What upgrade would give me the biggest boost?

Spike_UK · 5 Dec 2007 at 12:31

I'm at the stage where my machine, while still good, is in need of some TLC.

I'm currently running the following at stock speeds.

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
AMD64 4800+
2GB DDR RAM
nVidia 7800GTX (PCIe)
SATA HDD's (7200rpm I think)
600w PSU (I think)

I know I'd see a boost from going to DDR2, but that would mean a new motherboard and RAM. At the moment I can probably only afford to change one thing.

Is there one thing there which I could change and see a noticable gain?

thefishdude · 5 Dec 2007 at 12:40

hmm myabe going to a 3850 pro ? that would certainly help in games dont kowif you after all round performance increase thogfh rather than just games :d

semi-pro waster · 5 Dec 2007 at 12:42

What is your budget and what do you mainly use your PC for? Those are the most important things I can think of when determining what will benefit you most.

Spike_UK · 5 Dec 2007 at 12:42

It's for Games, I play World of Warcraft a lot and some of the higher instances are starting to make my machine chug (the Shade of Aran fight with the Blizzard....gah!).

Budget, hard to say, it's other half depending, not finacials. I'd say anything from £150-300 though.

nikebee · 5 Dec 2007 at 12:44

Firstly I'd say (that if your open to the idea, then) look at overclocking what you've got first to get a nice little boost in performance without spending any cash at all.

What sort of budget are we talking about here?

If your into your games and the budget is there, then I'd look at upgrading your graphics card.

Realistically there's still nothing wrong with the old 7800 range (despite sounding rather ancient now) but the 8800 cards give a pretty big boost in performance.

pastymuncher · 5 Dec 2007 at 12:45

Spike_UK said:
I'm at the stage where my machine, while still good, is in need of some TLC.

I'm currently running the following at stock speeds.

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
AMD64 4800+
2GB DDR RAM
nVidia 7800GTX (PCIe)
SATA HDD's (7200rpm I think)
600w PSU (I think)

I know I'd see a boost from going to DDR2, but that would mean a new motherboard and RAM. At the moment I can probably only afford to change one thing.

Is there one thing there which I could change and see a noticable gain?

You could get a decent boost by overclocking what you have. You have a decent mobo and cpu which should give you a good overclock. You may need to replace the cooler if you are using the stock AMD one. Aside from that then the next thing would be the graphics card. A 8800GT should see a significant boost.

Spike_UK · 5 Dec 2007 at 13:10

I'm using a Freezer64 with AS5 on the CPU, but I think I need to sort my case fans out before overclocking as my temps aren't really in a good state.

I get 52c while playing WoW (42c Inside Case).

nikebee · 5 Dec 2007 at 14:32

What case do you have?

A couple of decent 120mm fans should help a bunch.

Freezer64 is a brilliant cooler for its price, I used to have one on my old A46 build

Really there isn't anything that bad with the spec, fair enough it's showing it's age against the Quad Core, 4GB of ram 8800Ultra setups that some of us are lucky enough to own (as can be expected) - but a Dual Core, 2GB of ram, 7800GTX machine is still a good computer.

Personally I'd probably grab a new graphics card and then perhaps save up and build a new machine sometime next year.

As a relatively inexpensive and short term solution, buy a few decent case fans and try and sort out your case temps then do some overclocking to gain some performance for a only a few quid spent

Spike_UK · 5 Dec 2007 at 21:45

nikebee said:
What case do you have?

A couple of decent 120mm fans should help a bunch.

Freezer64 is a brilliant cooler for its price, I used to have one on my old A46 build

Really there isn't anything that bad with the spec, fair enough it's showing it's age against the Quad Core, 4GB of ram 8800Ultra setups that some of us are lucky enough to own (as can be expected) - but a Dual Core, 2GB of ram, 7800GTX machine is still a good computer.

Personally I'd probably grab a new graphics card and then perhaps save up and build a new machine sometime next year.

As a relatively inexpensive and short term solution, buy a few decent case fans and try and sort out your case temps then do some overclocking to gain some performance for a only a few quid spent

I've got a Coolermaster Cavalier 3. No idea what the fans are like though, it;s still using whatever came with the Case.

It's a nice case, but it doesn't really have that much room for fans. From what I can tell there's only really a 120mm exhaust and a 80mm intake. I put an extra intake on the side panel blowing directly over the CPU, but god knows if it helps.

Here's the case...http://www.coolermaster.com/products/product.php?act=detail&tbcate=17&id=71