Upgrade time

northwestdakota · 22 Oct 2008 at 17:34

Hi guys,

Many of you have helped me on my last 2 upgrades and the advice was great so I would appreciate any help you can give me on my next upgrade.

At the moment I have E4600 clocked to 3Ghz, G.Skill 2GB DDR2 NR PC2-6400C and a MSI 975X Platinum PowerUp Edition Mobo.

I have quite a limited knowledge and managed to clock it to 3hz but when it come to adding another 2GB of ram it just never got recognized. I tried to sort the problem out but it seemed to be a bios problem and to be honest it all started to go over my head.

Anyway, I have been given a ATI 4870 video card which will be an upgrade over my 8800GTS so I thought it would be nice to upgrade my memory to 4GB get a better CPU and maybe grab a better motherboard. I don't really want to go over £300. What do you guys think?

Thanks in advance for any help

northwestdakota · 22 Oct 2008 at 18:19

Blimey, that was quick guys thanks

I should have mentioned I use a 22" tft on a res of 1650 x 1050 and Vista premium 64 bit.

I had heard that the 8400 Wolfdale was supposed to be better than the 6600 for gaming, is that right?

northwestdakota · 23 Oct 2008 at 00:02

Bump as ill be buying it in the moring

northwestdakota · 23 Oct 2008 at 09:55

Cheers, I like the look of that DFI board and the memory is a bargain. So I just need to decide if the cpu upgrade is worth it.

Is there that much more power in a E8400 over a E4600? I currently use a Zalman CNPS9500A-LED CPU Cooler to get my 4600 to run at 3ghz.

northwestdakota · 23 Oct 2008 at 10:58

Bump as my button is hovering over the "checkout" button

northwestdakota · 23 Oct 2008 at 21:10

Thanks Pingwing, I have just ordered the DFI board and the memory. I think that combined with the new GPU will be a huge upgrade, certainly enough to wait for the 9450 processors to get to around the £100 mark.

Thanks again

northwestdakota · 25 Oct 2008 at 21:24

Ok, some tech help is needed now

I have installed the DFI board above and the memory above but now when I get to the windows screen my monitor loses signal :mad:

I have checked and reseated all bits in the pc, tried the latest drivers (and older ones for my card) but still no luck. I am using a Nvidia 8800 GTS320 while I wait for my 4870 to arrive. I am using Vista 64 bit.

Any ideas?

northwestdakota · 25 Oct 2008 at 21:53

Yep, formatted the drive and reinstalled windows

northwestdakota · 3 Nov 2008 at 16:47

It all works fine with my new 4850, so I guess it was some random video card fault. Anyway, its all working really well and I could not be happier with the memory and motherboard. Thanks for all the advice guys.