Spec me an upgrade for my 3yr old system :)

LadFromWales

LadFromWales

LadFromWales

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Hey all,

Having recently contracted upgraditis, I've felt the need to combat it with some new PC hardware.

I currently have a s939 system with an Opteron 175, X1900XTX wrapped up in an Eclipse 62 case.

I am not looking to change the case, and my Tagan 530w moduler is surely likely to be fine with a newer system! I am wanting to stay AMD, something Phenom II. I've had a look round but I am still bewildered, having been out of the PC hardware game for almost three years I've no idea whats good and whats not!

I believe all I'll need is CPU, Mobo, Ram, GFX, CPU Cooler...anything I'm missing?

I've come up with...
AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail - £120.74
MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD 790FX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard - £164.44
Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel Kit (2x2GB) - £54.04
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail - £160.99
Scythe Ninja II CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) - £37.94
£549.64

With my limited knowledge of everything new! I will be looking to overclock, and hopefully unlock the disabled core on the X3, though it's not important.
Anything I should change? Do I need a top of the range board like that one? Are the lesser boards missing anything important...I may add another gfx card later, but I'll never have four.

Ideas, criticism appreciated :)
 
what do ya suggest? I really don't have a clue what all the modern jargon means? If I think too much I'll decide against upgrading as I don't need to really, but I want to!
I thought the same, which is why I put a thread up really, it does seem a lot, considering my current board was less than £100.

Anything you'd care to recommend, bells and whistles aren't too important though it depends what they are...overclockability is important, as is the ability to unlock the unused cores on x3 chips. What about the rest of my selections. I spent all of 3 minutes or so choosing those :D

Cheers
 
Hey man,

First thing to catch my eye was 'unlocking the forth core', I think the people who have done this generally find it was disabled for a reason. Tends to be unstable above 1 ghz and so forth. Also nice case, I like the eclipse lots. The 4870 is an interesting choice for someone who uses Arch and thought my running Ubuntu on a 280 was ridiculous :p

I reckon Intel over AMD. Specifically, the p5q deluxe, e8400 and 4gb of corsair pc-8500 at £350. Take a look at the p5q premium, I think £11.50 for its extras is worth it but it won't clock any higher. Could get the e8500 or e8600 instead, but they all clock to pretty much the same place. Sole difference is the multiplier, whether it's x9, x9.5, or x10.

On a G35 matx board, I've got an e8400 (worse stepping) at 3.6 sitting happy using a stock cooler. Won't go higher because the board doesn't really like the 800MHz ocz ram much. A P45 chipset, e0 stepping chip, and ram that's actually fully compatible with Asus and you'll be well happy. Probably worth finding some benchmarks of a 4+ghz intel dual core against whatever the tri cores overclock to (3.6ish?).

Anyhow, the board+ram+cpu at £350 leaves 200 quid left over from your initial cost.
The Sunbeam http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-000-TQ at £30 quid is fantastic, ridiculously well reviewed. Better than the scythe. Not very quiet I believe, but I don't think you'll care.

So budget works out about the same as the tri core you suggest. Pretty sure a 4870 is far, far quicker than you need. (A very quick) google reckons the current card is around 8800gt, so I think keep the current one. It's quite possible to go under water for the £150 remaining after getting the intel system, which I'm thrilled to be getting into and am probably going to recommend to everyone for a while even if my processor is clearly voltage limited, not temperature.

So yeah. My vote is new cpu/mb/ram and water :)

Cheers
 
gamesaregood, changed the ram in spec, seems better and also cheaper which is a bonus! Will look into that board, will try and work out what it hasn't got that it's bigger brother has.

Jon, why intel? And more specifically, why c2d over c2q...the chips are similarly priced, Q6700 vs a E8400, but what do I know :p The core clock is lower, but do they not overclock very well too?
My reasoning for wanting to change the card is that ATi are dropping R500 support in their fglrx drivers, and the open source drivers cause random hard locks with thinking do I go Intel? Is it worth going for a slower quad over a faster dual? Why are the Intel motherboards so expensive?

This is all really out of my depth at the moment so I need some kind words. I know I should be looking into all of this on my own but this really is a spur of the moment thing while I have a bit of money burning a hole in my pocket! I can prob stretch to £600 if it's worth it, maybe a bit more if I have to, I don't want to have to change the cpu/mobo/ram for at least another 3 years!

