# What to upgrade?



## kellottajaFIN (Dec 10, 2010)

Yeah, I think I should make some upgrades to my gaming rig.. What do u people recommend?  Now it has:

Lapped Intel C2D E6400 @ 2.75GHz (hits 3.5GHz easily, but not with this motherboard..)
Asus P5KPL-AM EPU (G31, LGA775, 2xDDR2 slots, PCIE x16 1.1 etc..)
2x2GB Kingston HyperX DDR2 1066MHz
Sapphire Radeon HD4850 512MB @ 750/1031 + AC Accelero S1 rev2 cooler
320GB SATA2 HD + 80GB SATA 2.5" HD (for music) + 1TB iOmega external HD
AOpen PATA dvd+/-rw drive
Antec 900 with 4 cathodes and good ventilation
Hec 300W PSU (heh, this one has run a oc'd HD3870X2 with no problems )
Hyundai 17" TFT (no need to change, this is good for me )
Win7 Ultimate 64-bit

Don't need new speakers, mouse or kb... These are ok 

But I would want some recommends from people 


Sorry for my bad english


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2010)

at least a new psu, look at corasirs offereings


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 10, 2010)

No sense of it if you're not willing to upgrade your display.


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## Crap Daddy (Dec 10, 2010)

It's hard with what you have there to think at one specific component. I personally wouldn't put any more money into that configuration but then again a new competitive biuld will get you to at least around 800 Euro. If you still want to game on that system you need a new GPU (maybe 6850or GTX460 1GB) and definitely a better PSU.


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## Pembo210 (Dec 10, 2010)

Have you ever used a RAID setup?


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## Josh154 (Dec 10, 2010)

Crap Daddy said:


> It's hard with what you have there to think at one specific component. I personally wouldn't put any more money into that configuration but then again a new competitive biuld will get you to at least around 800 Euro. If you still want to game on that system you need a new GPU (maybe 6850or GTX460 1GB) and definitely a better PSU.



His 4850 is fine with that res on the monitor.

OP i would pick up a new 775 mobo and a c2q. Depending on your budget you can find a p5n-d for around 50 and a q6600 for around 100. Or if you wanted to have a amazing skt 775 platform a ud3p would be sweet with a q9550. It all depends on your budget though.

EDIT: and a new psu with any of these upgrades.


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 10, 2010)

Pembo210 said:


> Have you ever used a RAID setup?



No, I haven't. This mobo doesn't even support it...

Hmm, no sense if not buying a new display? Myself I have thought, that I should get a used quad-core CPU first... Playin' GTA IV sometimes...  Better ideas on u guys? I'm sure that quad-core would still run on this PSU with this configuration, as this PSU had run HD3870X2 @ 900/1000 with no problems


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 10, 2010)

Josh154 said:


> His 4850 is fine with that res on the monitor.
> 
> OP i would pick up a new 775 mobo and a c2q. Depending on your budget you can find a p5n-d for around 50 and a q6600 for around 100. Or if you wanted to have a amazing skt 775 platform a ud3p would be sweet with a q9550. It all depends on your budget though.
> 
> EDIT: and a new psu with any of these upgrades.



Hmm, thought about something like that. An used P35/X38/P45 mobo & Q6600 is something that should be fine..?


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## Crap Daddy (Dec 10, 2010)

yes but the again you will need a better GPU (GTA4 needs that besides the four cores...). Oh, and the PSU...


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## Josh154 (Dec 10, 2010)

kellottajaFIN said:


> Hmm, thought about something like that. An used P35/X38/P45 mobo & Q6600 is something that should be fine..?



Yeah im running on a q6600 and a 750i chipset. The 750i isn't known for it's high OC capability's with C2q's but i have mine clocked to 3.6. I was running only 1 8800gts for a while and i think your 4850 is equal to it or better and i could pretty much run most stuff at 1920x1080 pretty easily. I could play bc2 at low setting 1920x1080 at 60fps or i could run medium pretty easily too. I just upgraded to SLI yesterday and noticed a pretty big performance difference.

