Upgrade Advice:)

[wij]

Right, I built the rig that is in my signature getting on nearly 3 years ago and to be honest it has done pretty well up to now.

Starting to show its age in a lot of the newer games though so I think a new GFX card to start with then maybe look at moving on the CPU/Mobo/RAM etc. to an i7 rig or similar.

At the moment I'm mostly playing BF2:BC and have a 24" monitor so I need to know it can handle running stuff at 1920x1200.

Thinking about a 5870, probably one of the 2Gb versions, but just wanted some input from people on here. My last couple of builds have been nVidia cards but I'm not that bothered really, just want something fast and that will last a couple of years.

Have a budget of around £1k over the summer to spend on upgrades, and I think the GFX should be done first. I'm thinking around £300-400 on the GFX card and then that leaves around £600 for the rest of it.

PSU is a 650w Corsair one so hopefully that will be up to the job too.

 

[wij]

Cheers, yes gaming is pretty much all this machine is used for, I have a Mac Pro and a MBP for real work

Certainly plan on reusing the case, psu and drives (a pair of rather tasty Intel SSD's).

Would it be worth spending the extra bit of money one one of the 2Gb GFX cards?

Also any reason why not to go with 6GB for triple channel RAM in what you've recommended above?

 

[wij]

Okidokie

Yes, the SSD's were my Christmas present, have a the pair running in Raid0 as my system/apps drive and it's amasingly fast.

Will probably order the GFX card first then leave the rest for few weeks until I get paid again.

 

[wij]

Well new GFX card is in and thats made a noticeable difference to my FPS and general smoothness in BF2:BC

Think I may watch the MM and see if I can pick up a 2nd hand Q6600 or something and get one of them Corsair coolers mentioned above.

My E6600 is currently at 3.2Ghz running on just air cooling (got a fairly decent Noctua cooler on it).