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Best socket 775 upgrades

Camalot

Camalot

Camalot

Soldato
Joined
7 Mar 2005
Posts
6,797
Location
Wolverhampton
Hi guys,

Had my PC a while now and it feels sluggish. I want to try max it out a bit.

Current spec.

Cpu e2160 clocked to 2.8
2gb geil ram pc3200 ddr2
Mobo is gigabyte p35c ds3r rev2 bios F12
Graphics is x1800xt 256mb

I'm bidding on an 8800gt 512mb, what CPU you think would benefit me?
 
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Cost about 30-40 quid more but a Q9550 would be a better choice imo, more headroom for a bigger overclock if desired, cooler and better performance from the get go.
 
In those days two cpu's that were commonly recommend would have been the E8500 and Q9550. If you're bios supports them.

But maybe stating what you use the pc for would help, along with what operating system and hard drive and monitor resolution. You could end up throwing money at something which gets you nowhere.

It may be worth considering a budget build.
 
Budget no more than 80-100 quid for a card and CPU.

Just won an 8800gt for 26 quid off the bay so looking at 70-80 quid left.

I use PC for general gaming really.
 
I wouldn't do this..
I would get 4gb of ddr3 ram, a new mb and a AMD Trinity cpu

since you have 100 to spare... sell all your stuff for lets say £50 or more... and you can buy new parts
 
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To be honest i would'nt spend any money on that rig at all. Spending £100 on it would be throwing money down the drain. For £120-140 you could pick up a i5 750/760, 8Gb of ram and motherboard. There was a i5 750, Asus Maximus Gene lll and 8Gb of DDR3 1600 in the MM that went for £135 a couple of days ago. That would be a massive increase in performance over what you have now.
 
I have no idea why you rushed into buying an old GPU from an auction site. £26 for an old 8800 seems a lot of money considering what some newer GPU's are going for. Many 8800GT's are £14 buy it now. £30 could have probably got you an HD4870 or the like second hand.

If you have updated that motherboards Bios to F12 you can add the Q9550 or such, but you should consider the costs of any CPU, £30 for a Q6600 up to to £80+ for a Q9550. £100 would get you an up to date processor, AMD or Intel. I would guess most integrated graphics on todays CPU's would be more capable than the old 8800GT in many areas.

You are also lacking in memory with only 2gb, so I am guessing Windows XP?

Can you list your actual components? Are they IDE or Sata 1 or Sata 2?

Case?
Motherboard.
CPU.
Cooler?
Memory.
Graphics card.
DVD drive?
Hard drive?
Operating system? 32bit or 64 bit?
Power supply and it's wattage and connections?
What games are you hoping to play?

If the above is seriously lacking then all you indeed have as an option is to buy an old Q6600 and overclock the hell out of it. But what you can do will be down to the CPU cooler and bios options you have.
With only 2GB of memory and such, I think the Q9550 may be taking that old set up too far without a better motherboard, though if you do not need 4 cores of a Q6600 you may find the 2 cores of an E8500 get you further due to higher overclock per core.

I never bothered with the Q6600 as back then many old games never needed it, and the E8500 did better in games for many. I also have a Q9550, but still found the E8500 to hold it's head against that.

Don't get me wrong, I still like and use three LGA775 systems, dual and quad core, but I am sure newer hardware offers more performance per pound against much of LGA775 current second hand prices.

Maybe dropping all the above for something along the lines of what is below would serve you better? With current performance per pound, I am sure you can understand why some ponder spending any amount on old hardware as a main machine.

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A6-5400K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Dual Core Processor (AD540KOKHJBOX) £47.99
1 x ASRock FM2A55M-DGS AMD A55 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £41.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £29.99
Total : £129.86 (includes shipping : £8.25).

 
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I would try and pick up a second hand SSD to run as your main drive + games, biggest improvement your going to see on that old box. Plus when you upgrade later you can bring the SSD with you. Anything else spent on that age of pc as the others have pointed out would be a waste and your better off saving your cash to build a new pc later on.
 
I was looking at doing this, but the prices for some second hand ddr2 ram and a quad core 775 is ridiculous. I'd do as advised and buy a budget amd cpu with apu and then wish for a gpu for christmas/birthday, whatevers soonest, if cash is an issue.
 
No point having a fast CPU with an 8800GT.

Q6600 + OC and GTX260 / GTX280/ GTX460 for uber cheap gaming goodness

All about balance... should get the upgrade with significant change providing the PSU can hack it

AD
 
Until recently I have run a Q6600 on an ASUS P5N32-E SLI Motherboard with an 8800GTX with 4GB of Ram. I had a fault where I replaced everything except theMB and CPU to trace the Fault. In the end it was the MB which I replaced after 6 or 7 years of use and no Overclocking. I Put in 8GB of Ram instead of 4GB which I had in single sticks dual channel. I had OCZ in there before and replaced it with XMS. In the end when I updated my drivers the drivers were telling me I could run 3D games on it. About the only test in benchmarking it will not do is Firestrike. I may put the board CPU and Ram up for sale soon. I am currently running the same system I had on the Q6600 ASUS. I am now running an ASUS i7 3770K on an ASUS P8Z77-V LX with 16GB DDR3 Ram with Windows Vista 32 bit Windows 7 64 bit and Windows 8 64 bit. The 8800GT will out run most cards because it doesn't conform to the Kepler standard which starts at a 128 bit stream interface. The 8800 is 192 bit on a 256 bit bus. It may not be DX11.1 but it does its job and will play most games.
I am running a Gainward 650Ti 1024mb which does the basics of 11.1 quite well. I don't see any reason spending heaps of money on something you are not going to use. On the spec of the LGA 775 motherboard if you are going to upgrade your Graphics card and have it feel like an upgrade then the 650Ti should be a minimum. The 8800 is an excellent graphics card.
 
Well ive put the 8800GT in and everthing is really jerky and stuttery with the mouse movements, if i move mouse fast from left to right it sticks and lags behind.

A fresh install of windows makes no difference.
 
Camalot said:
Well ive put the 8800GT in and everthing is really jerky and stuttery with the mouse movements, if i move mouse fast from left to right it sticks and lags behind.

A fresh install of windows makes no difference.
Click to expand...

Maybe get an E8400 cpu for it, if the board supports it, one went for around £30 on the MM the other day. You would see more of an improvement in most games and Windows then a Q6600...

With regards to lag, have you downloaded the latest drivers off the internet? And what OS are you using? If it's still XP you should definitely look into upgrading to Windows7/8.

Finally I'd upgrade the RAM. 4GB is a good amount in this day and age.

Best option though is to upgrade to a more modern platform, as although many 775 systems are still very much up to scratch, to get yours there it will cost you much more than the system is worth.
 
Camalot said:
Well ive put the 8800GT in and everthing is really jerky and stuttery with the mouse movements, if i move mouse fast from left to right it sticks and lags behind.

A fresh install of windows makes no difference.
Click to expand...

This sounds more like DirectX lag to me. This could be your Mouse driver not being compatible or an issue in DX which can as others have mentioned here be caused by a Video driver conflict.
One suggestion is to strip your Video drivers out and start over, but instead of installing the latest video drivers to try and find earlier WHQL Qualified drivers for the NVidia card.
What is causing the problem is simple video acceleration. What size display are you using and what output to the display. I.E. VGA,DVI or HDMI. These are dependent on your resolution achieved and your type of signal output.
 
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