Honestly id just get a used q6600 and a better board P45 chipset's are where it's at and then you can Crossifre later on if needed.

You might be able to still run that psu on the q6600 and board but why risk it? You would be getting a new board that is a pretty stinkin good board and a q6600. If your PSU goes bad, boom it could take your mobo out too beings that its a crappy PSU. So you could spend like 50-70 bucks on a new psu that will run your rig fine and won't take out your components


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## Munki (Dec 10, 2010)

Definitely your PSU at the very minimum.


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 10, 2010)

Josh154 said:


> Yeah im running on a q6600 and a 750i chipset. The 750i isn't known for it's high OC capability's with C2q's but i have mine clocked to 3.6. I was running only 1 8800gts for a while and i think your 4850 is equal to it or better and i could pretty much run most stuff at 1920x1080 pretty easily. I could play bc2 at low setting 1920x1080 at 60fps or i could run medium pretty easily too. I just upgraded to SLI yesterday and noticed a pretty big performance difference.
> 
> Honestly id just get a used q6600 and a better board P45 chipset's are where it's at and then you can Crossifre later on if needed.
> 
> You might be able to still run that psu on the q6600 and board but why risk it? You would be getting a new board that is a pretty stinkin good board and a q6600. If your PSU goes bad, boom it could take your mobo out too beings that its a crappy PSU. So you could spend like 50-70 bucks on a new psu that will run your rig fine and won't take out your components


Alrighty.. So, you're saying, that P45 mobo, Q6600 or other quad-core and new psu? Well, that sounds ok.. 


...maybe later another 4GB RAM and another Radeon HD4850, those are cheap nowadays 


btw, I oc'd this E6400 to 3.5GHz with a nF650i SLI mobo (MSI P6N SLI Platinum), but it broke up when I was setting up SLI (GF8800 GTS 320 & 640MB)


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2010)

I have a p45 and a  q6600 and its grand


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## MxPhenom 216 (Dec 10, 2010)

Id get a Monitor an power supply right now

Then when amd releases their 6950 and 6970 then id get a either a new nvidia card for ati card


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## NdMk2o1o (Dec 10, 2010)

kellottajaFIN said:


> Yeah, I think I should make some upgrades to my gaming rig.. What do u people recommend?  Now it has:
> 
> Lapped Intel C2D E6400 @ 2.75GHz (hits 3.5GHz easily, but not with this motherboard..)
> Asus P5KPL-AM EPU (G31, LGA775, 2xDDR2 slots, PCIE x16 1.1 etc..)
> ...



Mobo, CPU, RAM and PSU the latter first!!


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## Josh154 (Dec 10, 2010)

kellottajaFIN said:


> Alrighty.. So, you're saying, that P45 mobo, Q6600 or other quad-core and new psu? Well, that sounds ok..
> 
> 
> ...maybe later another 4GB RAM and another Radeon HD4850, those are cheap nowadays
> ...



Yeah if you get a p45 board you can crossfire on the ud3p and some other ones. So adding another 4850 for cheap wouldn't be bad either. 4 gigs of ram is plenty right now man don't bother with that.

Just get a ep45-ud3p and grab a intel c2q. Come ask us for one's your looking at and wether its a good buy or not.


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## Fourstaff (Dec 10, 2010)

1 more vote for Quad core! You will feel this difference the most, and then upgrade your graphics card when you are going for a better monitor.


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## Josh154 (Dec 10, 2010)

Fourstaff said:


> 1 more vote for Quad core! You will feel this difference the most, and then upgrade your graphics card when you are going for a better monitor.



Exactly! Cause if he gets new gpu's and is still running the c2d he's gonna run into bottlenecking and at low res its more cpu dependent anyways.


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 10, 2010)

You said existing build. If going new mobo/cpu/ram, make it worthwhile. Core ixx or am3.


