Help me upgrade.

sepher

I'm planning to throw $500 USD at my current build, and would appreciate some suggestions on what I should upgrade and with what.

My current build: 

Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10K RPM (x2)

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Sound Card

OCZ Vista Upgrade 2 x 2GB  DDR800 RAM

BFG Tech GeForce 9800GX2

EVGA nForce 780i Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz

Vista 32-bit Premium

What's my weakest link? I'd assume still using a 32-bit OS, which I can remedy either through a new copy of Vista 64-bit or messin' around with the Windows 7 beta.

But is my processor itself not a bottleneck? Time to have more than two cores fially?

And are those 15k Velicoraptors that big an improvement over the old 10k Raptors?

And is DDR3 worth gettin' a new motherboard for, 'specially one that supports 12gigs of RAM or more since Windows 7 is supposed to capitalize on that towards the latter end of the year?

Any suggestions will be welcome.

Berek-Halfha

Hello sepher,

1) hard drives you are fine, no need to upgrade

2) soundcard you are fine, no need to upgrade

3) memory you are fine, no need to upgrade

4) video card you are fine, no need to upgrade...

... guess what, you don't need to upgrade . There are no weak links really. Your rig should be able to play anything and everything for awhile yet.

If you upgrade you will likely be disappointed, as you won't really notice much performance increase unless you strive to search for it (play Crysis at max settings on a 30" monitor, etc.).

In otherwords, save the money and wait for the summer/fall at least when the new generation cards come out that support DX11, DDR3 is cheaper, Core i7 CPUs are 2nd generation, etc.

hvc801

Noooooo need to upgrade..

Maybe to 64-bit OS, but thas all..

luckypotato

Id personally put 2 more G's of RAM and switch out the cpu for a Q6600 and OC it

 

thats just me tho

 

(oh and switch to 64bit windows7 once it comes out..that is.. if its any good, altho i heard that it is a big improvement over vista so far)

Cleffy

Yes your 2 year old processor is a bottle-neck.  So is your 32-bit system.  There is no such thing as a 15000RPM VelociRaptor drive.  15000RPM HDD require a RAID controller and 2 10k drives are good enough.

For processor I would recommend a Q9550 or better.

Calind0r

I would recommend updating to an E8400-8600 wolfdale and OCing with a nice cooler...Its easy on a good air cooler to hit 4ghz with those, and they will outperform anything but an i7 in gaming alone.

Your hard drives are fine, 15K are for servers, they have very fast transfer rates, but what makes the Raptor good for gaming, is its seek time...it is very fast, and that is what matters for gaming...you arent downloading or copying files when you game, you're trying to load them, and the faster your hard drive cna find them, the better performance you will get. If you really want to update your hard drive, you can look into a SSD (solid state disk), basically its just a big flash drive...it has extremely fast seek times, can load up Vista in like 7 second, cut down on game loading (which is really important for a MMO as you load things seamlessly). You can get a 64GB SSD for like $120 now, but it wouldnt really be that much of a gain over your Raptor.

 

Theres no real point to getting a Quad unless its an i7, the wolfdale is the best gaming processor out there short of one that runs like $300+, and its less than $200...and very, very good for OCing.

Your ram is fine, and DDR3 will be useless, unless again you have an i7...but an i7 would force you to get new ram, cpu and mobo..and basically be a whole new comp....More ram also isnt that great...the max I would go for in a PC for gaming is 4 gigs dual channel, or 6 gigs tri-channel. Sticks bigger than 2GB tend to cause lots of skips, and that much ram generally isnt good for gaming, its more for servers, or for heavy duty corporate machines that dont run games.

 

So my recommendation is just say an E8500 and a really nice CPU cooler, and OCing it...that and everything else will easily last you 2 years.

Respit

E8500 Wolfdale

64 bit OS

At least 4 gigs matched ram (a lot of games no likey 8 gigs)

If you really feel froggy, grab a SSD or 2.

Tykero

Originally posted by Respit


E8500 Wolfdale
64 bit OS
At least 4 gigs matched ram (a lot of games no likey 8 gigs)
If you really feel froggy, grab a SSD or 2.

 

This, pretty much.

 

Quad core processors are unnecessary at the moment in my opinion.

 

The Wolfdale Core2Duos are amazing. Fast, efficient, low heat. I'm using an e8400 myself. Your current processor is a very painful bottleneck, especially with a multi-GPU setup. They're the best bang-for-your-buck in your necessary operative power range.

 

Checklist:

1. e8400~e8600 Core2Duo processor.

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx

 

2. 64-bit OS

 

 

 

I would wait on any motherboard/memory upgrades at the moment. DDR3 is really developing now, but it's still fairly expensive, and it's best supported by motherboards that support Triple Channel, which are pretty much exclusively Corei7 boards I believe. Since it's still the "enthusiast"-grade technology, it's extremely expensive. Best wait for price drops. Lots of new stuff should be coming out later this year, so I would wait until then for major upgrades. The above are fairly minor and relatively inexpensive, and would certainly greatly improve your PC's performance in the meantime.