Should I upgrade

Kenpachi · 7 May 2008 at 09:30

Hey guys

Kinda need some advice for you fine folk, on what you would do in my shoes. I've been toying with upgrading my PC lately, but not sure wether to continue to wait for the new Nahelem pc's. So many good deals and bargains around that its so tempting to invest in new gear.

Currently I use a AMD Athlon 3800 x2, DFI Ultra SLI-D, 2 GB Ram, XFX 8800GTX 768MB, Dell 3007WFP.

Advice and suggestions appreciated.

semi-pro waster · 7 May 2008 at 10:41

Does your PC not do something that you want it to? If not then I'd be tempted to just save the money for the moment, it still isn't that bad a PC.

martian_aphid · 7 May 2008 at 13:58

lol what would you upgrade to 60" monitor?!?! maybe add in some extra ram but everything else looks fine.

milkinc13 · 7 May 2008 at 14:18

agree with semi-pro waster if it ain't broke, done fix it

Ethics · 7 May 2008 at 14:21

milkinc13 said:
agree with semi-pro waster if it ain't broke, done fix it

We're all enthusiasts here, if it ain't broke you haven't tweaked and fiddled with it enough

On topic i dont see anything wrong with what you have unless there's something it can't do?

better off saving the cash and spending when there are available components that will give a sizable benefit

milkinc13 · 7 May 2008 at 14:44

or your to good at tweeking, and don't break things

Ethics · 7 May 2008 at 14:48

I always learn a lot quicker from my mistakes than my successes

(could be because i make more of the former than the latter!)

Kenpachi · 7 May 2008 at 15:03

Nice joke about the 60" screen, made me laugh in RL.

But tbh guys, sometimes I feel my system struggles a little with games, especially when you are trying to run them at native res 2560x1600. And with DDR2 memory being quite cheap I was wanting to know is there much performace increase from upgrading to a Quad core.

semi-pro waster · 7 May 2008 at 15:10

The main benefit will of course come in games that are enabled/optimised for quad core - I don't know the numbers at the moment but I'd be surprised if it is much above the low tens of games. If you want to upgrade and then overclock it is quite cheap to do so at ~£70 for the motherboard (P35 based), ~£140 for a Q6600 and ~£70 for 4gb of decent PC6400.

Core2Duo/Quads are better overall chips than the X2s and will likely overclock fairly well but your system still isn't shabby so if you have ~£280-300 burning a hole in your pocket then go for it but otherwise it probably doesn't justify the expenditure.