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 11, 2010)

Hmm... So you guys are saying that I should move to ddr3..? Wouldn't Phenom II X4/X6 (or X2 @ X4) be ok with ddr2 mobo? With CF support of course 

Anyway, I had been thinking all the recommendations that you all have given, and thought something like this...

Option 1:

An used X38 or P45 motherboard with DDR2 support
Q6600 or Q9xx0 -processor
Another 4 GBytes of DDR2-1066
Another HD4850 to Crossfire
Corsair's cheap PSU (450+ Watts)

Option 2:

AM2+ motherboard with DDR2 & Crossfire support
Phenom X2 555 BE or X4 9x5BE (model depends of budget... i'm a poor guy )
Another 4GBytes of DDR2-1066
Another HD4850 to Crossfire
Corsair's cheap PSU (450+ Watts)


Or something else? Just wouldn't like to sell these DDR2 sticks and get DDR3... :/


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## micropage7 (Dec 11, 2010)

Fourstaff said:


> 1 more vote for Quad core! You will feel this difference the most, and then upgrade your graphics card when you are going for a better monitor.



quad core is good but most of apps just utilize 2 of them, quad core is nice if you plan to get high end system
i guess you need to upgrade graphic card and psu, the rest just leave it, if you still have spare money you could upgrade the monitor to 19 inch or larger for better gaming


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 11, 2010)

micropage7 said:


> quad core is good but most of apps just utilize 2 of them, quad core is nice if you plan to get high end system
> i guess you need to upgrade graphic card and psu, the rest just leave it, if you still have spare money you could upgrade the monitor to 19 inch or larger for better gaming



But my CPU would be an insane bottleneck for better GPU than this overclocked HD4850..? 

Anyway, one friend from irc is selling me an Antec NeoHE 430W PSU at 15 euros, and I think that it's a wonderful deal 


...and I'm going to buy  a GeForce 7800GS AGP from other friend to rig 2


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## micropage7 (Dec 11, 2010)

kellottajaFIN said:


> But my CPU would be an insane bottleneck for better GPU than this overclocked HD4850..?



yeah, quad core will give you much power but it wont utilize 100%, but if you want to run your rig on the max it could be considered
if you need power much and want to avoid bottle neck take quad core, if you on the middle take dual core


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 11, 2010)

kellottajaFIN said:


> Hmm... So you guys are saying that I should move to ddr3..? Wouldn't Phenom II X4/X6 (or X2 @ X4) be ok with ddr2 mobo? With CF support of course
> 
> Anyway, I had been thinking all the recommendations that you all have given, and thought something like this...
> 
> ...



Crossfire would go to waste at your resolution. I was giving it some thought over the past day or so:

Keep existing
Upgrade GPU (GTX460 or above)
Upgrade PSU (Branded 400W or above)
Upgrade display(Minimum 1680x1050 res)

Also is this upgrade you are doing strictly for gaming? Or are there other reasons behind it?

@micropage7

Athlon II X3 4x5's are pretty damn nice for the price. You might even get lucky and get it to unlock to a quad.


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 11, 2010)

JrRacinFan said:


> Crossfire would go to waste at your resolution. I was giving it some thought over the past day or so:
> 
> Keep existing
> Upgrade GPU (GTX460 or above)
> ...



Even if I would play games with full details on this resolution? Would still HD4850-Crossfire be waste? :S Those cards are cheap when buy as used nowadays, and it would give some performance boost..? You're saying that I should keep this crap mobo and have E6400 with slow clocks? This just won't go any further than 8x344, all tricks tried and FSB won't go any further.. With MSI P6N SLI Platinum, I ran SuperPI 8M and other benchmarks with 3.5GHz clockspeed on this CPU 

But you mentioned AII X3... Would that be ok at unlocked? If it doesn't unlock, i suppose it still take some oc easily?


