Anything to change while PC is in pieces?

Greboth

Greboth

Greboth

Soldato
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Birmingham
Hi all

Pretty much as the title says: My PC will be in pieces towards the end of the month and as it is watercooled it is a good time to change components around. So would you change anything around? My budget it likely to be around £200 + 2nd hand value of what gets changed. Also worth remembering I am running a cpu and gpu waterblock so that will have to factor in to the budget. The reason I am thinking about upgrading is everything runs fine and the games I play, however BF3 has caught my attention so may be getting that when it comes out and be making the change from console to pc fps too.

My Current spec is
AMD PhenomII 1090T @ 3.8 Ghz
Nvidia GTX 470
8GB Corsair XMS3
Corsair AX 850 W PSU
Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H 890GX
60Gb OCZ SSD
2 x 1TB Samsung HDDs

My thinking at the minute is to swap my motherboard for this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-164-MS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=1782

The board seems to have got good reviews and fits perfectly into my budget. It isn't a big change in itself but it opens the oppurtunity of getting a second 470 for sli which would help out with running games. Wondering whether worth the trouble of dual gpu or just swap my gpu for a single better one (I have slightly ignored gpu's for a bit so a bit lost on the nvidia v ati comparisons)

Thoughts on this? or other possible changes?

Greboth.
 
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Hi there,

First thing - please don't go for that board, it may explode when used with a hex core.

Second, it doesn't support SLI, it does hydra - which is something very different (have a read here).

Instead, I would suggest waiting for the new AM3+ boards that are about to be released and natively support SLI as well as the new AMD bulldozer CPUs.

The rest of your spec looks great (even without a new mobo the spec is still great).

Also, you may want to consider keeping your lovely 890GX board (which supports AMD crossfire at x8/x8 speeds) and sell on your GTX 470 card and replace it with something like this HD 6950 2GB (or two of them). This card is not only quick, but it scales extremely well in crossfire.
 
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cmndr_andi said:
Hi there,

First thing - please do go for that board, it may explode when used with a hex core.

Second, it doesn't support SLI, it does hydra - which is something very different (have a read here).

Instead, I would suggest waiting for the new AM3+ boards that are about to be released and natively support SLI as well as the new AMD bulldozer CPUs.

The rest of your spec looks great (even without a new mobo the spec is still great).

Also, you may want to consider keeping your lovely 890GX board (which supports AMD crossfire at x8/x8 speeds) and sell on your GTX 470 card and replace it with something like this HD 6950 2GB (or two of them). This card is not only quick, but it scales extremely well in crossfire.
Click to expand...

I think you mean please don't? Just to avoid confusion ;)
 
Ah ok, I did not realise that about the hydra chips. Forgot that idea then completely. I did read it as don't anyway so 'do' worry :p

I am not particularly fussed aboutt he AM3+ boards as apart from the native sli support there isn't anything that really stands out or that I need.

That could be worth doing, getting xfire 6950's. I will have to look up some of the bench tests for them, see how the compare. Working out the figures it is over my budget but might be worth switching to one in the build then get a second in a couple of months just in time for BF3.
 
Personnally I wouldn't change a thing, it looks pretty kick ass. I would sit and wait for Bulldozer and BF3 to make up my mind. Maybe a fancy case if money is burning a hole in your pocket.

If you need to, sell your 470 and get two 6950 2GB. That should be fun water cooling.
 
Greboth said:
Ah ok, I did not realise that about the hydra chips. Forgot that idea then completely. I did read it as don't anyway so 'do' worry :p
Click to expand...

:) I see what you did there.

Yea, the 6950s are pretty nice cards, and adding a second one at a later point (when they will more than likely be cheaper) is a good plan. Have a look at this review which shows the performance of a single and crossfire 6950 in battlefield bad company 2 (probably the best indication we have so far of how hardware will fare with BF3). As you can see, 6950 CF handily demolishes GTX 470 SLI.
 
That spec will not struggle with BF3, don't change anything. I have the same GPU and it's yet to struggle with anything, even Shogun 2 maxed out in Dx11 with huge armies in battle which is notoriously difficult.

EDIT: I assume you've overclocked the pants off the 470 with watercooling? If so it'll be perfectly fine for quite a while yet.
 
olivier renault said:
Personnally I wouldn't change a thing, it looks pretty kick ass. I would sit and wait for Bulldozer and BF3 to make up my mind. Maybe a fancy case if money is burning a hole in your pocket.

If you need to, sell your 470 and get two 6950 2GB. That should be fun water cooling.
Click to expand...

Well I wont be changing to bulldozer, the 1090 is plenty for me at the moment and I tend to run in about a 5 or 6 year cycle of cpu's or until they become bottlenecks. You mean like me moving into a tj07 :P it is purely for the loop being apart that it is the easiest time to add things into the loop. Though shouldn't be too much trouble to add 2 gpu as loop wouldn't change greatly from the planned loop of 1 gpu.

Darg said:
That spec will not struggle with BF3, don't change anything. I have the same GPU and it's yet to struggle with anything, even Shogun 2 maxed out in Dx11 with huge armies in battle which is notoriously difficult.

EDIT: I assume you've overclocked the pants off the 470 with watercooling? If so it'll be perfectly fine for quite a while yet.
Click to expand...

Well given some of the spec being banded about at the minute for bf3 and for reasons above thought I might change. No my 470 isn't overclocked at the minute - it was on my list of things to do when I watercooled it but then it runs all the games I currently play on max at about 50 - 60 fps. If I keep it for BF3 and it struggles then I would think about overclocking it to see what gains I can get.

cmndr_andi said:
:) I see what you did there.

Yea, the 6950s are pretty nice cards, and adding a second one at a later point (when they will more than likely be cheaper) is a good plan. Have a look at this review which shows the performance of a single and crossfire 6950 in battlefield bad company 2 (probably the best indication we have so far of how hardware will fare with BF3). As you can see, 6950 CF handily demolishes GTX 470 SLI.
Click to expand...

I did nothing, honest guv'nor!

I will have a good read of that review later :) I was also planning a hdd upgrade so might sacrifice them for some extra gpu goodness. I can get by on my current hdd's.

Thanks for all the advice on this :)
 
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