Looking for help with Gaming Upgrade

GreenMint

GreenMint

GreenMint

Soldato
Joined
11 Dec 2003
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Hey guys, looking for some help regarding an upgrade on my machine, I usually game exclusively on my consoles nowadays, but what with Star Wars: The Old Republic coming out and me being a SW/MMO nut, I've no option other than to play it :D

Current system:

E8400 @ 3ghz (Stock) (Cooled by noctua UH-12P w/ 1 Noctua fan)
Asus P5N-E SLI
ATI 3450 (Cost £27 new after my old 4890 OD'd itself too many times and was sold!)
4GB OCZ Gold
60GB Crucial SSD
2 x 750 Samsung F1 750GB
SB X-Fi Music
650W Corsair Modular PSU
All in an Akasa Eclipse w/ 120mm Noctua front & rear fans

The main issue I'm not sure on, upgrade the motherboard & cpu or do you think they'll still hold out?

I've got about £500 max budget to spend and was hoping to bring the system sound down a bit on top of this, I really don't want a loud machine, was thinknig if I can get away with keeping the current cpu/mobo I'd buy another 4gb (or 8gb set, whichever works out well for the money) and a SSD for the few games I have for quicker load times & quieeter gaming.

Any opinions or specs would be great..(Might sell off the 2 750's and throw a 2TB in at some point, too!)

Thanks!
 
Hi.
Quite a good system there but its showing its age a bit. Personally, I'd be looking at upgrading the gpu first. If all depends at what resolution you game at, but you can't really go wrong with a 6950 for £175ish. At that point it might be worth waiting until SWTOR comes out and see how it performs. If its not quite as much as you'd like, upgrade the CPU to a quad core (Q9xxx) series. These are still very good and aren't miles behind i5s.
Hope that helps.
 
I'd say the graphics card would be the first upgrade. Something like a GTX560Ti or 2GB HD6950 would be a great start. Next thing would be to overclock your E8400, especially given you have a good cooler already. If then you feel you need a bit more performance then look at upgrading mobo/cpu/ram.
 
it depend if you on a budget. firstly as other have mention i would upgrade your graphic card i would recommmed the ati 6950 2gb, gtx560ti 2gb by gainwood or gtx 570/580. 1gb of vram isn't very future proof these days as more and more game are being released where 1gb isn't enough for them. if you can wait then i would suggest getting a 28nm graphic card when their are released at the end of this year and start of next year. also from what read on of your system spec upgrading to a quad cpu would cheaper option to oppose a full mobo/cpu and ram upgrade. depend on how much you want to spend i would get from cheapest first to the dearest last q6600, q9550, q9650 either of those cpu will do but i recommend either q9550 or q9650 as overclocking these chip is fairly easy to do. where the q6600 can be overclock but anything above 3.0ghz isn't alway stable enough to be playing games.
 
Thanks for the help on this guys, yep, the graphics card is a given, the current one was really a placeholder as it was all that was needed at the time!

Thinking then, graphics card and another 4GB ram, maybe another SSD, too, if needed, a Q9550 or Q9650 and hopefully it should be ok to last out till the next generation of Intel CPU's, whenever they may be!!
 
Im in the same boat as you (P5NE- SLI) (E8400 @ 3.8 ghz) but i run two 250 gts 1gb in SLI, looking for a bit of a boost mainly for improving my fps in shift 2 and BC2/BF3 when it comes out, any recommendations?
 
WalkeruK said:
Im in the same boat as you (P5NE- SLI) (E8400 @ 3.8 ghz) but i run two 250 gts 1gb in SLI, looking for a bit of a boost mainly for improving my fps in shift 2 and BC2/BF3 when it comes out, any recommendations?
Click to expand...

The gpus that have been mentioned would be a great upgrade for you. 560Ti or 6950 for £175ish are excellent cards. If you have a higher budget though, you'll get something better. On a lower budget, a 460 1gb for just over £100 should be a decent upgrade.
 
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