Planning upgrade - help?

times_champion · 16 Aug 2007 at 20:20

My current system is a Dell 9150 desktop (had it 18 months) with the following spec:

Pentium 4 (dual core) 940, 3.2ghz
7800GTX
2gb DDR PC2-4300 RAM
320gb HDD

I am planning on getting a Q6600 which seem to be very reasonable in cost right now. Will it make a difference what mobo I get though? Does mobo choice really have much impact in performance? I was thinking about the Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA (Socket 775) because its cheap, but would this be OK? I also need to get a 500w PSU and a new DVD drive so I need to keep costs down. My plan is then to upgrade to a £200ish DX10 gfx card (and maybe vista) around xmas, do you think in the meantime (for the next 4 months or so) my upgraded system would handle Bioshock, DIRT etc at decent detail at 1280x1024?

mp260767 · 16 Aug 2007 at 20:47

i'd look at either a cheaper processor or upgrading the mobo as well as getting the quad core.

asrock boards are really for people who have agp cards and/or ddr memory so it allows them to upgrade in stages.

if i was you i'd go for something like the EVGA nForce 650i Ultra (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard, it allows u to unlink the memory so being as u have 4300 ram u can leave it at stock but still clock the processor.

now it is £21 extra at £64 instead of the asrock £43 but i believe it would be worth it

times_champion · 16 Aug 2007 at 21:06

Thanks - i dont understand about unlinking the memory, what benefot would that give and why would i need to do it? Would my upgraded system be OK with the 7800gtx for a few months?

mp260767 · 16 Aug 2007 at 21:37

times_champion said:
Thanks - i dont understand about unlinking the memory, what benefot would that give and why would i need to do it? Would my upgraded system be OK with the 7800gtx for a few months?

yeah 7800gtx should be fine.

with unlinking the memory you can set you're 4300 memory to run at its max speed, ie 300fsb, but you can run you're processor at 385 fsb enabling you to get a bit more speed out of the system if needed.

times_champion · 16 Aug 2007 at 21:48

cheers - I may well go for that mobo then

times_champion · 17 Aug 2007 at 15:46

If I could get the Q6600 already fitted to the Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA (Socket 775) mobo and new for £175, would that be worth it? if I opted for the EVGA nForce 650i Ultra the 2 together would cost me £235 ish so would the price difference really be worth it? i know the asrock is a dual card, but would that have any significant impact on performace if I could get it for effectively free with the Q6600?

times_champion · 17 Aug 2007 at 16:38

can anyone let me know whether this is a good deal? cheers!

mp260767 · 17 Aug 2007 at 17:35

its a good deal mobo and processor NEW for £175, basically a free mobo.

can always get a better mobo in the future, the asrock may not overclock as well as other boards but it will get u converted to quad core.

times_champion · 17 Aug 2007 at 17:46

Thanks - I may get it then, im not too bothered about overclocking just yet anyway.

ih8modem · 17 Aug 2007 at 18:59

times_champion said:
can anyone let me know whether this is a good deal? cheers!

Absolutely it is. The Asrock board is 45 quid and the CPU is 170-179 at most e-tailers. Together for 175, really good deal.

I have an Asrock, and if you have an AGP card and DDR RAM it's great.

However be aware that there are limitations, one of which is that the PCI-E slot for GFX is only apprarently a 4x slot.

I popped in an e2160, with a 512MB 8600GT card, overclocked it to 2479 and ran a benchmark (3dmark03). I scored 14603.

I then put in a MSI P35 Neo board, with the same CPU and card, but did not overclock it at all. Result - 14784

So it definitely does limit what the rest of the components can do.

Oh, the memory was DDR2 PC6400.