Upgrades - Help me choose the right bits please!

buchtis

buchtis

buchtis

Soldato
Joined
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Location
Derbyshire
Hi all,

Thinking about upgrading my ancient mobo and graphics card which has recently packed in. I'll be doing quite a lot of gaming at 1920 x 1080p so the right graphics card is a must. My budget is £300 which I don't want to go over if possible but if there's a significant performance increase in some parts that go over that then i'm willing to budge.

My current set up is this:

Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Hard Drive: 660 GB Total
Video Card: NVIDIA BFG GTX 295
Monitor: Dell ST2210
Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio
Speakers/Headphones: Trust
Keyboard: Microsoft Comfort Curve
Mouse: Trust GXT 14
Mouse Surface: Custom Made Mouse Mat
Operating System: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (5.2, Build 3790) Service Pack 2 (3790.srv03_sp2_rtm.070216-1710)
Motherboard: GigaByte GA-MA790GPT-UD3H
Computer Case:

I'm looking for an SLi/X-Fire enabled mobo and a graphics card equal to or greater to the BFG 295 performance wise.

Currently i've been looking at these:

Mobo:

Asus M4A87TD Evo AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard [90-MIBCK0-G0EAY0WZ]

Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard [GA-870A-UD3]

I've no idea on the difference between a 700/800 chipset mobo, guessing the 800 is newer/better?

As for the graphics cards:

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card [HD-489X-ZHFL]

OcUK Value GeForce GTX 260 "Core 216 55nm" 896MB GDDR3 Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - (Grade A OEM - 3 Months Warranty)

Worryingly, it only has a 3 month guarantee so a bit unsure :(

Again, any card/cards that will outperform the 295.

I also currently have DDR2 RAM, is it compatible with any of the mobos above? If not, i'll have to upgrade that too.

Thanks :)
 
Hi mate.

Here's my 2cents:

As long as you know that neither the 4890 or 260 will match the 295 then OK so I would look at something like the XFX 5850 for £209.98 from OcUK and then find a mobo that matches your needs for £90. Yeah from the description it seems that those mobos don't support DDR2, no. You won't see much difference from going to DDR3 from DDR2 imo so just find a mobo that has space for crossfire for around £90. The 5850 is probably as close as you can go within budget.

What I would do now though is: take your £300 spend all of it on a gfx card
then when you need to crossfire it up - buy a mobo then. This would allow you to get an ATi 5870. The performance doesn't match the extra £100 but it is a better card than the 5850.

Hopefully this makes sense and helps
 
I'd suggest getting an AM2+ mobo. That will take your DDR2 and CPU (most now support AM3) and will cost around £50-60 doubt they will do xfire for that price though.

Trouble with xfire/sli is that you need to ensure that the mobo will run both express lanes at the same speed. Some will do 16X & 8X or 16X & 4X, you want 16X & 16X.... you get the picture.

If you buy an AM3 mobo they will only take DDR3 RAM, so buying both mobo and RAM is going to dent the budget for a gfx card. An AM2+ mobo is going to leave you £250ish for gfx and a new board with warranty.

I'm unsure if you meant both the gfx card and mobo have packed in. If the mobo is ok you could just upgrade the gfx as Gza suggested.
 
Adding to the above about express lane speeds.
I've looked at both of these MB's in some detail for a current build that I'm doing and you should note that both of the second slots on the MB's that you listed are running at x4. This can be a really big hit performance wise if you are considering SLI/XFire :)
 
You are quite right raptor, I checked this as an after thought when i posted my reply. Was waiting to hear what the OP thought before adding further comment
 
honosuseri said:
I'd suggest getting an AM2+ mobo. That will take your DDR2 and CPU (most now support AM3) and will cost around £50-60 doubt they will do xfire for that price though.

Trouble with xfire/sli is that you need to ensure that the mobo will run both express lanes at the same speed. Some will do 16X & 8X or 16X & 4X, you want 16X & 16X.... you get the picture.

If you buy an AM3 mobo they will only take DDR3 RAM, so buying both mobo and RAM is going to dent the budget for a gfx card. An AM2+ mobo is going to leave you £250ish for gfx and a new board with warranty.

I'm unsure if you meant both the gfx card and mobo have packed in. If the mobo is ok you could just upgrade the gfx as Gza suggested.
Click to expand...

this
 
i think you should sell your 6gb of ram for £75 and with £375 get this, slightly over but hey i reckon you can find £7. the board supports AM3 cpus and will do x16 symmetrical crossfire for in the future. just oc the 5850 to 5870 speeds.

buildh.png
 
Well as the RAM hasn't been spec'd you can't value it to sell.

I would like to point out the gfx cards you are looking at are old tech and only directx10. If you were to go with an AM2+ mobo you could easily afford any 5850 card (directx11).

The 5770 is a good budget card and will be cheaper too, if your hell bent on xfire two of these equal and in some cases pip the 5870 (for less £). If bought with an AM2+ mobo you still have plenty of change and can save for a mobo/RAM upgrade later and additional 5770 for xfire, or just run one now on your current mobo and upgrade as suggested later if performance isn't to your liking.

It's probably worth sticking ati as finding a mobo for AMD that does SLI isn't going to be easy.
 
most generic ram sells for £25 per 2gig on these forums, im going off that. im guessing from the rest of his spec that its not value ram either.
 
Yes fair point although assumption is the mother of all F ups ;p

Trouble with the mobo in your spec dane is that the lanes are X8 in dual link. I still think it would be best to get the best gfx card possible now (with or without AM2+ mobo) and save (hopefully there is some change ;p) to upgrade to a better RAM and mobo later, by then the new 6000 series will be released most likely and the 5000s will be cheaper so xfire is more affordable.

An asus crosshair IV board has 3 lanes (2X16 or tri-fire 1X16 & 2X8) or the crosshair III does dual X16 and factor in overclocking potential it makes the base for an awesome system wether a 5770 or 5850 is run in xfire.

Just a thought, these are all options for the OP to consider
 
I do agree with what your saying, i would:

A. Go for the best card you can buy now
B. Dont worry about crossfire, especially with ati due to ****e drivers and scaling issues etc in xfire. you might find the 5850/5870 will be more than enough, my 5850 maxes everything except for metro in dx11.
C.dont worry too much about a new mobo as it will handle the gfx card fine and then sell both mobo and ram to subside the price of replacement parts.

Tbh i would wait for the mm on here, you can pick up a 5870 for £250 and sometimes less.
 
I like to think i make sense.....at least some of the time lol

I'm just going off what the OP stated in his post. If they want xfire i'll try and advise them best as I can. A crosshair III is only slightly dearer than the Asus EVO you suggested dane. Factor in the OC'ing, proper xfire lanes and the excellent soundcard supplied with it.....it's easy to justify a few more notes!

I think we'd all agree getting the best gfx card poss is a good idea. TBH i'd sooner have a 5770 than a 4890. Consider directx11 and eyefinity support with the 5000 series card and that I can xfire it when it's cheaper to get to 5870 performance it makes (financial) sense.

We've given plenty for the OP to think over I reckon. I'm sure other people will add further thoughts later on
 
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