Agree on the case though, it's ace, best case I've owned :)
 
Any input guys? :)

Having been looking into it all today, I've noticed that if I were to upgrade to a c2/ddr2 system, there would be no upgrade prospects due to the chip socket being obsolete, forcing a new cpu/mobo/ram all over again
So, if I go Intel, it really should be i7 really, or should I just forget about the future upgrade issue and go c2d/c2q?

I'm still pretty much in the dark about it all, even though I've read into it lots I still don't really know whats best bang for buck, which is what I care about really. The machine will likely end up not doing a huge amount of gaming, as I use Linux primarily. With that in mind, a 4870 seems like a waste, but its not that much more expensive than a 4850 and the like.

I really can't decide whether to go Phenom II x3/x4 or some form of Intel, looking for some advice from the pro's :D Put some sample specs together for me, as it's all going into current case I'll only need CPU/Mobo/RAM/GFX/CPU cooler I think...
 
For someone who claims to be in the dark, you've got that spec bang on there. I can't really fault it. It will be a nice rig if built.

i7 will be a fair bit more expensive, but it all depends on what your total budget is.
 
I think AM3 is the best way forward, so much PC here for £400!

AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £120.74
(£104.99) £120.74
(£104.99)
Asus M4A78-E AMD 790GX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard Asus M4A78-E AMD 790GX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £109.24
(£94.99) £109.24
(£94.99)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £99.98
(£86.94) £99.98
(£86.94)
OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 (OCZ3P13334GK) OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 (OCZ3P13334GK) £41.39
(£35.99) £41.39
(£35.99)
Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/AM2+/AM2/939) Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/AM2+/AM2/939) £28.74
(£24.99) £28.74
(£24.99)
Sub Total : £347.90
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £0.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £53.69
Total : £401.59

I just can't see why it would make sense to go 775 when its got no upgrade path.

Another option to keep in mind is that the new AM3 Phenom II 955 3.2GHz Quad is due out on Monday the 20th April... will likely be £200ish though!....
 
It makes sense because 'upgrade path' is a rubbish reason to chose one system over another. The OP is replacing mb/ram/cpu in his computer for this, theres no reason to believe he wont do the same later anyway. i7 is hardly more future proof than 775 since the future i5 range uses yet another socket. Intel have got us by the short hairs here, theres nothing whatsoever stopping them releasing a new socket whenever they wish.

As for c2d/c2q/i7 I can comment from first hand attempts with an e8400 and a q9550, and a lot of research trying to convince myself to go i7. Its easy to see people with 4ghz e8400s and 4 ghz q9550s and surmise that the quad is the same but twice as good. Sadly this is not true, mainly because overclocking quad cores can drive you nuts. A dual just goes faster and faster the more you voltage you feed it, a quad needs you to play with nb, vcore,fsb term, and if youre really unlucky gtl ratios. Where every single fsb notch seems to need a different setting, and 1.28V vcore may be completely stable whereas 1.28625 is not at all.
I'm sure things are simpler with 2 sticks of ram, but a quad core with 4 sticks hits the motherboard very hard. I think this is one of the reasons intel moved the memory controller on die for the i7, the fsb just couldn't take any more.

Besides overclocking, how many available threads do you want? 2, 4, or 8? I wish you luck finding 8 things to do at once which are all processor intensive, I can barely find 3. Dual cores clock higher and with less effort, leaving the northbridge less stressed and able to do good things with ram timings.
The thing to bear in mind is that a 3ghz dual is exactly the same speed as a 3 ghz quad until you manage to find more than two things for it to do. I love the quad core because I insist on running virtualbox all the time, but the dual is a far more sensible bet for anything else. Video encoding is quicker on the quad, but I don't think thats terribly important. If it takes 2 hours to transcode something or 3, and you've left it running while you went out, it just doesn't matter.

I'm largely ignoring i7 because its not a great idea at the budget and will show bugger all improvement in arch. You may also hit problems with drivers and linux if you use too recent hardware, debian won't detect my ethernet ports on a p45 board. i7 is a much better design than the core range, the cache management and onboard memory controller are both excellent ideas and well executed. That doesn't make it a good deal though.

None of this means I hate amd or that I think they would be a bad choice. My only experience of amd is a 1.8ghz dual core chip which was flattened by my friends t7200, and the reason I go with intel is because they overclock like mad. My knowledge is a bit out of date here, as it looks like the tri core phenoms actually clock well. A year ago amd did not clock nicely so I went with intel, then stuck with the devil I knew for the next upgrade.

