Upgrade advise please

[Guinny]

been out of system building for a few years and need some help!

I have:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. EX58-UD3R (Socket 1366)

Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
Bloomfield 45nm Technology

6.00GB Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 532MHz (8-8-8-20

Radeon HD 5800


What would my best upgrade route be - keeping existing system or ordering a new PC from OC UK.

Thanks

 

[Zethor]

How much are you willing to spend?

 

[Guinny]

Its not really the money - just don't want to waste over a grand on a new system if adding more ram and new GFX card would be a good option.

Not sure how much of a bottle neck the cpu is.

 

[Morfinel]

If ur PSU is decent, u have fast ssd and want to keep ur pc case it would be chraper to upgrade, do u oc?

 

[Guinny]

I'm running it at 3.2Ghz

Considering upgrading to 12 Gb ram and a new GFX card

 

[ShivP]

Yes, keep that CPU, it's still a solid one. What's your budget for upgrades?

 

[Guinny]

Yes, keep that CPU, it's still a solid one. What's your budget for upgrades?

About £500 - will get new ram and a Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Dual-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card.

I think!

 

[ShivP]

Is is not possible to just add another triple channel set or something like that or is there only 3 DIMM slots? Otherwise, that looks good

 

[Guinny]

Is is not possible to just add another triple channel set or something like that or is there only 3 DIMM slots? Otherwise, that looks good

Yeh - only three slots!
Not to worry the old ram can go in my spare machine the family use.

 

[ShivP]

Ah cool, so a new set it will be then

 

[Guinny]

Is is not possible to just add another triple channel set or something like that or is there only 3 DIMM slots? Otherwise, that looks good

I just checked and there are 4 slots - what option does this give me?

also - could I upgrade the CPU to Intel Core i7-970 Processor 3.20 GHz 12 MB Cache Socket LGA1366

Thanks

 

[Guinny]

RAM
Memory slots
Total memory slots 4
Used memory slots 3
Free memory slots 1
Memory
Type DDR3
Size 6144 MBytes
Channels # Triple
DRAM Frequency 599.7 MHz
CAS# Latency (CL) 9 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD) 9 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 9 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS) 22 clocks
Command Rate (CR) 1T
Physical Memory
Memory Usage 31 %
Total Physical 6.00 GB
Available Physical 4.12 GB
Total Virtual 12 GB
Available Virtual 9.81 GB
SPD
Number Of SPD Modules 3
Slot #1
Slot #2
Slot #3

 

[ShivP]

I'm not 100% sure but I don't think that CPU upgrade will give you a massive difference, 4 slots? Maybe they run in dual channel? You could get some new 8gb RAM then (2x4gb)

 

[Guinny]

Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit (CMZ12GX3M3A1600C9)

I think this is what I need?

 

[ShivP]

That would work well, yep

I believe your motherboard still uses triple channel as the specs you posted seems to show that

 

[no_1_dave]

Just get more ram and a new graphics card
The i7 920 can easily overclock to 3.8+ Ghz, even todays CPUs make little difference in gaming over a 920 unless you are using SLI/Crossfire

Surprising really, the 920 is 5 years old and still going strong. Best £150 I spend on my computer I think.

 

[Guinny]

Thanks all for the input - put in three new modules of 4GB ram:
Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz

And a new GFX card:
Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Dual-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card

system is flying now - can't believe the difference on the same CPU!

 

[ndaar]

Thanks all for the input - put in three new modules of 4GB ram:
Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz

And a new GFX card:
Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Dual-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card

system is flying now - can't believe the difference on the same CPU!

Good stuff, should last you an other few years

 

[cmndr_andi]

Agreed, the i7 920 is still a fantastic CPU for most modern games and in most cases a graphics card upgrade and a bit more RAM will help a lot.

I would also like to highlight that an SSD is a really good upgrade - even for a SATAII platform like X58. When I was using an i7 920 I made the jump from RAID0 2x7200rpm HDD to a Vertex 2e 120GB SSD (a pretty slow SSD by today's standards) and the upgrade felt like I had just made a brand new machine. If you want to go down this road my recommendation for a good SSD is the Samsung 840 Evo 250GB.

The i7 970 does seem like a tempting upgrade, but unless you get one really cheap (less than £60) then it really isn't worth it (unless you use a lot of multithreaded applications). It may have 50% more cores, but each of those cores is really no faster than the cores in the i7 920 and it is single-threaded performance which the i7 920 is somewhat lacking compared to modern intel CPUs if you are mainly playing games.