Can Socket 775 and DDR2 still cut it?

Soldato
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I'm thinking about making a 1080p gaming PC for the bedroom. I'll be playing the games I've missed from the past five years like Dishonoured and Bioshock Infinite but no GTA V or anything!

I'm not sure whether to base it around LGA775 (Q6xxx or Q9xxx) + DDR2 or whether I'd need to go newer + DDR3? I'm not bothered about loss of SATA 3. Will the older chips be able to cope?

I'll probably be sticking an ATI 7850 in there with it.
 
I wouldn't. For a lot of games a Q6600 with a good overclock would be fine, but only just. You'd be better off picking up a cheap 2500k if you're on a budget. S775 is pretty much dead for gaming
 
^ A "cheap" 2500K is still £75-100 though. A Q6600 is £20-30.

Really depends on the game. I'm sinking many hours into XCOM: Enemy Within atm on a Q9300/7850 system. Runs smooth as butter.
 
Again depends weather you become seriously CPU bound but has no notable problems with gta v and a 560 .. http://youtu.be/cBDnJfpl7Fo

Wouldn't think you'd have a problem even in the worse of scenarios providing your GPU in more than upto the task . Just a bit of tweaking the settings as is always the case will get results.
 
DDR2 RAM is going to cost a pretty penny in comparison to DDR3 as well.

I don't think it's too bad if you look on ebay etc, plenty of people are taking apart old pc's and selling ram cheap, only last week I saw 6gb of ddr2 go for £10, the seller claimed it was fully functional, if it's not you have ebay seller protection, bargain.


Just out of interest, what is the best S775 processor out there for gaming?

I have an old DDR2 computer that I loved,
8gb Ram, Gainward GTX 260m Gold edition, but the processor is not fantastic, If upgrading is the Q6 the best available? I'd love to be able to play decent games on that old rig, H1Z1 is my guilty pleasure at the moment but I fear it would just be too intensive for the S775 processor...

The minimum requirements for the game are Intel i3 Dual-Core with Hyper-Threading (required)

but the reccomend an i5-2330m, My knowledge on processors is limited, is there anything that comes close in the 775 range?
 
I think that's a really bad idea. Socket 775 has had it's day and building a pc now that is based on such a old socket is madness. You would be better off going for a G3258 and a Z97 board and clocking it. Then when you can afford it drop in a second hand 4670k/4690k. You have MM access and I have seen G3258's go for as little as £30 in there.
 
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since I have a rig still on this platform
I give you abit of my experience.

in short, most older games there won't be much problems but struggle to push latest gpu to max capacity
running xboxone and ps4 generations games will start to run into trouble

we have 2 pc

1 my wife
6core xeon x5650
24gb
7950 3gb

2 mine
q8400 2.6ghz to 3.4ghz
16gb DDR3
7950 3gb

gta v with xeon push the gpu to 100% usage most of the times
with the q8400 struggle to get 100% usage most of the times and fps nearly half

evil within: similar story

Mortal kombat x I was suprise I can get solid 60 with my q8400

and most older games I can get solid 60

AC black flag there was only about 5fps a difference between the 2 system but this game is kinda not well optimized anyway

so that's my experience
 
I'm currently running a Q6600 @2.4Ghz with 4Gb ram, an SSD and a 280X GPU and my CPU gets maxed out playing cities skylines. I dread to think how bad it would be running some other more dynamic titles.
 
Up until a few months back I was still playing games like Bioshock infinite, Crysis 3, Battlefield 3, World of Tanks etc on an LGA 775 system.

Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9550
GA-EP45-DS3P LGA775 Rev A3 ATX motherboard
Corsair XMS2-8500 8GB (4x2) 1066MHz DDR2
Seasonic X-650w power supply
MSI Twin Frz 7950 GPU

Also with an Asus Maximus II Gene with an E8500 and 4gb Dominator GT PC8500 and the same PSU and GPU.

1080p monitor, and playable frame rates with decent settings.

But like others are saying. Thats all well and good if you have a suitable motherboard, cpu and memory laying around to utilize.

The cost of the second hand components is a fair chunk of new tech budget.

After seeing some of the latest titles show a clear inclination for quad core, or i3 with hyper threading, I would be looking at a budget Z97 build along those lines instead of chasing second hand stuff decades old.

What LGA775 compatable components do you currently have?

Cpu cooler?
Motherboard?
Case?
PSU?
GPU?
SSD?
HDD?
OS?
Optic Drive?

A budget build with the G3258 and an H81 motherboard with 8gb of ram may well do.
 
This will be a second PC, I have a i7 4770k with a 7970 and 750GB SSD as my main PC, so I not worried about it being a dead end route to go down. It will be to play games from 2008 to 2013 basically.

I currently have the following bits:

Corsair 650 watts
An E6600
Coolermaster Cooler that supports 775 -> 1150
2x 2GB DDR 3
Windows 7 x64
250GB HDD
DVD Drive

GPU will be whatever I fancy under £40 or so. It will be an M-ATX build.

In terms of settings, I'd like it to look better and run better than an xbox 360. At 1080p.
 
think you might struggle to get a decent matx 775 board that will have legs; it's all pretty old gear.

One cheap and viable option is to get the cheapest board you can find, and the cheapest GPU with h264 decoding and stream games via steam in-home streaming (assuming you're using steam).
 
Another option is to find an old Dell/HP etc that's 775 based to harvest parts from... many of them were sold with overpowered CPUs relative to their uses.

EDIT: Related...

 
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I have the opposite problem. I have a Dell QX6700 with 3.5GB of RAM and 7750 that I'm using for WOT. No overclocking options at all. Currently it has some really slow hard drive that really ruins it. Loading times are horrendous, unsuable if two things access the disk at the same time. Having the 4 cores is handy for encoding though.

I suppose I should get a SSD as I can take that to the next system I get. I also have a E8400 with 2GB of slow RAM and HD. I think theres no point me spending any money on these, but just moving to a new system with a 1150 Pentium. I just don't have the funds to build a better machine.

If I was the OP I would start with a 1150/1155 system. Even pentium based.
 
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