Spec Check – 2 Year old gaming system upgrade

Sparky__H · 15 Sep 2009 at 15:23

Hello

My 2 year old gaming (and everything else) rig is starting to show it’s age. I’m trying to keep the upgrade as cheep as possible while delivering the best results.

Current Spec:

E6600 Socket 775 (Conroe) 2.4GHz (Stock)
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme (Aluminium Version)
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 v1.0 (F14 BIOS)
2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 (Stock)
8800GTS OC 640MB (Currently out for RMA)
Vista Business 32bit
WD Black 500GB
Lian-Li v1000 (v1)
Tagan 550W
NEC 20WGX2 20” (Keeping this until it blows up!)

I’m thinking the best plan is:

Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) 8500 1066MHz
Powercolor HD 4890 PCS+
64bit-OS

Any possible bottlenecks I haven’t noticed?

Am I still right in thinking that a quad core won’t be properly utilised by anything out at the moment?

I’ll probably pick up another WD black and raid them at some point too, although my last go was raiding a couple of 36GB Raptors and the results weren’t really worth the cost. Ahh memories...

Cheers

metamorphpwner · 15 Sep 2009 at 15:28

you have that CPU cooler and no overclock? at stock speeds it may start to cause a bottleneck of higher end graphics cards.

Sparky__H · 15 Sep 2009 at 15:31

metamorphpwner said:
you have that CPU cooler and no overclock? at stock speeds it may start to cause a bottleneck of higher end graphics cards.

The really funny thing is the CPU's from a batch that easily hit 3-3.2GHz at stock volts. I had every intention of overclocking it but it did everything I asked at stock speeds. So I just never got around to it...

mp260767 · 15 Sep 2009 at 15:39

Sparky__H said:
The really funny thing is the CPU's from a batch that easily hit 3-3.2GHz at stock volts. I had every intention of overclocking it but it did everything I asked at stock speeds. So I just never got around to it...

i'd start there first, might not notice a difference but worth a bit of time just to see.

if its for gaming maybe check members market for an 8400/8500 wolfdale.

Sparky__H · 15 Sep 2009 at 15:52

mp260767 said:
i'd start there first, might not notice a difference but worth a bit of time just to see.

if its for gaming maybe check members market for an 8400/8500 wolfdale.

Motherboard only supports 1066MHz memory but oddly bios updates allow the WolfDale 1333Mhz CPU's.

Sparky__H · 16 Sep 2009 at 09:16

Right if there are no serious faults with my plan I'll start moving ahead.

Cheers