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Pighardia

Pighardia

Pighardia

Soldato
Joined
9 Jan 2011
Posts
17,987
Hi everyone,

just built this system, you all helped a bit:

Phenom ii x4 965 be
Asus m4a88td-v evo mobo
MSI ATI Radeon HD 5850 Twin FrozR II 1024MB
samsung spinpoint f3 1tb
4gb corsair xms3 ram
antec truepower new modular 650w psu
cooler master elite 430 windowed case
windows 7 ultimate
Arctic power freezer 7

I scraped the money together and built it gradually, choosing my compoments with budget in mind,( all came to around £600). Looked at a Sandy Bridge build but decided to go with the 965 BE and i am very happy with the set up.

Now, if only I had waited a few weeks, as today i won a poker tourney and find my self with some spare cash. I reckon i will put £200 aside for a potential upgrade or 2.
I am set on another spinpoint 1tb hdd for around £40 and probably a Blu-ray drive.

If you had that system, and £200 for an upgrade, What would you do?

crossfire? more RAM?

obviously, the set up is manly for gaming.

Thank you.
 
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
MSI ATI Radeon HD 5850 Twin FrozR II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £137.99
(£114.99) £137.99
(£114.99)
LiteOn iHBS112 12x BluRay-RW / 16 x DVD±RW Drive - Black (OEM) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99
(£34.16) £40.99
(£34.16)
Sub Total : £215.81
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £45.06
Total : £270.37
With a decent blue ray writer.
 
i'm not sure of the benefits of crossfire for me. i posted another thread about it as i do all my gaming on my 32" HDTV which has max resolution of 720p. not sure that the benefit is really worth it at that res?
 
Another thing i was wondering is, as i am getting another identical hdd, would it be worth/would you recommend running them in raid0? i will back up anything important to an external hd, so i won't really be bothered about losing data if one goes wrong.
Also, would i get a significant increase if i crossfire hd5850's if i only game at 720.
cheers,
 
RAID0 does make things faster, but if it's mainly for gaming you won't notice a massive differnence - perhaps shave milliseconds off load time.

At 720p there is no need for another HD5850.

Spend the £200 on a new monitor, say a 24" that has 1080p :p
 
thank you for you thoughts guys.
Cookeh said:
RAID0 does make things faster, but if it's mainly for gaming you won't notice a massive differnence - perhaps shave milliseconds off load time.

:p
Click to expand...

But as i am definitely getting another hdd because i am running out of space (over 450gb of steam games alone) so i will have two 1 tb drives, would you set up raid or not?

btw, i havn't really got much on there at the moment, as the systems only been up for a few weeks, and i can just transfer games to an external and then back on to new install of windows,
cheers.
 
Cookeh said:
At 720p there is no need for another HD5850.

Spend the £200 on a new monitor, say a 24" that has 1080p :p
Click to expand...


that is something that i have been considering, in fact, i've seen a 32" 1080p HDTV for £299, and i could probably get £200-250 for my tv, so i am currently thinking about what to do there.

edit- £250 might be a bit ambitious:D
 
Last edited:
Probably order this lot.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Iiyama ProLite E2208HDD 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black £119.99 (£99.99)
Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATAII Optical Drive - Retail Black £57.98 (£48.32)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99
(£34.16)
Sub Total : £182.47

(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £38.74
Total : £232.46

Still not sure about Raid though. Any thoughts as i'll have 2 hdd's?
 
If you are regularly backing up I'd say go for it, it does help on game load times and start up but for me that's the main benefit

If I were you I'd sell the 5850 and get a 6950 flash it to 6970 capabilities and anandtech seems to give 10fps + but the main reason would be that you get a significant more benefit with cf 6 series than 5 series amd cards
 
al4x said:
If I were you I'd sell the 5850 and get a 6950 flash it to 6970
Click to expand...

This has occurred to me.

Question for everyone- If you did all of your gaming on a 32" HDTV at 1280x720, would the £50 difference(roughly) between the 5850 and 6950 be worth it?

PS. at the moment, i do have a 20" monitor at 1280x1024, but its quite old and not in the same league as the tv in terms of picture quality.
cheers.
 
Oh I didn't see that resolution, maybe its not worth it , maybe all you should do is get a second hdd
 
Oh yes blu ray drive, I'd advise getting retail like I did, even tho there is free player software about I find powerdvd very nice for playing mine
 
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