What to do?

J-FRO

J-FRO

J-FRO

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2011
Posts
4,450
Location
London
So, come April I'm thinking of upgrading my rig (specs in sig).

I have only just however purchased my 5770 and OCZ 600W for this particular rig and would like to re-use them if possible.

What I'm not so sure about however, is whether I should bother re-using my Q6600 (it has been used for 3 years, albeit not OC'd at all!). Or, should I get a new i chip/sandybridge set up? The AMD route however is not out of the question, but it is something I've never used before.

I think my budget will be about £500 and so I'm looking to see whether it may be worth just keeping the Q6600, OC'ing it and perhaps running 5770 in crossfire instead.

Ideally I'll also be looking for at least a 1TB HDD, 4GB RAM will suffice as I'll invariably end up just re-isntalling my 32-bit windows 7 Ultimate. I've got 5.1 speakers so any mobo I get will hopefully support this to save me having to also get a sound card.

All thoughts and advice are very much welcomed, cheers.
 
For £500 you can get a SB i5 2500k set-up, which is stupidly fast - even more so when heavily overclocked.

What res do you game at? Because that will determine if you need a more powerful graphics card.

As for specs, I would wait until april as invariably prices will have fluctuated by then and there may even be some revised/new products out.
 
ok, first thing, dont xfire, its a lot of hassle, generates more heat than you want and isnt 100% supported in everything, better selling current card and putting that money towards a better one.
secondly, the Q6600 is a very good chip and will still hold its own in most, if not all modern games, if thats what you use the pc for. if you want a go at oc'in it then thats your best bet, see how you get on and then decide whether to jump ship and replace everything. if you are happy with the OC then possibly upgrade mobo to one that supports DDR3.
personally, do all the free/cheap options first, see how you feel and wait for prices to drop on the newer chips.
 
Well my monitor runs at 1680x1050 and I've never really tweaked it in game.

And that's been pretty much just for COD:4 so far.
 
J-FRO said:
Well my monitor runs at 1680x1050 and I've never really tweaked it in game.

And that's been pretty much just for COD:4 so far.
Click to expand...

what mobo do you have, and how advanced is the bios?
do you have stock intel cooler or some kind of aftermarket one?
is what you use the pc for now starting to show signs of slowness, or is it just an itch to make it better?
 
paradisiac said:
what mobo do you have, and how advanced is the bios?
do you have stock intel cooler or some kind of aftermarket one?
is what you use the pc for now starting to show signs of slowness, or is it just an itch to make it better?
Click to expand...

Looking at his sig its a Dell.

No hope in hell of overclocking, and no point spending £60 on a decent LGA775 overclocking board now.
 
I've got the standard Dell Mobo which has a restricted BIOS so OC'ing the 6600 is a no go. Partly the reason I want to upgrade. I think if I didn't have such restrictions I'd be more inclined to start playing on my PC as opposed to PS3 again.

Came with a stock cooler as well, no major signs of slowness as of yet. My HDD is my biggest concern when it comes to slowness atm. Whenever AVG runs it makes a hell of a racket, literally hearing it churning through the drive scanning it and that's a tad annoying.

Not to mention yeah there is a bit of an itch just to make it better as well. Pop's and I have a bit of a "my pc is better than yours" thing and so he does also need to be put in his place a little which should be hard as he uses an XPS laptop thats about 2 years old.
 
Cookeh said:
Looking at his sig its a Dell.

No hope in hell of overclocking, and no point spending £60 on a decent LGA775 overclocking board now.
Click to expand...

no point? i dont understand. why spend £500+ on a system if his current system does what they need now, so a £60 upgrade of mobo and £40ish for ram would then speed it up. i would rather spend £100 and have a system that does what i want with some room to spare, than £500+ on a system that doesnt even use half of it possability.
 
Cookeh;18462988 No hope in hell of overclocking said:
That's kind of what I was thinking. That £60 could be better spent making sure I get a decent mobo capable of taking two 5770's or towards a better CPU cooler or case.
Click to expand...
 
J-FRO said:
That's kind of what I was thinking. That £60 could be better spent making sure I get a decent mobo capable of taking two 5770's or towards a better CPU cooler or case.
Click to expand...

i really would reconsider the 2xHD5770 setup, i had it, it was awful. my 1xHD6850, albeit with lower benchmark scores, plays all the games the xfire setup did, with higher res, max settings, with no lag at all, the xfire setup did not.

if you have £500 burning a hole in your pocket, then for me, AMD would be a good option. i have had intel for the last 10years or so, and was pretty happy. until i got my i7 920 D0, BSOD after BSOD. and similar things happen to my friends new intel setups. maybe its just us, but i notice far more intel problems than amd on here, but maybe more people own intel. and with the knowledge when amd release a new chip it will pretty much fit your old mobo until you can afford to upgrade that too, can you say the same about intel?
 
paradisiac said:
no point? i dont understand. why spend £500+ on a system if his current system does what they need now, so a £60 upgrade of mobo and £40ish for ram would then speed it up. i would rather spend £100 and have a system that does what i want with some room to spare, than £500+ on a system that doesnt even use half of it possability.
Click to expand...

