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aspirins

aspirins

aspirins

Associate
Joined
4 Nov 2006
Posts
373
Hi,

I built this computer around two years ago and looking to improve it, it can sometimes get a bit sluggish.

OCZ Platinum Revision 2 XTC (4x1GB)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2
Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2180 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.00GHz (800FSB)

So I'm considering buying the 64gb Crucial C300 SSD which seems quite popular.

As far as everything else goes I'm not sure. I don't really play much in the way of games, maybe WoW/CS every now and then, but I'd like it to be capable if I decided I wanted to play something newer.

I figure my upgrade choices are a new CPU, or replacing everything. Will a new CPU plus the SSD make a big difference? Or would I be better off leaving the CPU and upgrading everything later on in the year/beginning 2011.

Thanks
 
a new cpu should make quite a difference yeah, check your mobo support first though, make sure it can take what youre putting in, you might need to flash the bios first possibly
 
see if you can get a 2nd radeon 4850 512MB and use them in Crossfire (if your motherboard supports it). Or get yourself a more up-to-date graphics card - maybe the HIM Radeon 5850?
 
That would be no good with a E2180 at stock. It's probably bottlenecking the 4850 he already has. Don't think his board supports crossfire anyway and even if it did, being a P35 board the second slot would be only 4x and would add even more bottlenecking.
 
Yeh def new CPU, for Q6600 £80 is nothing. That Crucial SSD is good, although I think the OCZ vertex 2E is a similar price and will perform better as that Crucial SSD's speeds are based on SATA 6Gbps, and gets faster the larger it is. (ie the 256GB Crucial is very quick compared to the 64GB version)

Also SSD's are continually coming down in price so if you don't mind waiting a little longer...?
 
Ok, thanks. I'll start looking for a q6600 then. Is there an easy way to tell if it's G0 stepping? Is it just if it has SLACR written on the front?

I assume the cooler I have will be fine to use with this too

95thrifles mentioned whether the motherboard is compatible with the q6600, I did some googling and it seems it can take the CPU. Is compatibility more to do with whether or not it's possible to overclock, or just if it fits?
 
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