Upgrade Dilemma

Cold Fusion · 31 Jan 2007 at 10:00

Hi there

Im abit of a game addict (or was until I got my new job but nvm) and so I guess I could be placed under the name 'enthusiast'. I am looking to upgrade my PC as im starting to find that mine is falling under the recommended specifications of recent releases and my current trusty system is comming up to 3 years old. I tend to try and future proof my systems as much as I can in order to make it last, im not that well off and I cant afford a new gfx card each time a new generation is released. I plan on robbing parts from my old system so only the major components will need replacing below you can see my current spec, what il be keeping and what I propose to buy:

----- Current ------
P4 3.0GHz (Northwood)
1GB PC3200 TWINMOS DDR RAM
ASUS P4P800 Motherboard
Hightech Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
430W antec PSU
----- Robbed out -------
Cheiftec Dragon Case
CDRW Drive
DVDRW Drive
Floppy Drive
160GB SATA HDD
2x Coolmaster Fans
Ethernet card
----- Proposed -------
E6600 Core 2 Duo
Asus P5B Motherboard
2GB Gell DDR2 RAM
(All above in overclockers handy bundle)
Nvidia 8800 GTS or ATI R600
500+W Antec PSU

Now I dont plan on getting Windows Vista anytime soon, but I still want to have a DirectX10 compliant PC if i eventually do (I still hold out hope that might release it on XP) Now the dilemma. Those 5 items at the moment are going to set me back £800 which is a lot, do I upgrade now so I can play Supreme Commander in all its glory or do I wait for ATI to release the R600 and then go from there?

Additionally what kind of PSU will I need, im assuming 500W+ from a decent company (Antec or Corsair)?

All suggestions, opinions and information welcome.

naro · 31 Jan 2007 at 10:43

thats a nice new config.. for PSU, you might want to look at Seasonic PSUs, they are of great build quality and have very high efficiency.

melbourne720 · 31 Jan 2007 at 10:45

If its games you want to play, then I would recommend:-

e4300 core 2 duo (clocks as fast as the others, but much cheaper)
P5B-E or DS3/4 or the new 650 SLi motherboard is cheap and good.
8800 GTS is a must

520W Corsair PSU.

I'd add a Tuniq Tower, or Scythe Ninja to cool your CPU.

Cold Fusion · 31 Jan 2007 at 11:45

Thanks for the replies, more welcome

On the PSU front, I hear Hipers keep popping, Im tempted to go with an antec but not many people here seem to recommend them.

Ive not seen much on this E4300, only the anandtech review. Its very impressive at being overclocked but to be honest, im not into overclocking I can understand the idea behind it but you run the risk of the thing going bang, plus you only get 2mb of L2 cache, which is why I plumbed for the E6600, significantly cheaper than the 6700 and almost as fast. Dont really need an SLi motherboard as i dont plan on having a dual card graphics solution, hence the P5B, if there is any other board that has this kind of spec then i might take a look, although ASUS have always been good to me.

I dont know whether to wait for the R600, i assume that when its released Nvidia might reduce thier pricing which is tempting although by the looks of things ATI may have a more mature driver. I was planning on keeping the stock fan and heatsink

melbourne720 · 31 Jan 2007 at 12:38

e4300 is good if you want to save money, as it does clock fast. Have a look at easyrider's thread on the subject in Overclocking and Cooling.

If you're not going to overclock, then the stock cooler and 6600 (which I have) will be fine. I would recommend overclocking. Follow the sticky in the Overclocking and Cooling section using a decent 3rd party cooler and get 25% more performance for free. If you want to go further you can.

You won't use the 4mb cache for games, but you will for media encoding and things like that.

Cold Fusion · 31 Jan 2007 at 13:25

Good points there Mr Melbourne.

Considering ive never overclocked before and I dont plan on encoding media anytime soon (prehaps playing it) then I guess I dont need the extra L2 cache.

I dont think id want to risk overclocking a E4300 by 0.6GHz upto the 2.4GHz of the E6600, but iI may consider getting a E6400 at 2.18GHz and overclocking it up to 2.4GHz, would I be able to do that safely using the stock coolers or would I really need a seperate cooling solution.