upgrade time

YoungRogue

YoungRogue

YoungRogue

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Joined
7 Feb 2008
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101
I am looking at getting an Am3 setup this weekend, I fancy a change from my dying e2160. Am looking at spending under £350 for the motherboard cpu and memory as I currently have ddr2 so will need some new ram. So far I am pretty much decided on the Asus M4A89GTD because i think i would like to explore crossfire at a later date and I have always had asus boards. I am however undecided on which cpu to choose from I will be using the machine for gaming. Will i see any real benifit of getting a 1055t x6? or if I got something like the x2 550 for pretty much half the price and unlocked it to 4 cores would I be missing out on lots?
 
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You may also want to consider the Intel i7 option. This motherboard is a fantastic bit of kit (ASUS too) and not much more than the AM3 board you listed.

As for CPU, the i7 920 is a very fast processor and will overclock to 4GHz rather easily with a good cooler.

The X58 platform is designed with triple channel memory in mind - but it will work in dual channel mode with a dual channel kit if you need to save money (as you can see, the triple channel kit is slightly cheaper per GB).
 
so I would only need the x6 if i wanted to shave a few seconds off video rendering and stuff like that, and the quad core is better for games, bit of a no brainer then i suppose, just thought it would be cool to say 6 core processor lol. I am going to be looking at overclocking will this change anything or is the 955 quad pretty good for overclocking on the board I said, Never had an Amd processor before so dont know what I'm doing
 
YoungRogue said:
so I would only need the x6 if i wanted to shave a few seconds off video rendering and stuff like that, and the quad core is better for games, bit of a no brainer then i suppose, just thought it would be cool to say 6 core processor lol. I am going to be looking at overclocking will this change anything or is the 955 quad pretty good for overclocking on the board I said, Never had an Amd processor before so dont know what I'm doing
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the BE edition cpus have an unlocked multiplier, making overclocking so simple, i could show my cat how to do it!
 
YoungRogue said:
i think the i7 route is a bit out of my budget, would there be a great deal of difference?
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For gaming at the moment - not really.

The X58 board does do proper x16x16 crossfire and SLI, which is a bonus if you want to use a dual card arrangement in the future. Also, these boards support the 32nm Hex core Gulftown processors - so there is a decent CPU upgarde available for in the future (though Intel Sandy Bridge will not work with X58 boards).

These is some benefit to using such a powerful CPU in some games (though not by any means the majority), for example battlefield bad company 2 makes good use of quad core CPUs.

However, in most games the power of an i7 CPU is not yet needed. This will likely mean that you won't need to upgrade for sometime, but it would mean spending more money now.
 
so basicly been suggested these two builds
pcbuild.png

pcbuild2.png

I am leaning towards the amd route, as it works out over £100 cheaper, and I can put that towards a decent graphics card or some more memory.
 
stulid said:
yep.

edit, one warning, the stock AMD heatsink is a bit of a screamer
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I have a Scythe Ninja revb at the mo my e2160 has a load of 51 degrees and that was at 3.4ghz with silly amounts of voltage, partially the reason i wanted to go with the Am3 as this cooler will fit it (effectly saving me another £40-£80 on a decent cpu cooler)
 
YoungRogue said:
I have a Scythe Ninja revb at the mo my e2160 has a load of 51 degrees and that was at 3.4ghz with silly amounts of voltage, partially the reason i wanted to go with the Am3 as this cooler will fit it (effectly saving me another £40-£80 on a decent cpu cooler)
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sorted then :)

edit, new thermal paste for your cooler?
 
i have some arctic 5 somewhere, which memory would be best to go for? the 1600mhz or the 1333mhz? im a bit confused which the motherboard supports. ddr3 is double dutch to me at the mo
 
YoungRogue said:
i have some arctic 5 somewhere, which memory would be best to go for? the 1600mhz or the 1333mhz? im a bit confused which the motherboard supports. ddr3 is double dutch to me at the mo
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it supports either, the 1600mhz will run at stock speed of the cpu(usually 1333mhz) so will allow a higher overclock, so buy that
 
YoungRogue said:
the ocz memory says its specifically designed for intel, would the kingston hyper x be better? timings of 8-8-8-24 or 9-9-9-27
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marketing blurb, it will work, other people have used it with amd systems.

but if your still not convinced then corsair do a kit for £109, and corsair=quality.
 
cool, will look at ordering this all on friday (payday) cant wait to get it all up and running, and then graphics card next month x1950 is holding me back a bit lol
 
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