Upgrade route advice please

ran_out · 1 Oct 2009 at 13:25

Hi all, i'm new to the forums, just wanted to ask opinions on what a good upgrade route for me would be at the moment as i'm a bit torn over what to do.

I'm fairly happy with my current system performance but starting to get the upgrade itch and could do with slightly faster CPU performance.

The problem is i'm not sure if I should go the full way and just upgrade to an i5/i7/am3 system meaning i'll have to buy new RAM, probably new heatsink, new MB & CPU. Or if I should look for a better skt775 MB so I can push my OC a bit further and get by on what I have for a bit longer.

My current specs are:

Asus p5n32 sli premium 590i
e6600 @ 3.0ghz
4GB pc28500 OCZ platinum @ 667mhz
Sapphire HD 4870 512MB
Vista Home premium 64
650w atrix psu (not great but had to get in hurry after old one burned out)
24" monitor

currently i've hit a wall at 3.0ghz on this MB, can't get it to even post a single mhz past 1335FSB but it runs fine and stable at this level if I downclock the RAM to 667 for a 1:1 ratio. Temps are fine though at around 40-43 idle and 56-60max in coretemp under full load. The MB I have currently is an old chipset and doesn't accept the 45nm core 2/quad CPU's so a CPU upgrade is pretty much out of the question.

I think i could get a much better OC and get my RAM running at optimum speeds and also look at running CF on a P45 board but is the performance increase going to be noticable or worth it?

If i'm likely to get a noticable performance increase from moving to a newer skt775 chipset/board and increasing my OC somewhat i'd go with that route so I can wait for 6/7 months till i5/i7 and 5870 come down in price a little bit, if not I may as well just start saving.

mp260767 · 1 Oct 2009 at 14:18

i'd just start saving, not going to get any real sort of noticeable improvement from that setup over what you've already got.

If anything get yourself a new psu, in preparation for the i5/i7 upgrade.

ran_out · 1 Oct 2009 at 14:31

Yeah a new PSU is definately in order, was such an annoying situation when the old one went, me being an IDIOT bought a Tagan PSU off ebay which happenned to go over the bank holiday weekend about a year later. I had an assignment for uni due in the next week and wouldn't be able to get delivery till Wednesday so had to bite the bullet and go to ** ***** and buy whatever I could find to get it working. Spent about the same amount as OCuk charge for a higher output Corsair on the only acceptable one they had in store which was an Atrix (claims to be 80+ 650w), but I guess I learnt my lesson the hard way. By the time i get a new rig together I will have probably spent over £200 on power supplies when I should have just bought one decent one to begin with!

'Wes · 1 Oct 2009 at 15:12

AM3 has a nice upgrade root.

ran_out · 1 Oct 2009 at 15:25

Yeah i've been thinking about going with AM3 , all my experience so far has been with intel processors so may be interesting to try AMD. I saw ocUK offering a good bundle deal on a phenom x2 processor, also the possibility of unlocking additional cores with those as well but it depends how the price/performance ratio ends up with the core i5 750 looking quite affordable at the moment and will only get more so in future.

'Wes · 1 Oct 2009 at 15:41

I never owned an AMD system up until now. Thought i'd try something new, same goes for ATI as well, never used them before, and it has been a nice experience.