Worth the upgrade?

Moothead2

Moothead2

Moothead2

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23 May 2011
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I'm getting that chronic upgrade itch but I'm not sure it's really worth spending ~£300 on the upgrade.

My current spec is in my sig and I'm thinking of upgrading to an i5 2500k Sandybridge, MSI/ASUS P67 Motherboard ~£100-£150 and XMS3 4GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz memory. I mainly use this as a gaming rig and a little bit of video editing but other than than that not much really although I want to try getting into photoshop.

If I upgrade I can always give my current Mobo/CPU/RAM to my dad as I've already got a spare case and GPU so all he'll need is a PSU (Poor old thing is still using his P4 2.8GHz/1GB DDR 667Mhz/FX5500 GPU).

I was also wondering how worth it is to use an SSD for your Win7 boot + a couple of programs/games. I'm thinking of getting one but it still seems pretty steep to me price wise for such small capacities.

Thanks.
 
I recently went for an ASUS P8P67 with i5-2500k and 2x2GB XMS3 and it's working great. The forum seems to prefer the MSI P67 boards as more reliable though, I think this is the favourite. MSI P67A-GD65 Intel P67 (socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION **

I also got this SSD and the load times of Windows and Black Ops have reduced dramatically. OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive

I went from a ASUS P5B deluxe with an OCed E8400 so the difference is pretty large for me, the extra cores are starting to make a real difference in games now.
 
I would think you x4 940 would do the job nicely still. If you are looking for a replacement and flog your Phenom to your dad, the 2500K is the best option right now. If you just want an upgrade, imo, not worth the hassle.

As for a SSD, I just would never go back to hard drives for OS and programs. So imo, worth it. A vertex 3 sub £100 is a good buy, unless you can find a Vertex under £65 somewhere.
 
Agree with olivier renault. You've got a pretty reasonable overclock on your 940. What games are struggling with your current setup? What resolution are you gaming at?

+1 for an SSD.
 
Last edited:
shadow_boxer said:
Agree with Oliver. You've got a pretty reasonable overclock on your 940. What games are struggling with your current setup? What resolution are you gaming at?

+1 for an SSD.
Click to expand...

None really :D and I game at 1680x1050 so not the highest res. I guess I'll wait until this time next year when the next line of processors is out or whatever then.

About the SSD; what do you reckon is the best sized SSD for running Windows 7 64bit off of and maybe a couple of games?

Thanks.
 
At that resolution you should be fine with your current setup for a while yet, particularly as your not in any rush or desperate to upgrade. Depends I guess on how urgently your Dad's system need upgrading. Given that it doesn't need to be immediately you may as well wait for Bulldozer or even Ivybridge from Intel. As for size if ssd, most say the biggest you can afford. 60GB should be your bare minimum I would say.
 
Yeah, no lower than 60GB. For reference, windows takes about 25-30GB (It's got loads of crap hanging around, like swap file which you can move to another drive, hibernation files, and winsrxs or whatever it's called).

If you keep your user folders tidy (my picture, my downloads, ect...), and move each application temps folders to the hard drives then it's fairly easy to maintain.

I'd read up on Win 7 'libraries' that baically makes it easier to manage folders away from a SSD. It's a sort of shortcut system.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/libraries

Windows is still crap at separating the OS from applications and then user data, but it's better than nothing.

With 60GB and good management, you have plenty of space for a few games. Ideally, 120GB, but yeah, £££.
 
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