Upgrade bits....

Scania

Scania

Scania

Caporegime
Joined
25 Nov 2004
Posts
26,016
Location
On the road....
Looking for a cheap replacement for my old e2180 / IP35Pro / 8800GTS that I have recently sold.

I already have hard drives, case, psu, RAM (PC2 6400) sound card etc so just want a board, CPU & GFX card.

I am thinking of this...

Club 3D ATI Radeon HD 5770 512MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £112.99
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.60GHz (800FSB) £54.99
Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L Intel G31 (Socket 775) DDR2 Motherboard £35.99
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I won't be running at any higher than 1600x1200, I mainly play Battlefield 2, Flight Simulator 2004 & FSX.

I am wondering if I should spend a bit less on the card,perhaps get a GTS250 instead, and spend a little more on the motherboard?

Any thoughts appreciated. :)
 
Reading around the recommendation seems to be not to buy S775 stuff... the Phenom + board would probably be a better alternative.

Maybe X2 555, small gigabyte board, and ATI 5770 seems to be maybe another 30 on that and probably much better? and could be upgraded decently in the future..
 
It will completely depend on your budget; if you don't have much to play with then what you've suggested will, by all means, 'do the job'. However doing the job well is a different story.

If you gave us a ballpark budget figure we could advise more from that perspective, as at the moment the x2 555 + a cheapish AM2+ board seem like the logical choice, at least to me :)
 
i would also be looking at x2 555 and cheap mobo, cause these chips has quite good chance of being unlocked too 4 cores, as by bro bought one and his chip unlocked without any issues 3.6 ghz stable :) i'm kinda jealous for him...
 
I did not really want to spend any more than £200 tbh.
Perhaps, I could opt for a B-Grade 4870?
**B Grade** Asus ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB "Dark Knight" GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (EAH4870 DK/HTDI/512MD5)
AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 555 3.20GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail AMD
Gigabyte GA-MA785G-UD3H AMD 785G (Socket AM3/AM2+) DDR2 Motherboard
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The above puts me £40 over budget, I may well go for a 550 instead of the 555 (Still has an unlocked miltiplyer), £30 over budget is not too bad.

I was drawn to the 5770 due to its low power drain, I only have a 500w cheapo PSU....
 
Only CAT-THE-FIFTH/Big.Wayne will know for certain.

Big.Wayne says the 785 chipset does it, there is a thread on unlocking in the CPU forum.
 
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Update (I hate it when threads like this die with no follow up info! :o )

Ended up with the e5300, Gigabyte GA-G31 Board and a B grade GTX260 896MB

The difference from my old IP35 Pro, e2180 & 8800GTS 320MB is ,thus far,like night & day!

And I must say how surprised I am how the board performs (given its a £36 cheapo) compared to my previous Abit IP35 Pro which I'd regarded as a "high end" board....

Sold the above for £250 and got the replacement bits for £193.15 inc.

Happy for the upgrade results given the budget.

I'm a bit puzzled though, "My Computer" says my CPU is running @ 3.4ghz as opposed to 2.6 - I guess I have my FSB set up incorrectly!

Its stable so far, I'm going to goto bed soon and leave prime running to see if everything is ok. :)


I can finally ditch my copy of FS2004 and run FSX properly. :)
 
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The e53s are supposed to be 13x200 I think so yeah windoes will read it incorrectly if yours is set to anything else. They're nice clockers and have hit about 4ghz on that cheapo board. :p just hope you didn't get a dodgy xfx black edition 260 like me.
 
I got a B Grade Leadtek GTX260 (192 Shader) 896MB, I was not expecting quite such a jump from my old 8800GTS!

Run it solidly for about 12 hours now, still reporting 3.4ghz!:cool:

Really surprised how its performing. :)
 
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wouldn't that e5300 have worked in your ip35 pro ?
i would have just gotten a q6600 and a new gfx card myself.
to late now though i guess :(
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I would be looking to change that as quickly as possible TBH especially with a GTX260 unless it is a decent PSU.
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I intend to. - I need to upgrade the PSU quickly, I have 2 hard drives that I currently have not enough power connectors for. :o


chipps101 said:
wouldn't that e5300 have worked in your ip35 pro ?
i would have just gotten a q6600 and a new gfx card myself.
to late now though i guess :(
Click to expand...

Sold the old IP35 as a complete system, these bits I've just cobbled together in some of my other spare parts lying about to make a new system. :)

Early days yet, but this build seems a lot better than the old IP35!

Ands its still running happily @3.4ghz!
 
the e5300 @3.4 and the gtx 260 will make a huge difference but you shouldn't notice much difference with the motherboard untill you start pushing them to their limit's where i would imagine the ip35 pro would have started to shine against your £36 cheapie.

sounds like you have your fsb set to 1066 instead of 800 :) to have it running at 3.4 :)
 
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chipps101 said:
the e5300 @3.4 and the gtx 260 will make a huge difference but you shouldn't notice much difference with the motherboard untill you start pushing them to their limit's where i would imagine the ip35 pro would have started to shine against your £36 cheapie.

sounds like you have your fsb set to 1066 instead of 800 :) to have it running at 3.4 :)
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I bought my previous IP35 Pro as a B-Grade from Oc/UK - paid about £35 12months or so back -, I fully intended to get another but decided that Oc's current pricing policy with regard to B-Grade IP35's is a joke!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-125-AB&groupid=595&catid=689&subcat=

Better as I'm sure the '35 is, its not £140 better!! :D

**B Grade** Abit IP35 Pro (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 (MB-128-AB)

was £0.00 inc VAT
£176.24 inc VAT
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just for the record, i can play bf2 at 1600x900 with everything bar AA turned up on integrated hd3300 in my 790gx (similar power to whats in the 785g) at 35ish fps,
fsx needs a bit more power to say the least, and i would say the 5770 is a good choice. but it you wanna cut back price wise, the first thing i'd say is go for a 5750 instead.

other than that, id say a phenom 555 with a 770/785g board. imo they're quite sucessful with unlocking as well ;)
 
chipps101 said:
the phenom 550 can be unlocked also with a 770 :)
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while i cant find a thread with a list of sucessful/failed unlocks for the 555 (one for the 550 shows about a 75% chance of sucessful unlock), my theory is:

the 555 is based on the c3 stepping. by now, this die has been manufactured for a over a year (AM2+ 920/940), and yields should have matured - even more so with the newer stepping. this means that AMD are gonna have to disable more and more perfectly good quads just to fill demand.

hence i reckon the 555 will have a better chance of unlocking than the 550, and is worth the extra £5-10
 
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