System Upgrade

Kippered

Kippered

Kippered

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Evening all

I'm new here! Kicking myself at the moment as I should have been reading these forums a long long time ago. So much to learn here rather than learning from mistakes.

My first mistake was about 8 years ago when i bought a desktop from pc world....any way, my new system is below, had it for about a year & I'm looking to upgrade. Thinking the CPU would be a good call but thought I'd ask the experts.

OS: Windows 7 64bit
Case: Cool Master (not sure on model, not at home to check)
Motherboard: M4A77TD
PSU: 500W
RAM: DDR3 8Gb (4 x 2Gb)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 925 2.8Ghz
GPU: PNY GTX460 1Gb
Boot HDD: 500Gb Seagate
Store/Games HDD: 1TB WD Green

Not keen on a rebuild to put an intel chip in but I've been looking at the Phenom X6 1100T BE. Considering the above spec would that be the most sensible upgrade?

Don't really want to spend much past £200 as I plan on buy a Benq XL2410T 24" for 3d fun. I want to run games like Crysis 2 in ultra and still hold a decent fps.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Ben
 
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upgrading the processor wont give you any advantage atall in games as they generally cannot use more than three cores (and certainly cant use more than the four of the Phemom X4). however if you are planning on doing a lot of video encoding or something then it would be advantageous there, but certainly not for gaming. heres a benchmark to see what i mean:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/81?vs=147

as you can see, it helps a lot in some areas, but in the benchmark of games there is only a tiny improvement (1-2FPS).

the main thing i will need to know is what make and model PSU they have put in your PC. generally places like that put in a cheap and nasty PSU that i wouldnt trust to power a watch, let alone a PC.

also, if you want to play crysis 2 in 3D on maximum settings i would be very surprised if a GTX460 could manage it. gaming in 3D gives you effectivly half the framerate of 2D as the game needs to make a separate frame for each eye.
i dont know how much better the framerates are in crysis 2 compared to crysis warhead, but with a custom config designed to give me higher graphics than ultra and better FPS my PC (which is incredibly similar to yours) only manages ~40FPS, so 3D on max with that card is an utter no-no
 
personally i would wait until bulldozer is released (mid september) and then spend ~£100 on a new AM3+ mobo and ~£150 on a bulldozer CPU. (that is, assuming bulldozer turns out to be good).

i really dont see much point in upgrading to a Phenom X6 right now when they are so close to being superseded by a much more advanced architecture. the 925 should do you fine until bulldozer comes out.
 
Hi,

I wouldn't bother with an X6 for gaming, it won't help that much at all.

The main issue is that you motherboard doesn't support SLi, so adding another GTX460 which i would have recommended is out.
To max out Crysis 2 in DX11 you'll need a better graphics card. But chucking the 460 seems a waste. You might be able to get £85 for it second hand.
so then you'll have a bigger budget for a better card + possibley a new mobo
 
Thanks for the reply guys.

I believe this is my PSU....Antec BP500U 500 Watt Power Supply Unit

Funny you should mention selling the card. Someone recently offered me £90 for it so that is something I'll look into when I get home.

If I was to look into a new mobo/gpu what would you suggest? I imagine this would result in me needing a new PSU also? Suppose that would put my budget up to £350 if the gtx sold.
 
ive had a look at a review of your power supply and, despite appearances its actually a pretty decent entry level PSU. the only thing i'd do is make sure there is a surge protector between it and the mains, as there isnt one in that PSU surprisingly.

however, this is all pretty irrelevant because, if you want a new graphics card to play crysis 2 on decent settings in 3D your going to want a better PSU anyway.

we're not allowed to do price checks on these forums (except in the members market) but i would probably take up your mates offer on the GTX 460 because you can get an overclocked one new from here for £114

your motherboard looks fine to me. i think its an older version of what i have. i would only change it if you are willing to change over to sandybridge now, or are planning to upgrade to bulldozer later, which i suspect you arent just yet.

so, with a budget of £290 you could get a pretty decent graphics card and a good enough power supply
 
Like Reaper said if you're going to be replacing the card you can keep your current mobo.

Do you have the stock CPU cooler on your X4 925? you should be able to squeeze a little more juice out of it by overclocking it to around 3.1/3.2GHz. They don't clock aswell as the newer chips 955 upwards. But AMD stock coolers are loud enough as they are.

If you haven't then you could add the change from your other parts to that.
Just an idea:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £254.99
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £62.99
Total : £329.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).



That will give you quite a boost: comparison
 
Cool thanks, that looks pretty sweet.

Yeh I had been looking into overclocking X4 925 but am yet to fully understand how to do it without blowing something up. Will read into that more.

Those components look good. To be honest I now find myself coming up with ways to get some extra pennies for a AMD3+ SLI mobo as well. I suppose thats always something I could get later though.

Far to easy to get carried away!
 
Hey again.....i guess night shift isn't the best time to be on a forum but anyway.....

If i were to consider selling the system mentioned originally how much would be a fair asking price?

Thinking I may try and sell, put another £500 onto what I make and rebuild.

Do you think this would be a waste of time?.....got to much time to think on night shift!

Thanks
 
Night shift and insomniacs worst time of the day :p

If you were to completely up sticks, Id say you could get about £XXX **No price checks outside members market :(** for it (assuming its running perfect), otherwise it might be worth stripping out the mobo, CPU, GPU and PSU and replacing with better parts. The 770 chipset is awful...I have the 740 and its killing me :P


All honesty, and this will be the answer from 90% of the forum, it will be worth you selling everything AMD and buying an i5-2500k setup (what Im doing now, but with a 2600k).
If your planning on selling anyway, you can wipe the HDD clean for a new install (you should already have the product key as you already have win7 64bit).
 
Heh, actually just came back to edit my post as i realised someone mentioned earlier about no price checks. Thanks for your input though it's cetainly something to think about..

Rather painful how quickly things lose value. At least i'll get a few pennies for it.
 
Well, as with most things, it will be better stripping it down, but make sure you have buyers for the bits otherwise you'll sell like the mobo and be stuck with the CPU if you get what I mean.
 
Hello again,

Given the above spec is this still my best? Was unsure if things would have changed 1 month down the line but can't find anything better myself.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £254.99
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £62.99
Total : £329.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).

I have a £350 budget.

Thanks
 
To be fair, the 460 is still decent, depends if you feel you are GPU or CPU bound.

It's a bit tricky given the budget, but a 570 will give a nice boost in games for sure. Also to consider is a 6950 2GB, with a xfire-compatible PSU (750W, 4 PCIE connectors). For single GPU, the 570 and that PSU is pretty much the best you can get.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6950 "Dual Fan Edition" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE DIRT3 & Deus Ex Games £209.99
1 x Lepa B-Series 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £74.98
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 620 CPU Watercooler (Socket Intel LGA 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AMD AM2 / AM3 / AM2+ / AM3+) £49.99
Total : £346.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).

 
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