Opinions on the most noticeable component upgrade

555BUK · 14 Apr 2010 at 11:03

In recent years I have upgraded many PC components, many times. Some parts gave small gains, some larger.

My CPU History
Athlon XP 1800, Athlon XP 2500M, Athlon 64 3000, Athlon 64 X2 3200, AMD Opteron 165, Intel E6300, Intel E8400, Intel E8500 E0, Intel Q6600, Intel Q9450, Intel Q9550, Intel i7 920.

Graphics Cards
NVidia TI4200, ATI 9700Pro, ATI 9800Pro, NVidia 6800GT, ATI X800 XTPE, ATI X1950Pro, NVidia 8800GTS 320MB, NVIDIA 8800GT, NVidia 8800GTX, NVidia GTX260 192SP, ATI 4850, NVidia GTX260 216SP, NVidia GTX285, ATI 5870, ATI 5850 Crossfire, ATI 5850 Single (downgrade).

Motherboards
Lots and lots. From budget £35 boards to £260 i7 monsters.

Hard Disks
Started at 80GB and progressed all the way through to 1TB Samsung F3's in RAID0. Now Intel X25-M 80GB.

All of my CPU, Processor and Mobo upgrades have been incremental. Most upgrades have shown little noticeable performance gains, other than in benchmarks. 9700Pro and Intel 6300 gave what I would call memorable gains.

The same can be said for hard disks, up until I installed the Intel X25-M SSD. For me, this is the best upgrade I have ever made because it was instantly noticeable. Everything about Windows is faster, statup time has halved, apps open super quick, it all feels so instantaneous.

For me, the best system upgrade to spend your money on is a good SSD. What are your best single component upgrades?

Admiral Huddy · 14 Apr 2010 at 11:08

You have some mad upgrade paths

NVidia 8800GTS 320MB > NVIDIA 8800GT > NVidia 8800GTX ?????
Intel Q6600> Intel Q9450 > Intel Q9550 > Intel i7 920. ??????

I upgrade once every two years, giving me a notable performance boost and the best value for money.

The 8800 GTX was and still is the best single upgrade for me.

Ryan-3 · 14 Apr 2010 at 11:10

My best was a 8400GS>HD5770

From low on GTA IV with about 35fps to high with 50.

Though the Celeron M>Q6600 was good, but the change to my i7 was still quite abit of a difference to the old Q6600

UKDTweak · 14 Apr 2010 at 11:15

My G.Skill Falcon SSD, by far the biggest and most noteable performance improvement since it's addition to my system

cmndr_andi · 14 Apr 2010 at 11:18

Mine is probably 19in BenQ 4:3 monitor (1280x1024, TN) to Dell 2408WFP (1920x1200, S-PVA). I never realised there were so many colours before

MeMeMeMe · 14 Apr 2010 at 11:36

My best was
Single core Pentium-M 2.0Ghz + Geforce Go 7950 GTX laptop to the rig in my sig.
I have since added an OCZ Vertex SSD, but it's a distant second to that improvement!

illogik · 14 Apr 2010 at 11:42

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego to a Q6600@3Ghz

Liampope · 14 Apr 2010 at 12:11

Biggest gain for me will happen when I pick up my Ebay winnings on friday

. Athlon 64 3700/2GB/6800GT ==> i5 750/4GB/HD5850. Should be a fair performance increase!

However I doubt it will blow me away as much as when I saw Jedi Knight go from 320x240 software mode slideshow on a P100 to 800x600 Voodoo 2 awesomeness on a K6-2 350 :eek:

. But that wasn't technically an upgrade as it was my first own PC vs the old family PC at home.

FunnyKids · 14 Apr 2010 at 12:20

I tried to limit myself to 1 upgrade every 2 years, however whenever I feel like I have to wait for my PC, I begin to think of upgrade. So normally I do full upgrade every 2 years, and minor upgrade around every 6-8 months. In most case just Ram or CPU, I do not play game every much.

PhillyDee · 14 Apr 2010 at 12:37

My P4 megalaptop (Which I used to game on) to my E6600, 2Gb, 8800GTS.
Everything else has been little and often.

Even my 320Gb hard drive to my 150Gb Raptor was good!
Now running the same [email protected], 4Gb, 5850, 300gb VRaptor
I am still happy with how my E6600 performs!

pastymuncher · 14 Apr 2010 at 13:34

I think the biggest jump i made was from a Athlon XP2000+, 256mb ram, MX440 graphics card to a A64 3400+, 1GB ram (later 2GB) and a Asus 6800 Gamer Edition. I have had many a upgrade since but that was ther biggest.

555BUK · 14 Apr 2010 at 14:07

Admiral Huddy said:
You have some mad upgrade paths

I like to sell my bits whilst they are still worth some money. Many of my upgrades did not actually cost very much, and I like playing with things.

For example, I just built a new PC for the fun of it based upon a Gigabyte G31M-ESL2 and an Celeron E3300 (Wolfdale E8x00 with less cache). Overlocked to 4GHz with 4GB's of cheap DDR2 the thing absolutely flies. Makes me think my i7 920 was a waste of money

. At ~£70 new for the CPU and Mobo, this combo is pretty hard to beat, and will serve me as a low power FTP server once I have turned the clocks back down.

Playing Dirt2 @ 1920x1200 / full settings / 8xAA givea a constant 60FPS, the same as my i7 rig (single 5850 oc to 1000/1300 installed on both for testing). Will use the onboard G31's graphics for server.

Geckovich · 14 Apr 2010 at 14:17

1.8ghz athlon 64 with 512mb ddr1 to q6600 and 4gb ddr2 (with a pentium M laptop in the middle). The joys of getting a real job, extending budgets beyond pocket money and paper rounds!

Guest2 · 14 Apr 2010 at 14:17

NVidia 8800GTS 320MB > NVIDIA 8800GT > NVidia 8800GTX ?????
Intel Q6600> Intel Q9450 > Intel Q9550 > Intel i7 920. ??????

I know, a bit daft. I did something like this...

1mb onboard > 4mb matrox > 12mb voodoo 2 > Geforce 220 > X1800XT > 8800GT > 5770
P133 > K6 2 450 > Barton 2500 > Opteron 146 > X2 3800+ > Q6600

My biggest jump was to the Voodoo 2, either that or 1.2GB Quantum fireball hard drive to a 10.2GB beast. I remember being devistated when Atomic bomberman took up 530mb (about half) of my hard drive, just so i could play it without the CD! I uninstalled most of my programs so I could squeeze it on

iamtheoneneo · 14 Apr 2010 at 14:20

my best going from 6600 agp to a 8800gts lol.
and an athlon 1core to a q6600

oh and more recently 2gb > 4gb.

Fallen god · 14 Apr 2010 at 15:14

mine was P4 1.8, 256mb ram, intergarted GFX to E6600, 4gb ram, 8800gtx.