Please help with major upgrade!

Gamefreak501

Gamefreak501

Gamefreak501

Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2003
Posts
8,030
Location
Bedfordshire
Hi Everyone,

Blimey, it's been a long time.

Anyway, my very loyal AMD 64 2800+, Asus K8V/6600GT/Antec 450W setup has finally gone :(

Basically, it started off on a Tuesday morning when I switched the socket on that my computer connects to (via a cable reel) then the power tripped.

After the power was put back on again, I tried again. By which time I was greeted with a *pop* and some white smoke coming out the back of my PSU.

I was not happy! I took the Antec PSU out and salvaged the fans and fan grills (they might come in useful!).

Later on in the day, I went to a Lan Party around a friends house and we put a QTec PSU in (never again!).

To my horror, there was no noise but a awful dirty ancient burning smell.

We decided the PSU was suspect (I was always cynical) and so I took my computer home.

Yesterday evening I had a good look at my computer, took it to bits and investigated. To my shock, there is a scorch mark on the 6600GT slot where it connects to the AGP slot on my K8V, the AGP slot is also slightly melted with a black mark on it.

I don't know where it all originated but I reckon my motherboard went funny after my PSU smoked and decided to take my graphics card (the most expensive part of my system, *sobs*). Couldn't come at a worse time, I am in the process of fully restoring my Triumph Spitfire 1500, then this comes along!

So now, I am embarking on an upgrade.

I would like something powerful, fairly future proof and reliable to do my video gaming on and my web site design.

I came up with this lot:

  • Geforce 8800 GTX (768mb) GDDR3
  • Gigabyte GA-M59SLi-S9 NForce 590 (AM2)
  • AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.60Ghz
  • Enermax Liberty 620W ELT260AW2
  • Cellshock 2gb (2x1gb) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800mhz

This lot comes to about £1049 delivered.

I have been out of the game for a very long time, is there anything wrong with this lot? I already have a 80gb HDD, 250gb SATAII HDD and optical disk drives which I intend to re-use so I don't think I need to re-buy them. I would like to spend as close to £1k as possible.

Cheers in advance,

David
 
This is what i would suggest, comes to £800, so your saving £200!

By the looks of it, the 4300 could be an absolute winner! This is gonna be my upgrade when i do one in March/April!

Take a look!

Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
(£117.49)

Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£79.89)

Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Tenth Anniversary
(£199.74)

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£291.39)

Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK)
(£99.86)

Sub Total : £670.95
Total : £798.88

The 4300 with the 10th annerversary ram could be amazing, as you won't have to change any of the latencies! And will be easily able to get 3.3/3.4 out of the 4300 with a decent cooler! ;)

To be fair tho, i dont think you need to get the 10th annerversary ram, you save £50 and get the Geil 5300 ram.
 
Wow,

Cheers for the help so far!

It does seem that the Intel duo cores are indeed faster than the AM2 CPUs (I have checked on some benchmark scores).

Perhaps that is a better idea in light of this.

One thing I find confusing is the DDR2 clock speeds - do the clock speeds need to match the bus of the CPU or is it half of the CPU and how dependent on the chipsets are these?

Cheers again,

David
 
Higher speed memory is better suited to overclocking, but current price sets them at about the same price right now, so it makes sense to just get the faster stuff.... ;)
 
Hey everyone,

I have seen enough, it's definitely going to be an Intel Duo Core setup with 800MHZ of DDR2 memory (4-4-4-12 timings). However, does the 4mb cache offer much performance over the 2mb cache Duo CPUs?

Also, how much performance difference would I see over a 640mb and a 768mb 8800 series Geforce video card? I know one of my friends has a 1gb 7950 and against a 128mb 6600GT and 256mb 6800GT video card, there is a fair bit of performance difference.

They're my only issues I think!
 
Well, as for the 2mb cache. It's not worth the price you pay for it. As a 6300 will overclock easily to 6600 speeds, but your paying £100 for the extra 2mb cache.

As for the gts and the gtx, it really depends on screensize when it comes down to how much memory you need, it doesnt affect frames per second in games but the picture quality. If you have a 20 inch, i would be inclinded just to go for the gts and overclock it, as they can easily hit gtx speeds and beyond. if you have a larger monito like maybe 24 inch i would say its worth spending the extra on the gtx. But for me i dont really think its worth paying the extra £100. Go for the 6300 and gts and you have saved £200. both can be overclocked to the 6600 and gtx.
 
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