Your upgrade thoughts please O/C'ers

Skalaberg · 2 Sep 2009 at 20:58

Current system...

Asus P5N e SLI
Quad 9550
8800gtx
4 gig pc 6400 ddr2
Hyper type R 580w

The board i have only just runs the Q9550 at stock which has been fine over the last 9 months or so..however its time to think about upgrading my 8800gtx and mobo to see just how well this cpu clocks (Be a shame to run it at stock all its life).

I was thinking of the Asus p45 turbo as I have had good overall experience with Asus over the years but i'm not sure what to do about a power supply.

The hyper 580w I have now has served me well for a number of years but I notice that the newer boards now have a seperate 8 pin power slot near the cpu socket with this power supply does not have. Would i be better getting a new corsair 850w or lower perhaps.

I am thinking of waiting for a card a few weeks to see what happens when the new generation are released but am currently swaying towards the sapphire 4890 vapour x..or perhaps even crossfiring 2 hence why I am looking at 850w for power?

your thoughts and input would be appreciated.

Skal

95thrifles · 2 Sep 2009 at 21:03

750 will still be enough for 2 of them, that board should do nicely for clocking, but if youre thinking of 2 cards then an x48 might be better to save bottlenecking the gfx

Skalaberg · 2 Sep 2009 at 21:07

Thanks for the reply..i had thought about the x16 vs x8 crossfire issue but was under the impression the difference was hardly anything in terms of frame rates...also I may decide to just go straight for the new generation cards yet if the prices arent silly...I just cant help thinking 2 4890's in cross fire represent great performance for the price hence my consideration.

Damn upgrading has never been as hard as this before....bring back my dx 2 66 lol

95thrifles · 2 Sep 2009 at 21:10

its only really the 4890 and 4870x2 which get bottlenecked by the x8, all other cards are fine, it prob is small, but you can pick up the gigabyte X48 for under a ton, so worth doing imo

Skalaberg · 2 Sep 2009 at 21:19

Hmm..yes i see the gigabyte x48 board is only about a fiver more than the asus turbo....but i thought the P45 was the newer technology over the X48 and thus must be better?

:confused:

i dont suppose anyone out there already has the asus p45 turbo and 2 4890's crossfired do they?..how does it perform?

Namak · 2 Sep 2009 at 21:31

The x48 is the extreme enthusiast chip. In the same way that the x58 for i7's will have more multicard functionality than the p55s for the i5s due out soon. I have heard that the p45s overclock better than the x48s as well as a general rule.

Everything I have heard has said that there is pretty much no loss of performance though from splitting bandwidth on the p45 boards when running xfire. That would all be older information than the 4890 release though. I can understand xfiring 2 x 4870x2 might be make a difference as its effectively the same as running 4 cards.

As for the PSU I believe that the 8 pin CPU power connector is needed if heavily overclocking or running a high end very expensive i7 chip.