Sorry to do this but I've been out of the loop for a few years and am therefore needing some advise for spending about £200 on upgrading my computer (some wiggle room on price but try not to go crazy).
Current spec:
E5200 @ 3.2GHz
Asus P5K vanilla (775, DDR2)
4 x 1Gb DDR2 @ 900MHz
XFX 9600 GT @ stock
Hiper type-r 580W PSU (newer non-self destructing model)
I game at 1440x900 resolution and I guess my question is really will I see a greater FPS increase from upgrading the graphics card or the mobo+cpu+ram. The other question is will my 4 year old PSU with 2 18A 12v rails be competent enough to have either upgrade?
Despite what my spec suggests I love overclocking often just for the fun of it and that's my priority in a motherboard not too fussed about what else it has except perhaps a socket that wont be obsolete too soon.
I'm eyeing up the price cut Phenom II 955 x4 BE with an AM3+ board to make a low budget leap to the DDR3 and quad core world but I'm not quite sure whether the CPU will still be the bottleneck and I can warrant the extra cash for an i5-2500K, then what budget boards would allow overclocking my cpu to it's limit on good water cooling?
Also SLI was more for bragging rights when I was last around but if things have changed could I SLI the 9600 gt with a cheap second hand one and see any benefit coupled with a "modern" cpu? Is a DX11 card necessary?
Anyway lots of umm-ing and ahh-ing at my end so can someone show me the light?
Thanks, Stacey.
P.S. games I intend to play include Dirt3 as well as other new titles at a playable level of details and FPS. (Using Win 7 64bit.)
Current spec:
E5200 @ 3.2GHz
Asus P5K vanilla (775, DDR2)
4 x 1Gb DDR2 @ 900MHz
XFX 9600 GT @ stock
Hiper type-r 580W PSU (newer non-self destructing model)
I game at 1440x900 resolution and I guess my question is really will I see a greater FPS increase from upgrading the graphics card or the mobo+cpu+ram. The other question is will my 4 year old PSU with 2 18A 12v rails be competent enough to have either upgrade?
Despite what my spec suggests I love overclocking often just for the fun of it and that's my priority in a motherboard not too fussed about what else it has except perhaps a socket that wont be obsolete too soon.
I'm eyeing up the price cut Phenom II 955 x4 BE with an AM3+ board to make a low budget leap to the DDR3 and quad core world but I'm not quite sure whether the CPU will still be the bottleneck and I can warrant the extra cash for an i5-2500K, then what budget boards would allow overclocking my cpu to it's limit on good water cooling?
Also SLI was more for bragging rights when I was last around but if things have changed could I SLI the 9600 gt with a cheap second hand one and see any benefit coupled with a "modern" cpu? Is a DX11 card necessary?
Anyway lots of umm-ing and ahh-ing at my end so can someone show me the light?
Thanks, Stacey.
P.S. games I intend to play include Dirt3 as well as other new titles at a playable level of details and FPS. (Using Win 7 64bit.)
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