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 11, 2010)

kellottajaFIN said:


> Even if I would play games with full details on this resolution? Would still HD4850-Crossfire be waste? :S Those cards are cheap when buy as used nowadays, and it would give some performance boost..? You're saying that I should keep this crap mobo and have E6400 with slow clocks? This just won't go any further than 8x344, all tricks tried and FSB won't go any further.. With MSI P6N SLI Platinum, I ran SuperPI 8M and other benchmarks with 3.5GHz clockspeed on this CPU
> 
> But you mentioned AII X3... Would that be ok at unlocked? If it doesn't unlock, i suppose it still take some oc easily?



I foresee the only thing the 2nd 4850 would do would be add AA. I will admit in my own personal use going from a 4870 to a gtx460 proved like a night and day experience, at least a good 75% bump in all my games fps and right now I am maxing everything with full AA @ 1600x900 and it looks good. 


Even if the X3 doesn't unlock you would still have a good overclocking chip and 3 cores. Also you would be stepping into base clock architecture instead of FSB. It is a touch different.

All in all what I am trying to say is this, step away from s775 if you got the money to do it.


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 11, 2010)

JrRacinFan said:


> I foresee the only thing the 2nd 4850 would do would be add AA. I will admit in my own personal use going from a 4870 to a gtx460 proved like a night and day experience, at least a good 75% bump in all my games fps and right now I am maxing everything with full AA @ 1600x900 and it looks good.
> 
> 
> Even if the X3 doesn't unlock you would still have a good overclocking chip and 3 cores. Also you would be stepping into base clock architecture instead of FSB. It is a touch different.
> ...



Hmm. Well, I'd would get an AM2+ mobo (I want to keep these DDR2s ) and Athlon II X3? Wouldn't Phenom II X2 be ok? Well, of course it is sure that cores can be unlocked, but it isn't sure that they work... Athlon would have at least three cores already... What would be a good and cheap mobo with 4x DDR2 slots, CF support and core unlocking possibility? I want to add another HD4850 also, at least I can add a little AA without FPS drop as you said


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## Josh154 (Dec 11, 2010)

Hmm.. well idk man i love my q6600. Skt 775 is still the most used skt out there today and since you still want to run ddr2 it makes no sense to go am2+/am3. Honestly i can max out bc2 1920x1080 16xAA and 16xAF in 8800gts sli and a q6600 at 3.6. I can run metro but nothing spectcular.

I love intel over amd, and if you got a p45-ud3p and you could somehow get a q9450, 9550 or 9650 those chips are just as fast as i7's gaming wise.

Their really is no difference between ddr2 and ddr3 gaming wise. Shoot im plenty happy with a 65nm quad and 4gig ddr. I don't need anymore.

4850 crossfire is very good thats why i mentioned a ud3p. You can crossfire in the future so say you sold your current mobo and chip, you could just grab a ud3p and quad right now, then later on when you get a better display that has higher res adding another 4850 is easy. It's not too expensive of a upgrade and you can upgrade when you need it.

A 460 at your res would be overkill IMHO.

It's tough when you got a few guys tellin you what they would do i know how it is i had this problem building my system. My first system was a athlon x3 that unlocked to a phenom quad with a 4850 but i sold that. I made the switch to intel and i didn't want to spend anymore than i did on my amd system and thats why i got a q6600 and i actually paid $25 for my mobo  So thats how i could afford 8800gts sli.


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 11, 2010)

Josh154 said:


> Hmm.. well idk man i love my q6600. Skt 775 is still the most used skt out there today and since you still want to run ddr2 it makes no sense to go am2+/am3. Honestly i can max out bc2 1920x1080 16xAA and 16xAF in 8800gts sli and a q6600 at 3.6. I can run metro but nothing spectcular.
> 
> I love intel over amd, and if you got a p45-ud3p and you could somehow get a q9450, 9550 or 9650 those chips are just as fast as i7's gaming wise.
> 
> ...



