Upgrade help

sanofi · 27 Dec 2009 at 18:19

I am thinking of possible upgrade routes for my current machine with specs:

E8200 @ 3Ghz
Gigabyte P31-DS3L
4Gb Ram
512Mb 4870
550W Antec NeoH PSU
3 HDD's

I run everything at 1680x1050 and have noticed that at higher graphical settings, framerates are a tad sluggish.

I'm not completely certain how much I want to spend but am wondering what the most effective upgrade would be.

JPNUFC · 27 Dec 2009 at 18:38

Well if you are concerned with frame rate then a new gpu will be the way to go such as the 5 series ATI's of a 295gtx if you can afford it.

Tbh the 4870 is fine as far as GPU's go and should not struggle at that res on many games maybe crysis at the end make sure you have up to date drivers etc if you have then I would just drop the shadow detail etc down slightly why spend a load of cash for next to no picture quality improvement. At present and your spec is ok to improve it you would have to build an i5 or i7 system which would be an exspensive way to go if you wanted to up your system.

Regards JP

evoyear · 27 Dec 2009 at 19:05

wait till next year when the new fermi cards are out, you will see a price drop on the cards on shelf at now.

sanofi · 27 Dec 2009 at 23:33

JPNUFC said:
Well if you are concerned with frame rate then a new gpu will be the way to go such as the 5 series ATI's of a 295gtx if you can afford it.

Tbh the 4870 is fine as far as GPU's go and should not struggle at that res on many games maybe crysis at the end make sure you have up to date drivers etc if you have then I would just drop the shadow detail etc down slightly why spend a load of cash for next to no picture quality improvement. At present and your spec is ok to improve it you would have to build an i5 or i7 system which would be an exspensive way to go if you wanted to up your system.

Regards JP

I was hoping I wouldn't have to change the motherboard.

Would I see a noticeable difference in terms of multitasking and cpu intensive operations if I changed the cpu to a socket 775 quad?

PhoenixUK · 27 Dec 2009 at 23:42

sanofi said:
I was hoping I wouldn't have to change the motherboard.

Would I see a noticeable difference in terms of multitasking and cpu intensive operations if I changed the cpu to a socket 775 quad?

Depends what you mean by multitasking ....
if playing a game and having winamp, msn and firefox open at the same time ... no... not really.

If encoding 2 movies, making high render in 3dmax and making high resolution pictures in photoshop at the same time then yes.

Grab a 5770 and it should be just fine with that setup, tho you could squeeze extra 300-400mhz of that CPU as well which should help a bit too : ).

sanofi · 28 Dec 2009 at 20:07

PhoenixUK said:
Depends what you mean by multitasking ....
if playing a game and having winamp, msn and firefox open at the same time ... no... not really.

If encoding 2 movies, making high render in 3dmax and making high resolution pictures in photoshop at the same time then yes.

Grab a 5770 and it should be just fine with that setup, tho you could squeeze extra 300-400mhz of that CPU as well which should help a bit too : ).

How much of an improvement is the 5770 over the 4870?

PhoenixUK · 28 Dec 2009 at 22:54

Not so much but the extra memory should help a bit with the extra AA/AF and they OC better.

And what do you mean by sluggish framerates anyways ? 10-20? 20-30 ?

I'm pretty sure your PC should handle most of the stuff, maybe try OCing the GPU/memory and do a fresh install of windows ? Try squeezing few mhz extra off CPU?
Your board should do 3.3 - 3.4ghz I'd say and the CPU shouldn't have any prob with that.

What brand/model are those HDDs too? And the ram?

sanofi · 29 Dec 2009 at 14:43

The RAM is Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel. The reason I stopped at 3Ghz was due to an inability to boot and retain the OC settings any further than 3Ghz.

I run a dual monitor setup, the main screen is 1680x1050 and I extend onto a 1280x1024 monitor. I like to run background tasks on the smaller monitor while gaming on the main. This can include media players, browsers or Matlab simulations.

The HDDS are:

500Gb ST3500320AS
250Gb WD2500KS
200Gb ST3200822AS

I have ordered the 500Gb WD Caviar Black(WD5001AALS) to replace the 200Gb drive as I was low on space.