That socket is 3 gens BEHIND now.

My point is there is no point dropping £60 into a dead socket with no upgrade paths. A few months after spending that £60 he'll discover that the Q6600 can't cope anymore (its already beginning to slip - look at any modern benchmark) and he'll then have to upgrade anyway!

Do it once, do it correctly.
 
Yeah I was looking at AMD actually. I've pieced this together with the view that I've already got my GFX card and PSU:

newsetup.png
 
Cookeh said:
That socket is 3 gens BEHIND now.

A few months after spending that £60 he'll discover that the Q6600 can't cope anymore (its already beginning to slip - look at any modern benchmark) and he'll then have to upgrade anyway!
Click to expand...

i get that, but IF it is running what he needs now, nothing is going to be coming out in the next 12-18months software wise that would not run on an OC'd Q6600 surely. yeh he might not be able to wave his epeen around with high benchmark scores, but if it runs what he uses, then is that not enough?

do you say to the garage when your 10 year old car fails an mot on a bold tyre 'just scrap it i will buy a new car rather than spend a little fixing this up as the performance would be better' i know its different, but if it does its job, why spend more than you need to?
 
J-FRO said:
Yeah I was looking at AMD actually. I've pieced this together with the view that I've already got my GFX card and PSU:

newsetup.png
Click to expand...

the phenom X6 isnt much more, if you are looking for the future, plus when bulldozers come out then prices will drop, and again, if you are looking to the future, then wait for an AM3+ mobo, then you will always be able to upgrade cpu.
 
Cookeh said:
If you re-used your current HDD, and bought a lesser cooler (like the Arctic Cooler Freezer 13 - which will still cool it and allow full overclocking adequately) you could get a SB spec in there.

Comparison between X4 and i5 2500k
Click to expand...

J-FRO said:
My HDD is my biggest concern when it comes to slowness atm. Whenever AVG runs it makes a hell of a racket, literally hearing it churning through the drive scanning it and that's a tad annoying.
Click to expand...

dont think that is an option.
 
Depends entirely on your budget I'd say.

If you've got the cash, and are in a rush, go to Sandybridge.
If you've got the cash, and aren't in a rush, wait for Bulldozer (to see what it's like, and also to see what SB prices do).

If cash is tight, then I'd personally splash out £30 on a G31M-E2SL board (775, DDR2, mATX only, but a very good overclocker), and £40 on a cooler (many now have 1155 mountings, and is therefore not "lost" money) and see what you can get out of that chip.

So it's a £500 definite improvement vs. a £30 gamble effectively, all depends on your budget and needs.
 
Yeah I definitely need a new HDD. I could settle for 500-750GB as opposed to 1TB and lessen the cost of a CPU cooler though. Or scrap the SSD completely, but I'd like to have one for the fast boot up. Plus that'd really peeve pops having one.

That bench mark contrast of the X4 to the i5 is interesting though. I wonder how bulldozer will be in comparison. Also, with the X6, do many rigs actually even use the full 6 cores? And how many cores are the bulldozer chips going to have? Surely just for a bit of gaming I wont need more than 4 cores.
 
J-FRO said:
Yeah I definitely need a new HDD. I could settle for 500-750GB as opposed to 1TB and lessen the cost of a CPU cooler though. Or scrap the SSD completely, but I'd like to have one for the fast boot up. Plus that'd really peeve pops having one.

That bench mark contrast of the X4 to the i5 is interesting though. I wonder how bulldozer will be in comparison. Also, with the X6, do many rigs actually even use the full 6 cores? And how many cores are the bulldozer chips going to have? Surely just for a bit of gaming I wont need more than 4 cores.
Click to expand...

not sure about all of it but SSD seems pointless really as all it will do is improve the time from when you press the on button to when you can launch your game, with restricted size you wont run games off of it.
do games use 4 cores, no, not many, will they soon, probably. is it worth getting an X6 over an X4, no more than buying an X4 over a new mobo for your Q6600, why save a few pounds for something inferior. and if you multitask, you can, so i learnt yesturday, assign apps to different cores.
how many cores will bulldozer have, dont have a clue, but remember reading something about amd releasing a 16 core cpu, but might be wrong.

not sure why everyone push SB sooo much, maybe everyone loves intel, but is it worth the extra money for everyday use, not just waving your epeen in peoples faces?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom