Decision time....

weird_dave · 24 Feb 2010 at 09:26

I've finally had enough of my current system:
Asus P5ne sli
E4300 @ 3.0GHz
GTX 260
6GB Ram
etc...

It bluescreened on me last night, first time since xmas. But, over xmas it took me ages to get it to even post after a few weeks of regular blues. I was using an 8800GTS for physics, but I blue or lockup when the PCI-E x16 divider card is in the 2x8 position with the GTX 260 in either slot. It was the last thing I expected the problem to be! Was fine for ages but something must have degraded a bit.

So, it's time for change, but I can't decide what route to take. Here's what I consider to be my options, in order of cost:

1) I could just get a new mobo for it, but that's not really going to feel like an upgrade. (£50-80)

2) Get an athlon/phenom II X4 with a DDR2 compatible mobo and reuse my Ram. (£150-180)

3) Get an i3 setup and hope for 4.5GHz (£250)

4) Get a proper Phenom II X4 setup (£280)

5) i5 750 4GHz (£300)

6) i7 920 4GHz *** (£400)

I'm just not sure what to aim for to get a decent increase in performance for as little cash as possible (which wipes out option 6 I guess!)

Thoughts appreciated.

Frozennova · 24 Feb 2010 at 10:04

You wont be disappointed if you went down the i3 route, a well clocked i3 is beating even the bigger phenoms in gaming benchmarks

Admiral Huddy · 24 Feb 2010 at 10:14

i5 i750 is a good purchase considering it clocks just as good as the i7 920 and is considerably a lot cheaper.

However, buying a Phenom II X4 and using your existing RAM maybe a good idea if you're on a budget.

otemu · 24 Feb 2010 at 10:39

Everyone goes on about SSD increasing performance so if you can stretch that in your budget could be a good investment.

weird_dave · 24 Feb 2010 at 11:13

Hehe, got the 80GB intel

I'm quite tempted by the cheap AMD solution with DDR2, but I've not followed AMD kit for a long time and am a bit out of the loop. Can they reach 4GHz?

Ideally I'm looking for an increase in single threaded apps as well as multithreaded/multiple apps, so I think quad must be the way forward since that immediately doubles my multithreaded ability. I assume 4GHz will give me roughly 33% extra in a single thread over my current CPU and a possible 166% extra for multithreaded.
I'm hoping to re-use my tuniq tower 120 with this too.