Upgrade advice please.

Soldato
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Telford
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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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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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 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... :-)
 
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

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

Would I not see a better gain with a 960t, 6850 and 8gb for gaming ?
 
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..

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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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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