Upgrade Advice:)

wij

wij

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Right, I built the rig that is in my signature getting on nearly 3 years ago and to be honest it has done pretty well up to now.

Starting to show its age in a lot of the newer games though so I think a new GFX card to start with then maybe look at moving on the CPU/Mobo/RAM etc. to an i7 rig or similar.

At the moment I'm mostly playing BF2:BC and have a 24" monitor so I need to know it can handle running stuff at 1920x1200.

Thinking about a 5870, probably one of the 2Gb versions, but just wanted some input from people on here. My last couple of builds have been nVidia cards but I'm not that bothered really, just want something fast and that will last a couple of years.

Have a budget of around £1k over the summer to spend on upgrades, and I think the GFX should be done first. I'm thinking around £300-400 on the GFX card and then that leaves around £600 for the rest of it.

PSU is a 650w Corsair one so hopefully that will be up to the job too.
 
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if you're not gonna be doing anything other than gaming there isn't really a huge need for an i7 so this lot should do you fine:

(providing you reuse case, psu and hdd's)

14999432.jpg



you could use the remaining £200 ish for a ssd
 

wij

wij

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Cheers, yes gaming is pretty much all this machine is used for, I have a Mac Pro and a MBP for real work ;)

Certainly plan on reusing the case, psu and drives (a pair of rather tasty Intel SSD's).

Would it be worth spending the extra bit of money one one of the 2Gb GFX cards?

Also any reason why not to go with 6GB for triple channel RAM in what you've recommended above? :)
 
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cos that's an i5 and p55 motherboard and they use dual channel ram, two ssd's eh..... nice!

erm no tbh is the answer to the graphics card unless you plan on going down the eyefinity route a 1gb card is enough for that res, although if you do want some extra oomph i'd get a 5970 with that remaining £500
 

wij

wij

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Okidokie :)

Yes, the SSD's were my Christmas present, have a the pair running in Raid0 as my system/apps drive and it's amasingly fast.

Will probably order the GFX card first then leave the rest for few weeks until I get paid again.
 
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Have you got that E6600 overclocked or is it running at stock? If it's running at stock get it clocked for a free boost (you will need a half decent cooler if you only have the stock Intel cooler). Most will hit 3.4-3.6Ghz with a bit of tweaking.

Another option would be to drop a quad core in your current rig. A second hand Q6600 would be £75-80 and will hit similar clocks to the E6600.

I really don't see any point in spending money on i5/i7 when they are both being killed off next year (1156 in Q1 and 1366 in Q3).
 
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Have you got that E6600 overclocked or is it running at stock? If it's running at stock get it clocked for a free boost (you will need a half decent cooler if you only have the stock Intel cooler). Most will hit 3.4-3.6Ghz with a bit of tweaking.

Another option would be to drop a quad core in your current rig. A second hand Q6600 would be £75-80 and will hit similar clocks to the E6600.

I really don't see any point in spending money on i5/i7 when they are both being killed off next year (1156 in Q1 and 1366 in Q3).

I would go with what he said, Q6600 + new GFX and just pocket the rest of the money seems best, theres not even much difference in gaming between i5 and q6600.
 

wij

wij

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Well new GFX card is in and thats made a noticeable difference to my FPS and general smoothness in BF2:BC :)

Think I may watch the MM and see if I can pick up a 2nd hand Q6600 or something and get one of them Corsair coolers mentioned above.

My E6600 is currently at 3.2Ghz running on just air cooling (got a fairly decent Noctua cooler on it).
 
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