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E8400/8800GT upgrade path question

Bouchehog

Bouchehog

Bouchehog

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Joined
2 Mar 2008
Posts
4
Hi there - I've been playing Crysis 2 on my rig (listed below) and it's struggling to keep up, which is perhaps unsurprising given that I put this system together in early 2008. Is there any sensible upgrade path? I've got the cash for a new build if necessary, but this system still seems sensible for most games and I don't want to waste money unnecessarily.

Nothing is overclocked at the moment and I brought the PSU, RAM and CPU with this in mind and have some past experience with doing so (albeit I find the task a pain rather than an enjoyable challenge).

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R (Rev 2.0)
Core 2 Duo E8400 (running at 3Ghz)
Gigabyte 8800GT type B
Antec P182 PSU
4GB Corsair TwinX DDR2

The CPU compatibility list for the MB is here. I can upgrade to any Socket 775 CPU, which means that I can go to a Duo E6800 @ 3.33GHz, which seems a paltry gain for £68.39 or the more realistic Core2 Quad Q9650 @ 3GHz for £259.99. I may be able to shop around and get cheaper prices. This seems an absurd amount of money to blow when an i5 2500k is only £170...

I'm stuck with my current RAM as I have 4x1GB modules. The MB only supports 4GB of DDR3 and there's no mixed mode support. 4GB seems to be enough and I can't see any advantage in throwing out my current modules just to gain a little extra capacity with the same speed.

Thus I guess the question is, how should I send my cash? I could upgrade the system entirely keeping my HDs, opticals, case and PSU. A quick search based on the some quick picks (i5 2500K, Asus P8P67-M, Nvidia GTX 460 1G, Corsair DDR3 1333MHz) comes in at £440ish without shopping around. This seems quite reasonable to me.

The other alternative would seem to be overclocking my current CPU and upgrading my GPU, which has served me very well but it's now past its prime. If I do that what card would you recommend? Am I best to go with the GTX 460 listed above for £130 on the basis that I will replace the rest of the system toward the end of the year or should I go for a lesser card with the intention of eeking out the life of the system for another year and then starting from scratch?

Thanks!
Ben
 
I would go SandyBridge 2500K build, which should cost around £350~380 (CPU, motherboard, 4GB DDR3 ram, CPU cooler), and probably spend the rest (plus a little extra) on getting a 5850 at £100 ish; or if you gonna be getting money back on selling your old parts, instead of the 5850 you may be able to look at 6950 2GB (and unclock it to 6970) or the Gigabyte GTX480 SE/SOC, if you PSU is up to it for these two cards.

Forget getting sk775 CPU...you shouldn't even look at getting them new as they are ridiculously expensive. If you do want a cheap upgrade, try to source a 2nd hand Q6600 or Q9550 instead.

The cheapest way to get more performance would be of course overclock your E8400 to 4GHz or above, and then grab something like a GTX560/Gigabyte GTX480 SE/SOC/6950 2GB. But do bare in mind even with the overclock, the CPU might still struggle in some games...not so much because of the dual-core CPU being not fast enough, but more about games being poor console port that don't runs well on CPU with that only got two cores.
 
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Don't go from an E8400 to an E6800 thats essentially a downgrade (the E8400 easily overclocks past 3.3gig and is the newer tech CPU).

That setup is still essentially very capable, don't necessarily be tempted into buying a whole new motherboard/CPU.

My reccomendation similiar to above would be too look at the 6950 or GTX480 SE and if you can find one a Q9550 or similiar Q9x50 CPU at a reasonable price.

I'm still running a Q9550 @ 4gig and GTX470 SLI and it keeps up perfectly fine for gaming/benchmarking with the latest sandbridge setups in 99/100 cases - infact for crysis 2 I don't even need SLI enabled at 1680x1050 for perfectly playable fps with max settings - tho it needs a little more horsepower to be pefectly smooth at 1920x and above but even SLI isn't entirely needed there a single 480 would be fine.

EDIT: Suprised your having trouble with crysis 2 tho my laptop is similair spec to your setup T9600 @ 2.83gig (essentially an E8300) and GTX260m (which is actually a 1gig VRAM 9800GT) and at 1680x1050 with fairly high settings its fine - if your 8800GT is only 512MB tho that might be somewhat part of the slowdown.
 
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Rroff said:
Suprised your having trouble with crysis 2 tho my laptop is similair spec to your setup T9600 @ 2.83gig (essentially an E8300) and GTX260m (which is actually a 1gig VRAM 9800GT) and at 1680x1050 with fairly high settings its fine - if your 8800GT is only 512MB tho that might be somewhat part of the slowdown.
Click to expand...
May be he's at 1920 res? But I guess we wouldn't know unless the OP can confirm.
 
I would work out the prices for a 2nd hand CPU which would give you more options and keep the cost down a little more, then look at either the GTX460 or the GTX480 (I prefer nVidia to ATi). If you can get the CPU at a good price then great stuff since if you go the Sandy Bridge route you will still need (imho) a better GPU (GTX460/480).

Put simply work out the cost of doing both and see which one suits your needs :)

Stoner81.
 
I'd avoid the GTX460 (470 and 480 seem fine) on that board - theres been a small but not insignificant number of people who have had trouble with the 460s and compatibility issues on that board (tho I think they were all rev 1.0 versions of the board).
 
It's a 512mb 8800GT model but I'm not playing at particularly high resolution: 1680x1050. It's been fine for some parts of the game but I'd like to play on higher settings and it is beginning to choke a little!

Thanks for the input. I think I'm going with a 1GB EVGA 560ti GTX. I'll o/clock my CPU and see how that works out. If it's not enough I can always build the rest of the system then.
 
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I had a very similar spec (in fact only the PSU is different!) and wen from the 8800GT to the 460 and noticed a very good improvement. In fact such a good improvement I've decided to keep my current setup until early next year when i go for the full on i5 or i7 sandybridge setup. You'll get a significant increase with just a 460 (no issues here) and then you can OC the E8400 and keep that for a while. I also looked into getting a Quad but the prices for Quad 775 CPu's are insanely high so I gave that a miss.
 
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uv said:
clock the e8400 to 4ghz, and get a new GPU.
Click to expand...

+1

I've had pretty much the same decision to make as you Bouchehog.

Former rig:

E8500
ASUS P5E3 WS PRO
3870 X2 1GB
ThermalTake 700W
Antec P182

And I've upgraded to what's in my sig. I've kept most of what I had.

Buy a decent CPU cooler, overclock the E8400 to 3.4Ghz+, slap in a new gfx card (560 will be great) maybe new OS and hdd. Should last you you several years.

I'm planning on doing a build from scratch after 3 years.
 
Grab yourself a second hand Q9550 and clock it up to 3.4Ghz+, then buy a GTX480 for around £200. I have this setup and it runs everything I can throw at it maxed out 1920x1200 res.
 
Turns out that when I built this system two years ago I worked out the overclocking then: [H]ard forum thread! After two hours of messing around I've simply returned to 440x9 with the voltage increases I'd worked out then. Can anyone see anything wrong with running this system at the following settings?

440x9 Vcore 1.3625v, RAM 2.1v (+0.3v), FSB/MCH/PCIe +0.1v. The RAM is at 1:1 (running at 890MHz, 5-5-5-15, 2T). I've set the robust graphics is set to 'Fast'. PCIe is set at 100MHz. Vdroop using CPUz suggests a drop from 1.328v to 1.296v under load as before. The system is running at 62°C under a P95 CPU stress test. The only temperature that is concerning is what I assume is the northbridge at 56°C. It seems pretty stable at the moment.
 
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