What to upgrade?

Scon · 17 Jul 2010 at 10:20

Specs

Athlon 620 @3.6 (Quad Core)
Asus M4A78-E
2x2 GB Corsair DDR2 1066
Saphire 5830
Corsair TX 650
Corsair Obsidian 800D
Corsair H-50
640GB WD HDD

I am looking to spend around £300, but that could be raised higher by selling parts, E.G, selling the 5830 for £120, and then having £420.

What part/s would you upgrade, i have a few ideas, but would like some second opinions.

Uses of machine;

Gaming
Folding (gone off a bit since i got the 5830 for obvious reasons, but would like to get back onto it.

Thankyou for reading.

alex24 · 17 Jul 2010 at 10:24

AMD X6 CPU (1055T), maybe another 5830 or sell and trade up to the 5850/5870? You could also consider the nvidia GTX460, but your motherboard doesn't do SLI I think, so it cuts down the upgrade options a little.

Scon · 17 Jul 2010 at 10:41

alexhull24 said:
AMD X6 CPU (1055T), maybe another 5830 or sell and trade up to the 5850/5870? You could also consider the nvidia GTX460, but your motherboard doesn't do SLI I think, so it cuts down the upgrade options a little.

Would the hexi core give that much advantage in gaming?

My MB does support X-fire, but the second card runs at x8 instead of x16, so I am reluctant to spend £150 on a GPU that cant be used to its full potential. Is upgrading from a 5830 to 5850 a worth while upgrade?

Sorry if it looks like i dismissed your thoughts, i didn't, just want to make i spend my money correctly!

Can my PSU even run 5830 x2?

mp260767 · 17 Jul 2010 at 10:46

how about an ssd for the boot drive.

does the 5830 run at the res you need for your gaming will the settings you want ?

Scon · 17 Jul 2010 at 10:51

mp260767 said:
how about an ssd for the boot drive.

I have been thinking about that, but will that only boost Boot times?

mp260767 said:
does the 5830 run at the res you need for your gaming will the settings you want ?

Well i play BFBC2, MW2, Arma OA, and soon to be Black ops, i play them at 1680x1050 but cannot play on full settings on BFBC2 or Arma.

olivier renault · 17 Jul 2010 at 11:12

burrell said:
Would the hexi core give that much advantage in gaming?

Not really. Especially when you have yours clocked at 3.6Ghz. I would not upgrade the CPU just yet. However, it depends if you do a lot of multitasking and multithreaded, computationally intensive parallel tasks. THat's the strength of the 1055T.

My MB does support X-fire, but the second card runs at x8 instead of x16, so I am reluctant to spend £150 on a GPU that cant be used to its full potential.

Would 8x vs 16x make a big difference on your system (I leave that to experts)?

burrell said:
I have been thinking about that, but will that only boost Boot times?

Not just boot times, but responsiveness of programs installed on the boot drive. Makes windows a lot 'quicker'. Photoshop, IE, Chrome, memory paging, even a few games if you have the capacity.

Scon · 17 Jul 2010 at 11:58

olivier renault said:
Not just boot times, but responsiveness of programs installed on the boot drive. Makes windows a lot 'quicker'. Photoshop, IE, Chrome, memory paging, even a few games if you have the capacity.

By "Quicker" you mean quicker load times? Or does the actual App/Game run any faster?

Cookeh · 17 Jul 2010 at 12:02

Just so you know, there is bugger all difference in running two cards in crossfire when one is at 16x and the other at 8x.

Someone had some benchies a few weeks back, Ill see if I can dig them up