New board & ram advice

liamcrane · 21 Nov 2010 at 07:31

Hello all

Just wanted some advice on a possible upgrade, at the mo im running a PII 955 BE C2 OC to 3.7ghz on my Asus m4a785dm-pro am2+ board. Running a 5850 mas well. Im thinking maybe its time to let go of my DDR2 setup and get a bit modern, i was looking at the following
OCZ DDR3 ram
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-183-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1516

with the Asus crosshair 3 board
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-339-AS

For around £160 would this be a good investment compared to what i have?

Many thanks

dcsarge · 21 Nov 2010 at 09:48

I don't really see the point of spending all that money just to change memory types. From what I understand, it doesn't offer a significant increase in performance in day-to-day use.

If you wanted to go crossfire, and selling the old parts helps offset the cost, that would be another matter.

liamcrane · 21 Nov 2010 at 10:42

Hi mate thanks for the input, never actually considered cross fire to be honest. Saying that tho i have been reading arounda bit and it seems there are a lot of issues with cross fire driver wise anyway and there dont seem to be a great deal of games around that really make use of that extra power. I only have a 60hz monitor so im never going to see anything over 60fps in game but i guess cross fire would maybe smooth out the gameplay and make it run at its maximum more consistantly.

The thought of cross fire does kinda excite me but not sure if its worth the cost for the possible troubles i may get myself in for, what do you think?

dcsarge · 21 Nov 2010 at 13:41

I have never been in a position to get a couple of cards for x-fire/sli but I can see the appeal if you run high res and max detail.

My instinct (and finances) usually sway towards getting the best single card you can afford.

If you already had a dual card motherboard I would have said getting an extra 5850 (especially 2nd hand) would have been a good option. However your system is a nice spec but only has one slot, it would make more sense to me to sell the 5850 and get a better graphics card.

All of that is very dependant on whether or not you feel that your system is struggling to run games at the res/detail you want.

Scon · 21 Nov 2010 at 13:50

I'd wait for the bulldozer CPU's to come out, they new cpu's won't support the AM3 boards so upgrading to a new board now isn't the best idea, for now i'd do what sarge says and sell the 5850 and get yourself a new card, putting you in a good position to get yourself a bulldozer cpu, MB and RAM in the new year.