IS this MAJOR upgrade sane?

aryanenzo

November 20, 2008 10:33:04 PM

I jsut bought a Geforce GTX 260 graphics card and found out it was being bottlenecked by the rest of my system so im upgrading

current setup: HP pavilion media center
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.66Ghz (physically missing ONE transistor but seems to be working fine lol)
2gb DDr 2 (SLOWEST KIND)
320gb harddrive
550W power supply
Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 896mb overclocked to 700mhz

UPGRADE:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33 GHz
4GB DDR 2 OCZ REAPER ram
New SLI ATX motherboard instead of Hp's Micro AtX which dosent allow overclocking
New MID ATX gaming case (RAIDMAX SAGITTA)

=730 bucks

Is this worth it?
im getting 19fps in games like Crysis when i know the GTX 260 is capable of doing 35 so my CPU and Ram are bottlenecking

The only things im probly not replacing are like the powersupply, graphics card, DVD ROM Drive and the 320gb harddrive

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dirtmountain

November 20, 2008 11:20:44 PM

You'd probably be much better off to return that HP to stock and sell it, then use the money to build a complete new system. You'd most likely also have to get an operating system for it if you got a new motherboard. So you're looking at a new case, motherboard, RAM, CPU and operating system. You already have the GPU and PSU, the only things you'd need for a complete system are the HD and burner. Why screw with the HP? Just sell it and build a new rig.

*EDIT* you'll need a more powerful PSU if you're gonna crossfire the GTX260.

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geofelt

November 20, 2008 11:44:27 PM

Not unreasonable, but you can do the same for less:

1) a E8400 or E8500 will drive that card to it's limits, even without overclocking. The minor increase of a E8600 is not worth it.

2) Any quality DDR2-800 ram will do. The C2D is not sensitive to ram speeds.
4GB of corsair for $25 after rebate?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

3) Don't spend extra now for a sli motherboard.
SLI has been a poor upgrade path in the past. It should be used only by
those who will not currently be satisfied by the fastest available single vga card
which is currently the 4870X2. The 4870, GTX260, or 9800GX2
offer very good performance for the money now.
To get SLI. you have to spend more up front for a SLI capable mobo,a
more powerful SLI capable PSU, and better case cooling. Upgrading a single card later with a
second equal card does not get you 2x increase, it is more like 1.1x to 1.5x depending on the game.
At that time, you will still be paying top dollar for a card that is closer to
being obsolete.
It would be better to sell the old card and use the proceeds
towards a better new generation single card.
A simple P45 based motherboard will perform just as well, like a gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

---good luck---

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pcgamer12

November 21, 2008 12:06:08 AM

SLI scales way more than 1.1x to 1.5x. It's more like 1.5x to 1.84x.

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aryanenzo

November 21, 2008 12:32:02 AM

dirtmountain said:

You'd probably be much better off to return that HP to stock and sell it, then use the money to build a complete new system. You'd most likely also have to get an operating system for it if you got a new motherboard. So you're looking at a new case, motherboard, RAM, CPU and operating system. You already have the GPU and PSU, the only things you'd need for a complete system are the HD and burner. Why screw with the HP? Just sell it and build a new rig.

*EDIT* you'll need a more powerful PSU if you're gonna crossfire the GTX260.

i am building a new system
so i will be taking just the PSU, the DVD ROM and the harddrive out
the rest of the system will remain intact
i might either sell its parts OR build a new weaker system out of it again...
Im getting a SLI motherboard just in case for the future
the motherboard im getting is like 170 bucks so its not very expansive

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