BORING SPEC ME THREAD - AGAIN!

[Greebo]

Okay, I've decided to sell my cpu, mobo, ram and get an Intel system (rest all as per my sig).

Reckon I can get £150 from that sale and now I have some money to put to it so my budget is around £500 for new cpu,mobo,ram.

It seems not worth me swapping to Intel unless I was prepared to put money to it as the performance gain would be too small.

So what should I spend my £500 on and I don't necessarily have to spend the whole of my £500 as I always beleived in getting "bang for bucks"

Have never gone SLI and unlikely I ever will so that doesn't bother me.

I always overclock (see sig) so bear that in mind when speccing me.

Have watercooling already

 

[Greebo]

Thanks for the answers and here's my replies:

Phoenix: What's wrong with my gpu? I only just bought it for £117 (told you i'm frugal)

I only have a 20" screen so the GTS ought to be fine until next gen come out or I fancy a chnage of screen.

Would I see any benefit from the 4gb of memory since i'm running xp 32-bit? I have vista ultimate sitting on a shelf and I have no intent of putting that back on my system again (tried it for a month then went back to xp)

Semi pro waster: psu is a tagan 430W. Will that be enough?

System is mainly games and video encoding.

Why are the dual core E8 series more money than the quad E6 series? For £33 less I can have a Q6600 guaranteed to 3gz, same speed as the E8400?

Sorry for the lame question, but been out of touch in the overclocking world especially Intel related.


Not too bothered about speed of encoding as I tend to leave it overnight so not concerned whether it takes 10 minutes or two hours although it is tempting.....hmmm. How much faster would a quad core encode compared to a highly overclocked 8 series?

 

[Greebo]

Thanks for that.

Wasn't going to pay the premium for the guaranteed 3Ghz processor, was just comparing like for like since the 8400 processor ran at 3Ghz - hence I was amazed that the quad core was still substantially cheaper.

Reading around a lot of people including yourself recommend just PC6400 ram and not PC8500+. I thought getting the fastest (subject to not too much extra money) was best?

And I have been reading the oc threads and there seems to be huge debate over motherboard chips. Assuming I go quad core, is the p35 board best for overclocking? If I go down the E8X00 route, is there a better board for dual core?

 

[Greebo]

Thanks for that. It explains a lot.

However if getting the E8X00 cpu and acheiving 4Ghz won't that put the the 6400 memory out of spec?

 

[Greebo]

Thanks for that. I might see how the Tagan handles it. It has really stable voltages and hasn't let me down so far. If it becomes a problem I can always change it later.

I think I'm fancying the 8400 route. Is the Intel X38 best for that processor or did you recommend that board to suit my budget?

 

[Greebo]

Fair enough but is OP using it for high end CAD rendering?

Nope!

I still can't make my mind up between a quad core or a E8x00 dual core.

4Ghz sounds tempting but the future all seems to be quad core in the next few years with perhaps more games taking advantage of it so a 4Ghz dual might start and get left behind by a 3Ghz quad core.

The quad cores seem a bargain atm. Just out of interest how much faster than my current rig would a 3Ghz quad or 4Ghz dual core be?

 

[Greebo]

i went from a 2.7ghz opteron (dual core), to a q6600 (even at stock 2.4ghz) it was way faster

i'd possibly sell your raptors are get a 640gb western digital drive

the performance will be almost the same, and the noise will be about 1/5 of the raptors, with 9x the space, check the thread for them in Hard Drives section, they're awesome drives

Cheers for that tip. I'll look into the drives as I am finding I have run out of space again.

However, I;m not looking forward to reinstalling xp again as that is on my Raid Raptors unless there is a quick and easy way?

 

[Greebo]

2gb? come on..
and he said he doesn't want sli/crossfire, that's the only difference between that and the p35-ds3r, for £50 extra, just throwing money away



you'll have to re-install windows anyway because it's a new machine

doesn't take that long at all on a fast pc though, you'd get probably £60-70 for the raptors, which would pay for the new drive

-realistic tips for the win

Good point about the windows re-install. I hate doing that but I suppose it will force me to have a clearout again. Might even put Vista Ultimate back on since it's gathering dust on the shelf. Or maybe even a dual boot with the new drive.

Phoenix: Valid point about upragding later so may not be worth while getting the quad however they are still tempting me due to a quad at 3.5Ghz just seems better than a E8400 at 4Ghz especially £30 -£50 cheaper.

I'm a frugal overclocker. I normally either buy 2nd hand or mid range or slightly older tech which has dropped in price and then maximise the oc from it. May not get the best/maximum performance but I get a hell of a lot for my money!

hmmmm decisions, decisions