Upgrade soon request spec

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ajm

ajm

ajm

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I may be looking to upgrade my agp system shown in my sig soon. I don't think i can use any of my existing components apart from...

Sata II samsung 500gb
Sata II samsung 40 gb
Dvdrw drives Pioneer 112 (IDE) Optiarc 7170 A (IDE)
Samsung 930bf monitor keyboard, mouse etc
Will be running windows XP pro

Will probably be needing..

Motherboard
CPU Intel (core 2 quad ) i think
Mem (Poss 4 gig dual ch)
Case
PSU ( capable of running all the above)
Graphics card for gaming (512mb min and i want nvidia personal preference)

Lowest budget the better.

ps. I won't be overclocking.
 
This would probably be about the simplest and cheapest setup that fits all requirements.

OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £45.99
(£54.04) £45.99
(£54.04)
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £134.99
(£158.61) £134.99
(£158.61)
Point of View GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (8717344966320) £139.99
(£164.49) £139.99
(£164.49)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £66.99
(£78.71) £66.99
(£78.71)
Sub Total : £432.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £77.68
Total : £521.58
 
Thanks for the quick reply.:)

That does look quite good for the money. Is this a good setup for playing all the latest games on high spec? Also is that a really good motherboard or should i maybe go for something with a little bit higher priced?
 
Thanks, is the p35 motherboard much better and worth the extra? Bear in mind i will not be overclocking.
 
The P35 has a few more features (more SATA ports typically and Crossfire support although only one PCI-E port is at 16x the other is at 4x) but if you aren't going to use them then you might as well go with the P31 and save yourself a bit of cash, only you can really decide if you need the features by doing a direct comparison. :)
 
Thanks for the tip but which P35 board are you refferring to? I am not planning to go crossfire or sli or anything like that. Just single vid card for gaming and no overclocking. Like the idea of at least 4 sata ports. I do have 2 ide dvdrw drives that i will want to use so this will go on the single ide port is that right?
 
All P35 based motherboards (that I'm aware of at least) only support Crossfire at 16x and 4x although this won't really matter to you.

Gigabyte, Abit and Asus all offer decent options in the P35 based arena but you will be paying anywhere from £10 more and upwards. Gigabyte P35 DS3R, Abit IP35-E and Asus P5K SE are the options at the cheaper end of the market I'd suggest - OcUK do an own brand version which seems to offer decent performance but J&W (the OEM) don't seem to be quite as good as some other manufacturers for releasing updated drivers.

Yep, two IDE devices are fine on a single port.
 
Thanks for that.

It looks like i will go the Gigabyte route, now i am wondering what the different letters are at the end of the model like DS3L, DS3R, DS3P ?
 
Slight differences in specification, the DS3R seems to be the most common option. Basic difference from a quick look are that the DS3L (P35 option) doesn't support Crossfire or Firewire, the DS3R supports Crossfire but no Firewire while the DS3P is the most fully featured and supports all the above as well as every other feature common to the range. You will also probably find that the DS3L has the fewest SATA ports and might not support Raid either but I haven't checked that out properly.
 
I have decided that it will be a P35 board and i think i will go with Gigabyte, now which is the best for my use? I do like the idea of plenty of sata ports.
 
This DS3R would be the best option then I think, there is a version of the DS3R that supports both DDR2 + DDR3 but it is both more expensive and a bit of a gimmick to my mind since by the time you need DDR3 you will probably be buying a whole new motherboard and CPU anyway.
 
If you are using software that makes use of quad core or you are planning to keep the CPU for a good length of time then I'd go with the Q6600.

However if you want outright speed then I'd go with the Wolfdale E8400, particularly also if you will be overclocking. I wouldn't bother with the E6850 unless you can get it at a very good price - say £30 under the cost of the E8400 because the Wolfdale uses a 45nm process so should run cooler and overclock further.
 
Equal pricewise, not necessarily faster unless the application makes use of 3 or more cores. I'd go with quad core given that I upgrade pretty rarely at the moment but if you upgrade frequently then I'd probably go with the faster dual core and buy a motherboard that would cope with upgrades.
 
Sorry not replied sooner been away for a few days. Thanks for that info, i don't upgrade too often but like to keep somewhere in the loop as my current setup is in my sig and i bought this just after pci-e came out. I wouldn't be upgrading now but for agp is not giving enough reason to stick with it. Looks like i will go for the core 2 quad. Just not too sure about the mem now as i will only be running XP pro and have heard that it won't run 4 gig which i did really want for future proofing.
 
XP will run with 4gb (you could run it with 24gb if you really wanted to) but it won't access all of it due to an inherant limitation of 32bit OSes in addressing that much Ram, instead you will see just slightly less than 4gb of total Ram in Windows i.e. 3.45gb(ish) of Ram and the 512mb from the video card. :)
 
So am i worrying over nothing about the 4gig limit in Xp?

Also will the 500W PSU be enough to run the spec you give earlier plus 3 sata hdd and 2 dvd/rw drives?
 
Antec generally make quality PSUs so I'd have no worries about it.

Running with 4gb Ram shouldn't give you any problems at all in XP Pro (there are plenty of people about here doing so), the only issue is as I said you won't see all of it.
 
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