Upgrade advice please.

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MOOGLEYS

MOOGLEYS

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I'm in the mood for upgrading my pc and have a max budget of £250. My monitor is 1366x768 19" so not too stressfull for most GPU's. Any advice would be great I might even see no difference at my res ?

My current spec is -

760G AM3+ mainboard limited to 95w cpu's Asus M5A78L-M LX
Athlon II x2 250 @ 3.6ghz
Freezer 7 cooler
4GB of cheapo 1333mhz ddr3
Radeon 5770 1gb
Corsair 430w Builder psu
Coolermaster micro atx case

My only must is the GPU must have VGA and HDMi..

Any help greatly recieved..
 
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Would be helpful if you could tell us what you use the PC for, I'm guessing gaming. Your graphics card will be good enough to run most games at that res, so maybe look at a monitor upgrade (i can't imagine being on a monitor that small after staring at a 24" for months!) because otherwise you would be wasting money on an upgrade.

If you really want to upgrade, maybe look at getting a Radeon 6950 or something then plan on upgrading your monitor soon!
 
It's used mainly for gaming. Tbh the size of the monitor is fine for me I have it plugged into my 42" tv via the hdmi so can use that if required.

I was thinking along the lines of a Phenom II 960t, 6850, and 8gb of Ram... ? Is this overkill ? Anything higher gpu wise i'm looking at a new psu and monitor upgrade which is going to be too much..
 
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How about a daily deal... £55 off and its a 2GB card which you would need for BF3 and more games as seen here http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-140-MS

Then spend the remainder on RAM.

If you wanted to upgrade the CPU, I had a look at this comparison (as AMD processors i know little about) and it does look like a good upgrade, but games are becoming increasingly dependent on GPU power than on CPU.

If you wanted to do the CPU upgrade instead then what you said originally would be a good choice i think (so Phenom II 960t, 6850, 8GB of RAM)
 
So this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL DEAL** £99.95
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 960T Black Edition "95W Edition" 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £97.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) **BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL DEAL** £34.99
Total : £244.33 (includes shipping : £9.50).



Replace your "cheapo 1333Mhz" with the RAM there, or you could run both sets for 12GB. Or you could save some money and go with a 4GB kit.
 
I'm not sure my 430W psu would handle a 560ti ?

I'm limited to two slots for RAM so the 8gb would be my max but I'm sure that's plenty. Free shipping makes the above £232.88 which is within budget.

Looks a good deal to me hopefully I would see a difference.
 
I think it would be ok, using the PSU calculator here gives 407W recommended PSU, that was with 3 hard drives as I don't know how many you have! As long as you plan not to overclock.
 
I have 3 drives. Tbh i'm liking the above with the cpu as well. Only concern is the 6850 is meant to struggle at 1080p if I ever decided to upgrade my monitor. Just seen the Benq 22" for £99....

I need more money... :-)
 
95thrifles said:
I'd say go for this


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £155.99
1 x MSI Z68A-G43-G3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £86.58
Total : £253.97 (includes shipping : £9.50).



£242.57 with free shipping, use your current RAM, its fine, the freezer 7 may still fit (the ones currently on sale do, can you check yours?), if not you would need a cooler too as its OEM CPU

This would give greatest all round boost
Click to expand...

The board would not fit in my case.. :D

Would I not see a better gain with a 960t, 6850 and 8gb for gaming ?
 
ahh sry missed the case being mATX

this P67 would fit

Its a close call, with that option youre taking system to its limits n no upgrade route, going for the i5 youre getting a better core system, then next year you could add a better gpu/psu to it

Also given your low res the 5770 is likely able to cope, I'd go for my option, personally
 
I have changed the 6850 to the MSI one as it gets good reviews is overclocked a tad and is also meant to be quite which is important. So i'm looking at -

MSI ATI Radeon HD 6850 Cyclone Power Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £113.99

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 960T Black Edition "95W Edition" 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £97.99

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) **BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL DEAL** £34.99

Total - £246.97 inc delivery..
Click to expand...

Unless anyone can come up with better for my small budget..

I feel the I5 route is going to get quite expensive, I think a Phenom II would be more than enough performance for what I need and I can use my existing board.
 
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well you could go with the msi 560ti tf2 + psu

psu http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-055-OC&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= if you can strech your budget by £5

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-003-LA&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= if you can't stretch


or if you can live with the 1gb version of the 560ti, go gpu+ram+psu

gpu http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-247-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1341

ram http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-094-KS

psu http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-117-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= if you can stretch by £5 gives you plenty of head room for future upgrade even adding a 2nd 560ti 1gb if your mb can handle it

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-007-XF&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= if you cant stretch

£255 with antec 650w, £244 with xfx 550w

looking at the specs of your current psu it only has 1 pci-e connector so whatever you do you'll have to upgrade it if you're planning on a graphics card upgrade(be it to 560ti or cpu + 6850 + ram).

editi damn it too slow, get on the phone and get it changed.
 
My CPU is at 100% load in most games. I think the Phenom will help. 6850 only has 1 power connector..

Ordered now so will give it a go. I think all round it will be a better system.
 
I have all these parts now recieved and installed and running very well bar a couple of minor issues.

The Cpu is superb happy to be a 6 core and be clocked up to silly levels, Only downside is at 3.6ghz I'm getting throttling as the cpu temp is hitting 65'c. This could be the motherboard as its only a 95w board. I doubt the freezer 7 is coping too well either.
At 3.2ghz everything runs fine and under prime I'm getting a max temp of 54'c and no throttling.

The graphics card is superb, Its so quite and everything runs very well even BF3 at 1080p on my tv and too my eyes it's fine.

Really happy with the upgrade some very noticeable differences both ingame and just general use which is always nice.
 
Just installed a 550W Fatal1ty PSU, Asus M4488T mainboard and a Hyper Evo cooler.

The CPU is running as an X6 at a rock steady 4ghz with 1.45v. After 6 hours of prime it reached a max temp of 53.c

Really happy with the system going from an Athlon II dual to a 6 core at 4ghz is quite a difference... :-)
 
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