphics card and wait another year / few months and do a full system upgrade for more than £500.

If you're going to upgrade from an already good system (as you have there) you need to spend at least £750 for it to be worthwhile.

Sherpa · 5 Jul 2009 at 22:40

Minato said:
whoops!! my bad, disregard what I said completely lol. you could go for a Asus p6t, gtx 275, and some corsair ddr3 ram, and upgrade gfx later, especially since gt300 cards will be due in a few months.

Do you mean a P6T, Corsair and an i7? Then a 3xx card later?

Maybe just get a decent graphics card and wait another year / few months and do a full system upgrade for more than £500.

If you're going to upgrade from an already good system (as you have there) you need to spend at least £750 for it to be worthwhile.

Fair enough. For a single card would Ati or Nvidia be the way forward? Mid-range ish.

Sherpa

Minato · 5 Jul 2009 at 22:41

yep, sorry my mistake (seem very tired tonight lol)