have £600 to spend on an upgrade - help please.! :)

Dan87

Dan87

Dan87

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28 Nov 2009
Posts
354
right please don't laugh at my current setup, but if you had £500 to spend on this what would you do?

r8cubq.jpg
 
here you go buddy
Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £149.99
(£130.43) £149.99
(£130.43)
Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
(£69.56) £79.99
(£69.56)
OcUK Value ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £77.99
(£67.82) £77.99
(£67.82)
OCZ Gold Low Voltage 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3G1600lV4GK) £76.99
(£66.95) £76.99
(£66.95)
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD10EADS) £62.99
(£54.77) £62.99
(£54.77)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w Silent SLI Ready Modular Power Supply £56.99
(£49.56) £56.99
(£49.56)
Sub Total : £439.09
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £67.36
Total : £516.45
 
Thanks man! and this is a fairly good setup?.. in the future if i wanted to get a much newer card there won't be compatibility issues?.

I'm a total pc noob as you might have noticed.
 
alright cheers. just wanting to run most of my steam games maxed at out at reasonable fps..

I mean this PC runs tf2 maxed out @20fps, but sadly the card goes to 100 degrees... lol when i get a bit more money i'll just get a much better card
 
It is a good set up by woppy, but if its purely for gaming Id look at a dual core AMD with a better GPU personally, also just to note the HDD he included the green is more of a storage drive than a main drive

Hows this look?

OcUK Value ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Retail £121.98 (£106.07)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £83.98 (£73.03)
Coolermaster Sileo 500 Silent Case - Black (500w Extreme Power Plus PSU) £79.99 (£69.56)
AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £77.99 (£67.82)
Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMV4GX3M2A1333C9) £72.99 (£63.47)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £66.99 (£58.25)
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.99 (£16.51)
Sub Total : £454.71
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £69.97
Total : £536.43

Comes to a bit more but it includes new case (very good one too), fast GPU, better suited HDD, if you can afford another £20 on top of this I'd recomend an aftermarket CPU cooler like the Akasa 968, will make system run quieter, cooler and allow OCing

Edit: Oh and you say £600 in title but then £500 in main text, can you clarify which is correct
 
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thanks a lot, and the dual core will have a reasonable lifespan? - tbh i'd love it if you could explain to me why a dual core would be better than a quadcore as I'd love to understand this stuff more, and also what kind of framerates would i be getting on say - Left 4 dead 2. @ 1680x1050 on a system like this?

and as for the 600 to 500.. that's obviously my subconscious battling with my sensible side - i can only really afford 500 but could squeeze 600.. preferably 500 though
 
99% of games cant utilise more than 2 cores as they're simply not coded for it, the i5 is a great chip, dont get me wrong, and better than the 550, but you have to approach the system from an overall balance point of view, and for gaming a better gfx card is more important than a better cpu, when it comes to gaming the difference is negligable on the CPU front but massive on the GPU front.
Check here for comparison of different chips using same gfx card (280 in test rig), PhII 550 gives 114 fps i5 gives 130
and here for comparison of different cards with same chip (i7 975 used in test rig), 4850 gives 107fps 4890 gives 153
As you can see, gfx card has bigger impact, and thats at these relatively low resolutions, if you ever upgrade your monitor and use higher resolutions the difference becomes much more noticable
 
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thanks a lot for explaining. was thinking though maybe, as i already have a DVDrewriter and also harddives + 1tb external one,would it be better in the long run if i swap over the i5 with your one?

I also use my PC for my designing - As i've progressed as a designer (got this pc about 3 years ago now) I use many many layers, sometimes 200+ - and also projects that are for print are Huge @ 3000+pixles @ 300dpi and i've been experiencing serious stutters with this pc..Have been having to merge layers all the time and constantly save.
 
if do dont need the psu i said which you dont,keep the spec i have given you because it is far better than the amd system. replace the graphics i said with the 4890
 
i have always said if you have so much to spend on a system spend the most you can on a chip an board because at least everything can be upgraded around them if you skimp on a cpu you will only find your self upgrading again in the near future
 
How about this:

Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £135.99
(£118.25) £135.99
(£118.25)
MSI P55-GD65 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard MSI P55-GD65 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £128.00
(£111.30) £128.00
(£111.30)
Asus ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game + Ruby Doll Asus ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game + Ruby Doll £119.98
(£104.33) £119.98
(£104.33)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £82.98
(£72.16) £82.98
(£72.16)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £66.99
(£58.25) £66.99
(£58.25)
Sub Total : £464.29
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £71.07
Total : £544.86

better gfx than the previously mentiones (although a bit slower but you can crossfire in the future and it supports dx11).
 
as above (nameless's spec), though you can leave the psu til later if/when you do add 2nd card, only small thing Id change is the RAM, get the blue GSkill stuff, same price and has lower cas
 
You'll need to reinstall Windows since it's AMD to Intel, make sure you have the chipset and ethernet drivers burnt on a cd/dvd, then the internet will work so you can download whatever else you need (graphics drivers).
 
true, or even better buy win7 HP and install 64 bit so you can address all system memory, and win7 will find everything for you, no need to mess about with drivers
 
95thrifles said:
as above (nameless's spec), though you can leave the psu til later if/when you do add 2nd card, only small thing Id change is the RAM, get the blue GSkill stuff, same price and has lower cas
Click to expand...

woulda thought it would be better to get a 4870/4890 and keep the tagan psu instead of getting a worse performing 5770 then upgrading the psu AND getting another 5770.
 
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