upgrade advice please?

rippling · 16 Apr 2010 at 13:54

My current spec is q6700 at 3.6, 4 gb ram and a 500 g hd and ati 5850

i use my rig mainly for games and encoding movies , i game at 1900 x 1200 and like fps like arma2 bfbc2 dirt2 etc etc and like dx 11 eyecandy

If i was to upgrade my spec what would you guys recommend , is the i7 that much faster than my quad 6700? would motherboard, proc and ,memory be the way to go , or add another 5850? maybe my cpu would bottle neck the cards ?

any advice weclome i suspect i could still get a decent price for my quad and gigabyte x38 mobo ?

UKDTweak · 16 Apr 2010 at 13:59

From looking at bench tests on I7 rigs compared to my own Q6600 @3.5... there is not a huge benefit going from your current cpu to an I7 considering the cost involved... for gaming, however, for encoding, you would see an improvement...
Therefore, if you mostly use the rig for gaming, get another 5850, far cheaper, and should you upgrade to an I7 system or better in the future, you can put the 5850's in it

rippling · 16 Apr 2010 at 14:01

i take it the 5850 crossfired are better than a single 5970?

UKDTweak · 16 Apr 2010 at 14:29

A 5970 is basically 2x 5870, but running at 5850 speeds, so two 5850's should be similar to a 5970

Lemin · 16 Apr 2010 at 14:37

I vote 2 x 5850 too, if your PSU is good enough.

KaylanCloud · 16 Apr 2010 at 15:57

I'd also consider an SSD if you dont have one already, but maybe im just impatient with game loading times