upgrade advice.

BoB3rt · 25 Jun 2009 at 02:27

Current Rig is: (in sig but...)

Asus p5kc (combo)
8800GTS (640mb)
Q6600 g0 (never been clocked)
OcZ 2gb 800mhz
Coirsair 520w
250gb 8mb Seagate.
(& IDE 40gb HDD - for media)

at a guess i am best going for RAM and Graphics (as i do play games a bit)... but also looking to get rid of the IDE HDD and replace with another sata for OS and media - games on separate HDD (one i have).

heres what i was looking at:

need advice between the cards... well on the whole lot to be honest.

Thanks in advance.

skippy2421 · 25 Jun 2009 at 02:34

that is ddr3 ram and you state you have 2 gig of what i would assume is ddr2. Could be some issues there. the black caviar is a nice drive i've got one myself (slight hint of bias here lol). as for the gfx cards 4890 is the better card as is reflected by the how good it is rating (aka the price). Apologies im in a strange mood tonight. personally i'd get some kingston hyper x ddr2 ram, keep the HDD as for the cards i'd go for the 4890 but if you're on 1680x1050 res or below might as well go 260 tbh or get a 4870 to save some money.

cmndr_andi · 25 Jun 2009 at 07:51

Hi Bob, Looks like the P5KC uses DDR3 (as I'm sure you knew) so that reaper RAM is definitely the best deal for you a the moment.

As for the graphics card, I agree with skippy that the 4890 is the superior card for not much more money.

As for the HDD, the caviar black 500GB is indeed nice. However, this is even nicer for only £4.50 more. Its 320GB per platter make it faster in all situations and it has an extra 140GB of storage.

dUcKy · 25 Jun 2009 at 11:05

I'm going with the 4890 personally, will clock higher if you plan to od that, plus its got more frames on crysis at 1680*1050.

Ordering mine todaty

BoB3rt · 25 Jun 2009 at 16:37

cmndr_andi said:
Its 320GB per platter make it faster in all situations and it has an extra 140GB of storage.

Hey

So The Ram and Ati are fine :-)

good stuff !

I have not heared of your quote, does this mean it is double sided or... little confused. although i see £5 is great for 160bg but other has 32mb cache, still i do know numbers are not everything... could someone explain this to me?
Sorry

thanks for replies!

cmndr_andi · 25 Jun 2009 at 18:08

The 640GB uses two 320GB platters. The 500GB either uses 2 x320 (short stroked) or a single 500. My statement about "faster in all situations" is in error - they seem to perform alost exactly the same (atleast the 320 x2 ones, no idea about the 500 x1 ones).

As for 32MB cache vs 16MB, in the tests I have seen the upgrade makes very little difference in terms of performance. For the sake of £5 it is worth it for the extra storage IMHO. Alternatively, get this for another £4 and get the 5 year warrenty and (largely unnecessarty) 32MB cache.