Upgrading

JayEnnBee

JayEnnBee

JayEnnBee

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Joined
11 Nov 2008
Posts
11
Hey all.

I've currently got an old S939 AMD X2 system, with no upgrade path, which is a Joy. When I bought the system I thought that by going dual-core and 64 bit, I'd be gibing myself lots of upgrade options, but as it turned out the socket changed to AM2 a few months later!

So now I'm after a new rig, that can play decent games, for a meager budget.
I'm thinking of getting the Quad core Q6600, as it seems a bargain. I already have a decent case, PSU and a BFG 8800 GT (pre overclocked).

Ideally I need CPU, Mobo, Memory (4Gb), Possibly a HDD, and probably a cpu cooler for a max £500.

Do I wait till spring for the core i7? - to ensure upgradeability?
Assuming I go with a Q6600, what sort of Mobo should I be looking at?
DDR2 or DDR3? Is there much of a performance gap?

Erm, Also, I've never done any overclocking before, but I get the impression that if you're not looking for bleeding edge performance, just a comfortable step up, its not too hard to get a stable system?

This post is a bit of a brain dump of all my questions, hope you can make sense of it, and thanks for any advice!
 
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Something like this would give you a good setup.

I wouldn't bother with i7 just now, the cost would be too much for very little gain over a good core 2 rig. If you get the Q6600 overclocked, 3.2ghz should be easy enough to achieve, it'll last you a decent amount of time.

The same goes for DDR3, not worth the premium over DDR2, you can get 4gb kits, like the one I've spec'd for next to nothing.

I'd suggest running this with 64 bit vista, will make the most of the ram.

You could swap the CPU for a faster dual core if you are mainly playing games, the E8400 is a great chip for this. But if you want it a bit more future proof then just stick with the quad, get it overclocked and should do you well in your gaming needs
 
Thanks for that advice.
Does 64bit vista still have lots of driver and general support issues?

Yeah, primarily gaming is what I want it for, perhaps some SQL Server development, but I don't get to swap components as often as I'd like, so It'll probably be 3+ years before I come to upgrade, and that'll probably be a full tech refresh again.
 
64 bit is much better now, most issues seem to be resolved and is widely regarded on here as the OS to have. Plus it allows you to have 4gb+ whereas the 32 bit systems don't.

The samsung F1 drives are pretty quick, can be quicker than the raptors in certain applications. Only reason I'd consider a raptor would be to have the OS and games on it seperately from any other data, would boot into windows slightly quicker and load times are a bit shorter. It depends if you can warrant the difference in price. I'd still get an F1 drive aswell, just get a smaller raptor and run it as I've said, then use the F1 for storage.
 
Excellent, thanks.

Just another quick Qn.
I'll look into the details of how to do it properly, but is Overclocking something that it pretty achieveable? By that I mean, I'm a developer, have built all my PC's but have never dabbled in Overclocking at all. Always been afraid of nuking components.
 
Overclocking is a lot easier than it's made out to be. It's a case of changing a few values in the bios and testing them out, make sure the system is stable. a lot of people can manage to get 3.2Ghz on the Q6600 with little fuss.

Once you get the PC all built up, just create a thread in the overclocking forum, there will be plenty of people happy to help with what you want to achieve. Alternatively, do a search on the forum, im sure there have been plenty of requests for helping with overclocking the Q6600, it's a popular chip.
 
Oh, one more Qn. :)
Do you thing this system would offer a significant performance upgrade over my existing one?
AMD s939 64 bit X2 3800+ with 2 GB ram
I have an Asus A8N-SLI 32....summat board.

Thanks again for all your assistance
 
I used to have a system exactly like that one, same CPU and motherboard, made the jump to a core 2 system, the difference was pretty significant. It's definitely a good move ;)
 
ro55o said:
Something like this would give you a good setup.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Good set up, but you might like to look at the 640 Gb F1 for only £4 more - when in stock.

Also, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro currently at £18.79 inc VAT is probably plenty of cooling for anything other than extreme clocking.
 
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GM2 said:
Agreed.

Good set up, but you might like to look at the 640 Gb F1 for only £4 more - when in stock.

Also, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro currently at £18.79 inc VAT is probably plenty of cooling for anything other than extreme clocking.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if you can get the 640gb in stock, go for it. I had only put in the 500 as it was in stock at the time.

I had seen that the tuniq was on offer at a brilliant price, it's a great cooler, got one in my setup and keeps the temps very low, but agree that it's mainly for higher overclocking, you could save yourself some money and go for the freezer 7, it'll still do a good job.
 
Hi,
I'm getting ready to buy this now.
My only concern is the motherboard specified above.
I've read a that there are some issues with these boards (P5Q & P5Q Pro) relating to memory stability.

Any further Mobo suggestions? all I want is a quick stable board that can overclock the chip and memory above a little. No need for RAID or on-board graphics or integrated wifi or any other random price increasing additives.

Thanks again for advice.

Perhaps:
This
 
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