Best upgrade path with 400 budget?

AlexTrickle · 28 Sep 2009 at 16:10

Current specs:

E8600 (stock cooler, stock clock)
4GB GeIL Black Dragon PC6400 DDR2
Asus P5E-VM HDMI mATX motherboard
BFG GTX260 (not maxcore)
Antec 900 (with custom fans and Zalman fan controller)
Corsair HX620 PSU
Hitachi 320GB HDD
WinXP Pro 64Bit

Have 400 to spend and am really at a loss at to what would be best path for my upgrade. If i stick with LGA775 i need to change motherboard as the current one has no overclockability!

My main uses are gaming and computer DJing.

Thanks!

xGaffner · 28 Sep 2009 at 16:32

AM3 will probably be the cheapest, X4 955/965 offers amazing performance for a very good price. You can easily get a cheap AM3 motherboard and a some 4GB DDR3 RAM for a budget monster. It's not like you wont be able to upgrade in the future either with AMD confirming 6 core and 12 core (?) CPU's coming to AM3 in the future (also AM2+). If you go 1156 you are getting better performance but also have to pay a bit extra. Sure the i5 might beat AMD's greatest so far but like i said you have to pay more (obviously) and correct meif i'm wrong but Intel won't be bringing 6 core CPU's to 1156 in the near future, i'm pretty sure it's 1366 only. Also the fact that Crossfire/SLi runs at 8x bandwith too in P55 motherboards. It all depends on how much money you have to spend but since you only do computer DJ'ing and Gaming i suggest going AM3. That's just me though.

Edit: Realized that you have £400 to spend. It's really up to you want you want to buy but if i was you i'd get a pretty decent but cheap AM3 motherboard (Gigabyte?) X4 955/965) and some cheap but decent DDR3 RAM. That's just me though. I know a lot of people will recommend going 1156.

blinghound · 28 Sep 2009 at 16:34

Hey Alex,

you could purchase an intel quad core and a p45 mobo for some overclocking room,

or if you are heavily into gaming, a 5870 or two 4890s in crossfire would nice

(thats if your current mobo supports it that is).

Good luck dude

Blinghound

xGaffner · 28 Sep 2009 at 16:37

blinghound said:
Hey Alex,

you could purchase an intel quad core and a p45 mobo for some overclocking room,

or if you are heavily into gaming, a 5870 or two 4890s in crossfire would nice (thats if your current mobo supports it that is).

Good luck dude

Blinghound

I advise heavily against this, if you do go intel i'd definitely get an i5. The best Core2Quads are way more expensive than the i5 for considerably less performance.

blinghound · 28 Sep 2009 at 16:44

xGaffner said:
I advise heavily against this, if you do go intel i'd definitely get an i5. The best Core2Quads are way more expensive than the i5 for considerably less performance.

Yeah, on 2nd thoughts the i5 is probably the best way to go, if an intel is what you want, but its up to you whether you get a mobo+cpu or a gpu etc depending on your needs. By the way, what do you use for dj-ing?

AlexTrickle · 28 Sep 2009 at 16:52

Cheers for the advice, ideally i'd like i7 (1366) but I'm a student so unfortnately its a bit out of my range.

I had thought of i5 but the lack of 'notable' coolers is putting me off. Any update on a H50 1156 bracket?

I have no problem with AMD but i'd only change the entire base setup for i5/i7, else ill just try and max out my 775 system.

The upgrade i'm currently considering is:

Asus P5Q Pro - 89.99
Corsair H50 - 54.99
XFX HD5850 - 198.98

Total - 355.47

Im guessing this would be better than going i5 for gaming purposes? However I'm not sure for my music/DJing - the main software i use is Ableton Live 7 and I don't know whether this is multi-threaded so to make benefit of the quad core i5?

Edit: Apologies for the lack of pound signs, my laptop keyboard seems to have all the symbols mixed up and I can't seem to find the combination for the pound symbol!

blinghound · 28 Sep 2009 at 17:13

nahh, theres nothing about the H50 1156 bracket yet dude, i5s are just too new i guess..

I have the p5q pro and the overclocking on my q6600 is insane, i got up to 3.8 once

but the temps were way too high with the arctic freezer 7 pro

Ableton live 7 has multicore support, so a quad or i5 would do nicely--although im not sure about the multithread thing.

Nice graphics choice