Worth the upgrade?

Associate
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10 Jan 2010
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By the end of the month I should have saved up £800, I want to upgrade my rig but not too sure what to choose.
My current setup is:

Q6600 @ 3.0GHZ
4GB DDR2 RAMAsus Motherboard
2 x 5850 CrossfireX
500GB Samsung Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive

I've currently selected 2 builds but don't know which one to choose from:

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail

Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard

OCZ Vertex 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1VTX60G)

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9)

CoolIT Eco A.L.C. High-Performance CPU Watercooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366)

Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ)

Xilence XPF120R Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan

Or

Intel Core i7 930 2.80GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard

BenQ G2410HD 23.6" Widescreen LCD Monitor

Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel (TR3X6G1600C9)

CoolIT Eco A.L.C. High-Performance CPU Watercooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366)

Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ)

Xilence XPF120R Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan


What do you think I should do then?

Thanks
Sam
 
Last edited:
Soldato
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Well your system looks good man The only thing you could try is OCin your Q6600 till like 3.4ghz, dont really see any reason for an upgrade. Also i cant see the builds you spec'd might just be me not sure.
 
Associate
OP
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Well here is my dilema, my VID on my Q6600 is 1.325 even though its a G0 stepping. So overclocking my Q6600 will be much harder I think :/

With the AMD build I can have a SSD too, or would the i7 be generally better anyway?
 
Associate
OP
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Ok thanks for the help, looks like I will be getting an i7 by the end of the month :D

Is Raid 0 faster than an SSD?

Thanks
Sam
 
Associate
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do you really need an i7? your 6600 is a perfectly good gaming CPU. unless you plan to do some sick encoding or stuff the 6600 is fine for gaming! the xfire 5850s will chew up all games, and youre only gonna be spending 800 quid on new hardware for the sake of spending 800 quid! a 2nd monitor and maybe a secondary 1tb storage drive is the most you need right now, an i7 setup is a waste of money if you only wanna game. Yes ok, 200 fps is bigger than 100 fps for example, but if you can only see 60 fps, what is the pont?
 
Man of Honour
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There is absolutely nothing wrong with what you already have. I take it the main use will be gaming in which case you will probably not notice much of a performance increase even with i7. By all means get the ssd and the watercooling kit and stick the kit on your Q6600 to get it clocked further. I had a high vid Q6600 yet it still hit 3.8Ghz. Vid is not the problem that a lot of people make it out to be.
 
Associate
OP
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Ok maybe I'll leave the i7 then. I been looking round on Ebay and found a Q9550 which would probably cost only £20 to £50 after I sell my Q6600. Hopefully I will be able to get this to 4.00ghz, do you feel this is a more sensible upgrade?

I will be getting a new moniter, SSD and hard drive also :)

Are the OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD's any good?
Sorry for all the questions but is it possible to use the SSD for windows 7 and raid 0 hard drives for general applications?

Thanks
Sam
 
Associate
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hmm if you are buying from the bay, then you really dont know what you are gonna be getting, a bit risky in my opinion. Personally i wouldnt ever buy overclockable components from the bay as they could have been previously OCed and damaged :S Therefore I would still suggest to keep the Q6600 rather than risk a 9550 from ebay?

As for the specific drive, i dont know; but you can do that with the SSD and raid 0. Putting W7 on the SSD will yield a nice increase in loading
 
Associate
OP
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However the one reason for my wanting to get rid of my Q6600 is because I can't overclock it that far unless I pump quite abit of voltage through it, my cpu cooler really struggles when I up the voltage :/

So I havent got much for choice unless I consider watercooling :/
 
Associate
OP
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I currently have the Thermalright True Black. No I feel I need to overclock because I seem to get really crap FPS compared to other results, this makes me feel that I am not getting the most out of my system.
 
Associate
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hmm well a q9550 would certainly improve things, but i guess it up to you if wanna risk buying it from ebay! would be a better idea to maybe see if u can pick it up new somewhere else? As far as getting crap fps, i guess it could be CPU related, but mostly its about GPU these days, something your xfire 5850s are definately not in short supply of!
 
Associate
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Between i7 and AMD I prefer I7 seen I am intel fanboy :D. Between i7 vs i5 I think i7 main have better potential to upgrade later, it worth the extra money.
 
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