uprgade opinions mark2

wowfood · 5 May 2008 at 00:35

ok, i'm gonna put some random stuff up here and why i'm choosing it. Once again i'd like opinions, (mostly on the stuff i left out) i'm being fairly vague here also. Just a warning

Q6600 processor.
780i mobo (aiming to grab the same make as the graphics card if possible, also making sure it supports 1066mhz ram)
4gb of 1066mhz RAM (aiming for the same speed as the processors FSB)
2x 160gb HD's in RAID0 for games.
1x 1tb HD for data

dvd drive with litescribe (i hate writing labels)

i know i've left out a fair bit here on detail. So i'll just be asking a few random questions.

1: i'm most definatly going to be goin SLi i can't really be swayed on that, anyone know what the best graphics cards might be for this. (i'm aiming for a total cost on the system to be around £1000, originally i said 2x9600gt's, people said no, but never said why not.)

2: Which company is good for graphics cards / mobo's atm. (i've been out of the game for a while now)

3: any other recomendations (i already have an arctic square cooler for the quad, and i'm going to be using my x-fi xtreme gamer sound card soon as i remember where i put it)

Any helpful posts appreciated.

------ edit -------

lol after looking around online i may just end up using my old 7900gto's in SLi. Damn that was a fine card for an SLi rig, too bad my SLi mobo blew. least the cards are fine... (i hope)

After looking around i've actually caught on that the 9000series is just a less power consuming version of the 8000 series with a higher price tag. and considering that my 7900 kept up fairly well with the 8series cards (a friend had an 8800 640mb card when they were newish and there was maybe a difference of 50 in our 3d mark scores... and mine was the higher one when i had SLi working. Dispite having a worse CPU and RAM)

Bah i've convinced myself to re-use my old card now

pingwing · 5 May 2008 at 03:18

YAY, i love my 7800gt

its all about hanging in there till something UBER amazing is released.
You so want an E8400 though for gaming, as the usual games arnt designed for quads yet argument comes out, and its clocked at 3ghz which is a pretty fun place to start overclocking...

I would recomend 2x 2gig sticks of ram over 4x 1 gig sticks just as it looks cooler and leaves the door open for 8 gig or ram one day (something we all will go for....)

Other than that your one lucky git (i mean guy)

PhoenixUK · 5 May 2008 at 04:35

I dont think you understand the FSB speed correctly.
You get your CPU fsb simply by dividing the rated fsb by 4 for core2duo which gives you 1066/4= 266mhz, while the PC6400 memory is running at 400mhz.

This already gives you a lot of headroom for this CPU.
Just setting it to 400x9 will give you 3.6ghz with memory on stock, which you probably wont get unless you got some pro cooling and get good chip.

And good 6400 memory tweaks easly to 450+ mhz which is 450x9= 4.05ghz.

I don't see any point in getting memory which you wont use and will even need to underclock.

-------------------------
SLI is a waste, no one of current and soon incoming games use the newest graphics yet anyways. Unless you like benchmark scores, then I guess get something from the QX series , OC it to 4,5ghz, get 8gb ddr3 and 9800gtx in sli ;p.
------------------------
And quad for just gaming is such a waste, get e8400/8500 it will do better.

wowfood · 6 May 2008 at 00:04

so your saying that it'd be better to stick with the 800mhz memory over the 1066mhz?

And i think i have a pretty good cooling solution, Before my upgrade i decided i would overclock my current processor so i bought myself a new fan for it. Little did i know that Assrock can't even make is so as you can attack a non-stock fan onto their mobo's.

So right now i've got one of the shiney Asus Arctic squares sitting around doing nothing.

-----edit----------

ok i ordered the stuff now, basically here's what i've got

mobo: Asus striker II (ddr2 version) with the 780i chipset.
proc: q6600 (i have an arctic square cooler for it, so that should overclock nicely)
RAM: DDR2 800mhz CAS4
Graphics: I'm reusing my old 7900gto's its still one hell of a card imo. (and i have 2 already so may as well SLi them. heck, if i can track down a third one for cheap i may be able to test 3way sli. although tbh 3 in computers doesn't seem good to me)
HDD: i've gotten 2x500gb drives with 32mb of cache for raid0 and a 1tb drive for storage. gonna use the raid for the OS and games, so i don't lose data if i have to reformat.
Litescribe DVD RW drive,
Thermaltake Armor case
and an 800w PSU (can't be bothered to backtrack which brand i went with on this i know it was a good one, thats all i remember)

Soon as something with a big improvement over the 8800gtx's comes out i'll upgrade again, (well not AS soon as, i'll probably wait a month or so first for a price drop when the decent version comes out but you know what i mean)

I'll admit right now, the bottleneck on the system i'm putting together will be graphics since i'm on the 7900's BUT like i said it was a damn fine card and it should handle itself perfectly fine in todays market, (before when my cpu was the bottleneck i was still getting over 8000 on 3dmark tests purely because of the graphics. The cpu test tended to lower my score... a lot)