Upgrading soon, could use some advice

[Ice213]

Hi everyone, new to the forum but been stalking the boards for a while. Just need a little help with an upgrade I'm planning for the very near future.

First my current build is:

CPU: Core 2 Duo e8400 overclocked@4Ghz.

Mobo: Asus P5Q PRO

Ram: OCZ 4Gb DDR2 1066mhz Reaper edition

HDD: Samsung spinpoint F1 1TB

GPU: 2 x Sapphire HD4870 1GB's in crossfire

PSU: Corsair 850W TX series

Cooler: Zalman CNPS10X-Performa CPU Cooler

I've got a monitor, keyboard, mouse, cd drive and case that i'm very happy with at the moment.

I will be using the machine to game quite a lot on hopefully high/max settings in 1920x1080 on new games (for the next few years if that'd be possible at all) and also to do general uni work when i go to do my masters in September, but nothing at all taxing.

My budget will probably be somewhere around £400-£500, but if needed I could wait a little longer and save up some more if there was something really good for not too much more cash.

So basically, any upgrade ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated .

I have one additional question too (silly though it may sound), if i get a new mobo, will I have to clean install windows for the drivers etc to not cause problems? The only thing i've upgraded since building this machine around 3 years ago is adding a second 4870 to crossfire them a few months back.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[mp260767]

start with the following, then think about upgrading your graphics card, either a nvidia 560ti or ati 7850, depending on funds, at a later date could add an ssd drive for your operating system.

what operating system are you running ?

yes you'll need to re install to get the motherboard drivers etc.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £189.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £105.98
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
1 x Kingston Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99
Total : £357.31 (includes shipping : £9.50).

 

[Ice213]

I'm running windows 7 ultimate at the moment.

I forgot to mention that I already have a decent aftermarket cooler (which I've now added to my opening post), so should I use that extra money on more ram?

I was looking at the 7850 myself actually, is that better or worse than the 560ti?

Thanks again

Edit: I thought I should add that my 4870's are the 1gb version, not sure if that effects my need for a new GPU or not...

 

[Doomedspeed]

I'm running windows 7 ultimate at the moment.

I forgot to mention that I already have a decent aftermarket cooler (which I've now added to my opening post), so should I use that extra money on more ram?

Yes, 8Gb will be great.

I was looking at the 7850 myself actually, is that better or worse than the 560ti?

It's newer, slightly better and highly over clockable.

Edit: I thought I should add that my 4870's are the 1gb version, not sure if that effects my need for a new GPU or not...

No, Doesn't effect any CPU. VRAM will only be a factor in games. Battlefield 3 is said to eat VRAM, so you may not get huge frame rates in that but it will be more than playable.

 

[Ice213]

No, Doesn't effect any CPU. VRAM will only be a factor in games. Battlefield 3 is said to eat VRAM, so you may not get huge frame rates in that but it will be more than playable.

I said GPU not CPU . But yeah I just wondered if the upgrade to a 7850 would be something I need soon to play the latest games at max settings considering I had the 2x1gb 4870's? Because I know the 512mb ones would be a little out of their depth these days.

Think I will definitely go with the processor that mp260767 suggested, as for the ram, should I get 8gb of the mp260767's suggested ram or is there another ram I should consider considering im getting 8gb rather than 4 now?

Thanks for all the input .

Phil

 

[mp260767]

8gb version of that memory will be fine.

the 7850 will certainly help run things better than the current cards on recent games at the sort of resolution/detail you talked about.

what sort of games are you currently playing ?

 

[Ice213]

Planning to play a little bit of everything to be honest (except fighting games probably ). Until about 6 months (maybe a little more) ago, I played most of my games on consoles, but then I started to get more into PC gaming and want to continue to do so.

Recently I played the witcher 2 on medium to high settings (little slowdown here and there but nothing major...no ubersampling on of course ), I bought myself max payne 3 the other day, but haven't installed or played it yet, though I hear that gets taxing on the CPU at higher settings, and my gf is playing Kingdoms of Amalur which doesn't appear to be be slowing or anything of the sort at all on similar medium-high settings too.

Would a 7850 give me a few years of high/max settings gaming before needing another upgrade? Also (noobish question here), but should i go for 2x4gb sticks of ram, or 4x2gb?

Thanks a lot

Phil

 

[mp260767]

i would expect the 7850 to be able to last a few years on high, but it really depends on how the games are developed.

as for the memory, go for 2x4gb

 

[Ice213]

That sounds good to me . Think my upgrade will be pretty much exactly what you suggested mp260767. 8GB of kingston blu ram, the gigabyte motherboard, the i5-3570K 3.40GHz and the 7850. Which should come to around £540, which I'm sure I can stretch to .

Just one last thing if you wouldn't mind answering, you mentioned eventually adding an ssd for my os, how big an ssd should I be looking at? Is it worth the upgrade over a normal HDD? Any suggestions for ones i should be looking at?

Thanks again for all the help

Phil

 

[mp260767]

i'd look at a 128gb, 256gb if budget allows.

mainly for your o/s loads a fair bit quicker and it can help with some apps.

i've got a crucial m4, but i've seen the sandisk and samsungs mentioned as being pretty decent as well.

 

[Ice213]

Ok, I think that will be a future upgrade at some point, but I will go for the rest first and add that at a a later date, maybe Christmas time.

Thanks so much for all the help, really appreciated.

 

[honosuseri]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £189.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £105.98
1 x Sandisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £84.98
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £43.99
Total : £436.31 (includes shipping : £9.50).



I'd have to agree with MP. That mobo does SLI/Xfire so you could rock your xfire setup a lil while longer. And yes you will need to do a fresh install, I included a good sized sataIII SSD so you can just install fresh on there and keep your old drive for storage. The Z77 mobo also has lucid MVP which uses the IGP to boost your GPU

Install Max payne 3, have a play with the graphics settings. I can't max all the settings on my 1GB 460 as the game warns me it exceeds the VRAM i have. So you do really want to be looking for 2GB of VRAM minimum on your GPU. The 7850 would be good to aim for the 670 is better but thats £300 for a GPU!

 

[Ice213]

Thanks for the input honosuseri, I think I might be able to stretch to get the 7850 with this upgrade (it's my birthday on Tuesday so fingers crossed for some money to help me out), as long as I won't have to then upgrade that one in a few months or anything like that. I'm thinking of then selling my 2 4870's to try and take the edge off of the upgrade .

When you say I can keep the other HDD for storage, and use the SSD for windows, would I have to format and wipe all the data from my current HDD or could I keep all the data and just remove the windows files once I had it installed to the SSD?

Thanks again.