what to buy (core components)

[trif]

Let me set the scene: i generally have 2 PCs on the go, a new gaming rig, and the old gaming rig, however the old one has died early leaving me with only 1 PC that i dont really wanna fill with crap as i wont be able to play my games, so to the specs:

the dead pc was was an old DDR AGP socket 939 board,
i've been left with a Corsair 400W CX PSU
500gb sata II HDD
(also 2gb of DDR ram and an ok AGP gfx card (Sapphire HD 2600XT 512MB GDDR3)

the gaming PC is as follows:
Corsair 520W HX Series Modular PSU - ATX12V v2.2 APFC
XFX 680I LT edition SLI Socket 775 Nvidia 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
2x Corsair 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4 Lifetime Warranty
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz (1333MHz) Socket 775 6MB L2 Cache OEM Processor
Gigabyte 8800GT 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card

results:

so far its been established its probably not worth trying to save the old system (i think the cpu will die getting it out, and socket939 boards with agp and ddr seem few and far between even on ebay so i'd probs sell the old ram and gfx)

the suggestion has been to get a cheap dual core system:
eg:
£50 cpu
£35 mobo
£70 gfx (or do i spend £110 to get another 8800gt i could SLI in the gaming PC to make it still useful when i by a Core i7 rig in a year) [or get a £200 gfx card for the gaming system to extend its life and use the old 8800gt in this system?]
(i have 2gb of ddr2-800 basically not being used by XP pro 32 bit in the gaming system i could use along with the 400w psu and 500gb hdd to make a system)

or do i get a Core i7 system for about 700-800 now? (would that cost about £500-600 in 7 months when i would normally buy a new system) would it still be good 3ish years from now?



basically how future proof is my current gaming system?[would a new GFX card / SLI extend its life much?]

if its still good i guess i get the cheap system with either a cheap [or swap out GFX card]

if its not much good would a core I7 system be a sensbile purchase now? or wait for i9 release and get that or a cheap i7 system further down the line?

(my gaming aims are currently modern warefare 2 and not much else tbh, if that helps guide ur suggestions)

edit: if i do get a cheap system now and an i7 mid next year my dad would love the cheap dual core system ^^

 

[Nocky24]

Let me set the scene: i generally have 2 PCs on the go, a new gaming rig, and the old gaming rig, however the old one has died early leaving me with only 1 PC that i dont really wanna fill with crap as i wont be able to play my games, so to the specs:

the dead pc was was an old DDR AGP socket 939 board,
i've been left with a Corsair 400W CX PSU
500gb sata II HDD
(also 2gb of DDR ram and an ok AGP gfx card (Sapphire HD 2600XT 512MB GDDR3)

the gaming PC is as follows:
Corsair 520W HX Series Modular PSU - ATX12V v2.2 APFC
XFX 680I LT edition SLI Socket 775 Nvidia 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
2x Corsair 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4 Lifetime Warranty
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz (1333MHz) Socket 775 6MB L2 Cache OEM Processor
Gigabyte 8800GT 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card

results:

so far its been established its probably not worth trying to save the old system (i think the cpu will die getting it out, and socket939 boards with agp and ddr seem few and far between even on ebay so i'd probs sell the old ram and gfx)

the suggestion has been to get a cheap dual core system:
eg:
£50 cpu
£35 mobo
£70 gfx (or do i spend £110 to get another 8800gt i could SLI in the gaming PC to make it still useful when i by a Core i7 rig in a year) [or get a £200 gfx card for the gaming system to extend its life and use the old 8800gt in this system?]
(i have 2gb of ddr2-800 basically not being used by XP pro 32 bit in the gaming system i could use along with the 400w psu and 500gb hdd to make a system)

or do i get a Core i7 system for about 700-800 now? (would that cost about £500-600 in 7 months when i would normally buy a new system) would it still be good 3ish years from now?



basically how future proof is my current gaming system?[would a new GFX card / SLI extend its life much?]

if its still good i guess i get the cheap system with either a cheap [or swap out GFX card]

if its not much good would a core I7 system be a sensbile purchase now? or wait for i9 release and get that or a cheap i7 system further down the line?

(my gaming aims are currently modern warefare 2 and not much else tbh, if that helps guide ur suggestions)

edit: if i do get a cheap system now and an i7 mid next year my dad would love the cheap dual core system ^^

The E8400 is still a very good cpu and start overclocking it now if you haven't already, so a good cooler would be top of the list providing your motherboard is good enough (unfortunately i've had no experience with that mobo so its worth checking). Also you say you want to play the new cod. Cod is far more gpu intensive than it is cpu intensive so i wouldn't worry about not having a quad at all, a 4890 seems to be a good choice right now and you'll get great fps with it- what res do you play at by the way? Sure an i7 is nice to have, but for just purely gaming you wont see the benfits over an E8400 at 4Ghz unless you're going sli/crossfire or play a lot of cpu intensive games that can fully utilise it like supcom or anno 1404 which i believe supports SMT.

Also as you've only got 2GB of ram it would be worth getting maybe 4GB of pc2-8500 and sell what you've got i think. Thats probably what i'd do, things will run a lot smoother then. Ideally you'd like a 64bit os like win7 (can't recommend it enough) to fully utilise your ram, but that all depends on your budget.

 

[trif]

so you reckon keep the current system and swap out the gfx to use in the old system?

could you suggest a specific 4890 (Make, RAM etc)?

also i have this cooler Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler
reckon i'd be safe getting it to 4ghz if the mobo can manage it?

the mobo doesn't seem to take over pc2-6400 ram

edit: also suggest specs for the cheap system?

eg £50-80 cpu and £30-40 mobo to put it on