I understand exactly what you're saying! My point is why invest into s775? With it's FSB architecture that's out of date and no longer having new chips coming out.  Granted I do like your rig ALOT (Basically my old setup but instead an e5200 @ 4.2Ghz daily)! Also sometimes it's good to overkill just as long as you don't spend an excrutiating amount of funds for it, meaning you know exactly that you're going to be doing another upgrade in the near future that revolves around the current upgrade. I mean there's horribly overdoing it(Intel 980X when you all you do is websurf only) and there's overkill(GTX570 @ 1280x720). Also a 460 would be a touch overdoing it, I agree there but not too too horrible, maybe one of those new 1GB SE's would work out really really well.


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## Josh154 (Dec 11, 2010)

JrRacinFan said:


> I understand exactly what you're saying! My point is why invest into s775? With it's FSB architecture that's out of date and no longer having new chips coming out.  Granted I do like your rig ALOT (Basically my old setup but instead an e5200 @ 4.2Ghz daily)! Also sometimes it's good to overkill just as long as you don't spend an excrutiating amount of funds for it, meaning you know exactly that you're going to be doing another upgrade in the near future that revolves around the current upgrade. I mean there's horribly overdoing it(Intel 980X when you all you do is websurf only) and there's overkill(GTX570 @ 1280x720). Also a 460 would be a touch overdoing it, I agree there but not too too horrible, maybe one of those new 1GB SE's would work out really really well.



Yeah true but at lower res isn't it more cpu intensive? I used to run a 4850 at 1600x900 and it was plenty. More and more games are starting to be optimized for quad cores and well i think a quad core would be a good benefit and when he does need more gpu powa just add another 4850!


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 11, 2010)

Josh154 said:


> Yeah true but at lower res isn't it more cpu intensive?



That's incorrect. CPU is just as important at higher resolutions. Just at higher resolutions more work is loaded to the GPU and is more balanced.


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## Josh154 (Dec 11, 2010)

Yeah i meant like doesn't a lower res not really use as much gpu power?

EDIT: So say a lower res is less gpu dependent and games are being more optimized for quad cores. At his lower res i think he would notice a larger difference by upgrading to a quad than a different gpu because at his res it doesn't really tax the gpu as much. Now when he plays a intensive game using a quad he will see better results. Therefore when he is playing at a higher res he can easily add another 4850 for crossfire or go all out with a different gpu and not have to worry about any bottlenecking and being much more futerproof.


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 24, 2010)

Hmm... This machine runs also Crysis Warhead well with gamer preset, effects with enthusiast settings  Maybe I just get a better CPU..


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## Jamborhgini313 (Dec 24, 2010)

Just save up for a Sandy Bridge next year


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 24, 2010)

Jamborhgini313 said:


> Just save up for a Sandy Bridge next year



Won't need... My HD4850 would be a bad bottleneck. And I don't wan't to change to DDR3 yet because I have ok OC-ddr2's...


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## Jamborhgini313 (Dec 24, 2010)

How is a gpu gonna bottleneck a CPU? And it doesn't really matter you have a 17 inch monitor and the 4850 is plenty


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## kellottajaFIN (Dec 25, 2010)

Jamborhgini313 said:


> How is a gpu gonna bottleneck a CPU? And it doesn't really matter you have a 17 inch monitor and the 4850 is plenty



I'm saying that Sandy Bridge's speed would be waste in games with this HD4850, if I keep this card then a slower CPU will be enough... C2Q or Phenom II/Athlon II X4 with ddr2...?


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## ShiBDiB (Dec 25, 2010)

PSU -> Monitor -> then GPU/CPU

If you dont take that advice then you shouldnt be on this forum.


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## Jamborhgini313 (Dec 25, 2010)

kellottajaFIN said:


> I'm saying that Sandy Bridge's speed would be waste in games with this HD4850, if I keep this card then a slower CPU will be enough... C2Q or Phenom II/Athlon II X4 with ddr2...?



Definately go with phenom 2 but your gonna have to replace your mobo and PSU.

BTW Merry Christmas


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## silkstone (Dec 25, 2010)

I vote Mobo and CPU, but it seems like a waste going for another socket 775. If you got the cash, then go i7 and upgrade your gpu later. The 4850 is still pretty strong at the resolutions you will be playing at.


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