sensible upgrades?

[Velpecula]

Thinking about upgrading some components. Money is not a big issue. Not that I'm rich, just don't have anyone but myself to answer to about where it goes.

Would any, or all, of these upgrades make much difference? I play FPS's (STALKER, Crysis, COD, soon FarCry2) at 1680x1050/22" LCD. Currently using XP. I have VISTA Home, but not installed. And I have a CORSAIR HX-620 PSU. I'm not interested in Crossfire or SLI.

Current: E6750 2.6 OC to 3.2 with stock cooling. I do plan on getting an ARTIC COOLING Freezer 7 PRO whether I upgrade or not.
Proposed: E8500 or E8600 and do some minor/simple OC. I don't chase benchmarks.

Current: Abit IP35PRO P35 Motherboard
Proposed: One of the P45 Motherboards

Current: 8800GT 512 MB
Proposed: 4870 1 Gb. I don't think a 280 would justify the price difference.

Currently using 2G of DDR2 and will probably upgrade to 4G. I'm not ready to go to DDR3 yet. And I know about the 32 bit memory limitation. If I go to VISTA, I may go to 64 bit at the same time.

For the most part, I'm happy with what I have. But I would like a little more eye candy and smoother performance. Upgrading one component may not make much difference, but doing all 3 might be worth it.

I'll probably make use of NEWEGG's 6 month " same as cash/no interest " deal.

All opinions are welcome. And thanks in advance.

 

[Proximon]

I think so. Some will argue that the processor upgrade won't give you too much, but that's more game dependent. If you play those shooters online on larger servers the extra processing is noticeable.

You should get the best cooler you can, regardless of how far you are going to OC.

http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

You didn't mention what power supply you are using.

Actually, with no crossfire and no DDR3, you can get by with a P43 board if you want. P45 might give you a sightly better build quality, but the chipsets are identical beyond those two things.

ASUS P5QL-E (P43)
or
ASUS P5Q -E (P45)
(basically a deluxe board without the deluxe price)

 

[Velpecula]

Proximon, thanks for the reply and the link to the coolers. I'll look them over.

I did mention the power supply, the CORSAIR HX-620.

And I hadn't considered the P43 at all. Thanks for that info.

I just play the games "single player", I don't play online at all.

 

[jpdykes]

+1 to processor cooler rather than stock for overclocking.

- I'm not aware of the relative performance difference P35 to P4x. I wouldn't be convinced to move up.
There seems no point moving to P43 from P35 it doesn't even give a second PCIe slot to play with. Surely the performance difference is going to be in the relm of a few percent.

- Upgrade the GPU, you'll see a good improvement there.

- I think there is very little difference running 2Gb to 4Gb of RAM on XP. (I didn't notice any.) Vista will make use of the extra - make sure to go to 64bit.

- For processor, you will see a small improvment in all probability - check the Tom's Charts for more info. You might see more benefit from a quad core chip.

I would definately upgrade graphics, I wouldn't be so convinced about processor and I'm against an upgrade to P4x motherboard. (Unless some proves a major gain!)

Jeremy

 

[dirtmountain]

I'll admit to being a cheap bastard, the upgrade i'd go with is the cooler, RAM on Vista 64 and the GPU HD4870.

 

[gators1223]

i would also stick with the current motherboard, because nahelm bards will start showing up probably within a month and it has a different socket so p45 doesn't have an upgrade path, as for using 4gb of ram just try to play Crysis in vista 64bit