For gfx, perhaps a second hand nvidia? anything 8*** series or above will fly through linux. My friend uses a 8400 with great success, I'm using a 8800gt of sorts. Nvidia do driver support really well for linux, to the extent that I can overclock my 8800 to make it run compiz extra well just using their drivers. There are quite a lot of cards going in mm.

Hell, if you do the entire thing second hand you can probably do i7 after all if you want to. A very long rambling post I know, but should be some sound advice in there, and it's worked excellently at delaying the thermofluids work I'm meant to be doing.

Cheers man

p.s. far too late to be asking really, but what do you want to do with the computer? makes a massive difference for where to allocate funds. doing hundreds of things at once would make a slow clocked quad with lots of ram or an i7 a great call, doing one thing at a time as quickly as possible is absolutely the dual core area


edit: at higher budget Id personally take the q9650, asus p5q deluxe, and your choice of 4x2gb of ram. it'll be a challenge overclocking it, but it'll be stupid fast if you manage it. It may be a year out of date, but it was perfection a year ago.
 
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Right then, looking at this all to order today by 4PM!

I'm not decided between AMD and Intel, I can be swayed either way. As Jon has pointed out, I am unlikely to be upgrading singular parts along the line, so raw performance is more important than upgradeability. I will be overclocking, but still want some guarantee that one system will be faster than the other once overclocked for a similar price.

These are the systems that I've cobbled together...

AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £114.99
(£99.99) £114.99
(£99.99)
Asus M4A78-E AMD 790GX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard Asus M4A78-E AMD 790GX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £109.24
(£94.99) £109.24
(£94.99)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £99.98
(£86.94) £99.98
(£86.94)
OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 (OCZ3P13334GK) OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 (OCZ3P13334GK) £41.39
(£35.99) £41.39
(£35.99)
Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775) Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775) £28.74
(£24.99) £28.74
(£24.99)
Sub Total : £342.90
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : FREE
VAT is being charged at 15.00% VAT : £51.44
Total : £394.34

or...

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.16GHz (1333FSB) - Retail Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.16GHz (1333FSB) - Retail1 £172.49
(£149.99) £172.49
(£149.99)
Asus P5Q-E Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard Asus P5Q-E Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard1 £126.49
(£109.99) £126.49
(£109.99)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail1 £99.98
(£86.94) £99.98
(£86.94)
Crucial Ballistix Tracer RED 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT25664AR80A) Crucial Ballistix Tracer RED 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT25664AR80A)1 £49.98
(£43.46) £49.98
(£43.46)
Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775) Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775)1 £28.74
(£24.99) £28.74
(£24.99)
true Sub Total : £415.37
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : FREE
VAT is being charged at 15.00% VAT : £62.31
Total : £477.68

It's pointless me going for the previous mentioned MSI AM3 board as I'll never have four cards in crossfire, ever, maybe two, but never four! I'm guessing the description for the Asus board is incorrect in the listing, as it goes on about DDR2 ram when it should be DDR3...

GFX is not set in stone, I could go for a 4870/90 if its worth the extra outlay...
Whatever I go for, will have to check the sound chip etc works well in Linux, though I could carry on using my HDA X-Plosion if I have to, I use analog so it'll likely have much higher SNR's anyway...

What do you guys think? Phenom II or C2D, what would you change/add/remove?

Cheers guys :)
 
Gonna have to get the board from elsewhere, after calling OcUK about the Asus they have taken it off the page as its only DDR2 rather than 3.

Is there anything else I'm missing that I'll need for an upgrade? I don't wanna get the kit and find I'm missing something silly and have to wait til after the b/hols to get it!

Will my Tagan 530w EasyCon have enough connectors?

Cheers all :)
 
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So guys, postponed my order as the RAM went out of stock when it was all in my cart! It came back into stock later that day too! :(
Just looking at the boards, there are two that come to mind, the MSI 790GX-G65 AMD 790GX and the ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX...which would you recommend.

They both seem pretty similar, but does anyone have any experience of either?
Thanks
 
Currently using a Dell 2405, looking to upgrade to a 30" in the relatively near future.
The system primarily runs Linux, and plays some Windows games, though its more Linux than games these days!

For these reasons I know an upgrade seems unnecessary, but I'm sure you know how it is, heh. The old parts will go into another system anyway :)

I do want to get back into PC gaming, at least for RTS and other games which just function better on the PC than console.

Thanks :)
 
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