Thinking aboout a hardware upgrade.

willhub

willhub

willhub

Caporegime
Joined
3 Jan 2006
Posts
25,278
Location
Chadderton, Oldham
First of, here is my current system:

Intel Xeon X3350 @ 3.7GHz
Corsair Dominator 4GB DDR2 ram
Asus P5Q-E Motherboard
Corsair HX520W
ATi Radeon HD5870 (crap overclocker)
Antec case.

I've got a potential budget of about £400

Would I be able to make a decent upgrade for that price? Is it worth me upgrade, would I see any signification improvements, the game I am playing at the moment is FarCry3 and when GTA 5 comes out I'm wanting to play that too. I've got an OCZ SSD, SATA 3 but am currently limited to SATA 2 on my current motherboard.

Thanks.
 
willhub said:
I'm not sure about these i5's, would an i7 be better if I can afford it in my budget?
Click to expand...

i5 is better if you only play games i7 i better if you do a lot of video/photo editing things like that, generally people go for the i5 because they mostly game.
 
I have a i7 3770k and it's awesome in games, I doubt there is much difference if you have the same gpu, no noticeable difference anyways
 
You can do a lot with that, I am not clued up about that CPU you have but with £400 you can do 2 things:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £161.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £35.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 612S CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £32.99
Total : £326.35 (includes shipping : £9.50).



This setup here will basically improved the over all system and help a little in gaming, you can drop a 7850 later on and just use your current card for a little longer.

Or

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showd (GX-100-GI) £129.95
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £35.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 612S CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £32.99
Total : £387.90 (includes shipping : £10.00).



This build will have a significant increase from your gaming performance and that CPU is more than capable, you can transfer the cooler over later when you want to drop an i5 into it.

So gotta choose, first option you won't see much of a difference in gaming but over all system speed will be faster. Second option you will see a difference in your games and depending on how the little i3 compares to the xeon will determine the performance increase in over all use.
 
willhub said:
I'm not sure about these i5's, would an i7 be better if I can afford it in my budget?
Click to expand...

An i7 will do squat all when it comes to games compared with the i5. The only reason to get it would be if you're going to be doing some 3d modelling etc, which I take it you aren't ;)

You can scroll down on this comparison and see there really isn't that much different between the two when it comes to games :)
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/701?vs=551
 
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