What should I upgrade first? Whole system?

[Cashman]

Hi guys,

I used to be well into my overclocking and gaming and I still enjoy the idea of it but gone are the days when I can justify spending £1000's each year on my PC.

I have had a Vapochill and then a Mach II GT and loved messing with £300 worth of BH-5 Ram but those days are the last I bothered upgrading from really.

For the past 4 years I have had a watercooled rig with a HE120.3.
AMD X2 4800+
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix PC4000
DFI Lanparty SLI-DR
8800GTS 640mb
74gb Raptor plus all the normal stuff and running XP.

I do like to play the odd game and I have a 22" widescreen Iiyama.

Basically.... what should I do?

Is it a new system that's required? Or just a new mobo, ram and cpu? of just gfx to get a decent gain?

Cheers for the help!

 

[ejr22]

Personally I would go with a new i7 or i5 build, with one of the new DirectX 11 cards - you will be amazed by the step-up in performance, not just in gaming either.

It won't be cheap but you could get away with spending less than £1000 now - as you have already got monitor, periphs and OS - and not have to spend again for 2, 3, maybe 4 years?

 

[Grimley]

Out of that lot I'd keep the 8800GTS & your Case & order this lot below. Stuck with AMD just to be familiar with what you already have. your old CPU should go for a good price on the MM.

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £136.99
(£119.12) £136.99
(£119.12)
Corsair HX 650W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650HXUK) Corsair HX 650W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650HXUK) £96.99
(£84.34) £96.99
(£84.34)
Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SNV125-S2/64GB) Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SNV125-S2/64GB) £92.99
(£80.86) £92.99
(£80.86)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail (Full Version) Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail (Full Version) £79.99
(£69.56) £79.99
(£69.56)
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £69.99
(£60.86) £69.99
(£60.86)
OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Series (OCZ2G8004GK) OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Series (OCZ2G8004GK) £61.99
(£53.90) £61.99
(£53.90)
Sub Total : £468.64
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £71.80
Total : £550.44

 

[Cashman]

that sounds good mate! Thank you!

Are the Intel CPU's back to being any good? I know that Intel have dominated since I had my new rig.

I have a LIan Li PC75 tower so I'm ok for case. I have an OCZ POwerstream 600w psu, that should still be ok do you think>?

What are these solid state hard drives like? Would you be using that for the system disk instead of my raptor? I assume solid state are VERY quick?

Cheers for all the help!

 

[Devrij]

SSD are indeed VERY quick, and yeah the done thing is to use them for the boot drive and use a slower 1Tb HDD for storage. Your PSU should be fine, unless you decide to do some crazy xfire setup. TBH, I'd put the SSD cash towards building an i5 or i7 rig and boot off your raptor.

 

[Cold Fusion]

I'd like to add that at 1680 x 1050 resolution a 8800GTS is going to start to struggle with new games.

Personally on a limited budget i'd go for a new ATI 5750 or 5770 which are all DX11 compliant and perform well with all current games at around £110-£140

Intel are ahead of AMD in terms of performance but the black addition X4's are really good value at the moment so its not a bad choice at all.