Adjust or Rebuild????

[petros21]

Hey. I'm at a crossroads in my many years of machine building experience; and am hoping that the focused minds here at Tom's might lend a hand in arriving at a practical solution to my problem. As many of you have probably experienced; whether it be a family member or friend; I have a younger brother that has thought himself a bright young machine building mind; who had built himself a Frankenstein of a mess. He realizes it and has come to me with questions of a full blown engine pull and replace. My response to him, as it usually is to others....... let's look at what we can save and possibly upgrade what you have....... but of course he wants to see advice from the pros.


Here's what he has for major components at present.

COOLER MASTER COSMOS 1000 case
Intel E8400 CPU
Asus P5b Deluxe Motherboard running newest bios
Corsair 650 psu
6 Western Digital (WD5001AALS) 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 32MB Cache hd's
4 gigs OCZ (OCZ2P800R22GK) DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz Platinum memory running factory timmings.
Ati Radeon HD 3870 (512 MB DDR4 @Core Clock 777MHz/Memory Clock 1126 MHz
Windows Vista 64 bit


The situation is that he has around $1100 canadian to spend... He wants to put together a base I7 machine, by just upgrading ram/motherboard and cpu .... I think that he should wait and spend cash on putting together a solid core2 machine; unless he upgrades at least his video card also. I think that he should upgrade his motherboard/ram (To DDR3 X3 Kit)/ video card. Run 2 sticks for now.... Save up, and then later sell the mobo for what he can get and buy an I7/motherboard bundle. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[ir_efrem]

My advice is to wait on I7. New Intel CPUs are on the horizon that are based on the I7 architecture, and they will require a new socket. They are supposed to be mainstream CPUs which means lower prices and lower cost motherboards.

He has a Very solid system right now. A slight overclock to 3.5ghz, or so (not to mention safe) and a new 4870x2 or a GeForce 280, will give him a nice bump in gaming performance.

If he wants some extra encoding performance or he actually runs something that will take advantage of more than 2 cores, then by all means get a Quad core.

I am just a little hesitant to upgrade to I7 right at this time. He will not see a marked improvement buying a LGA775 motherboard that takes DDR3 (if any performance increase at all.)

 

[MykC]

What is he running now that he isn't happy with? What resolutions? I mean everything looks ok.

If he moves to a Phenom II 940BE he can keep his ram.
Phenom II 940BE $280
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103471
ASUS M3A78 Pro AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard (1x PCI-e) $120
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131325
ASUS M3A78-T AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX ATX if he wants 2x PCI-E and extra PCI slots
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131331
XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler $45
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233003

Thats $450 before tax and shipping, leaving at least 600 a GPU if need be. This quad core Phenom II will OC extremely well and extremely easy (all done in windows through AMDs on software with unlocked CPU multipliers).
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-overclock-athlon,2161.html

 

[gkay09]

Well actually he can just go ahead and upgrade the graphics card...
Dont go wit DDR3...it will not give significant performance boost over the DDR2 he has...So upgrading the card to even a 4870 1GB or the GTX260

GFX card...
EVGA 896-P3-1260-AR GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail $237.99
(Before $20.00 USD Mail-In
Rebate
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130370

Cant beat tis offer...

or buy him a GTX285...

 

[jitpublisher]

The only real problem I see with his system is that the 3870 is way under powered compared to the rest of the parts he has. A new high end video card would do wonders, really just wonders.
I am assuming since he is "younger" that he probably mostly games, music, and internet, so spending money on an i7 won't show any improvement over what he has right now.

 

[petros21]

Thanks all. Pretty much what I thought about the whole thing. Wanted him to upgrade the video card; then wait for the new boards and chips to mainstream. He also wants to dump the ocz and buy 4 sticks of faster/larger ram so he can play with the o-clocking a bit as well as increasing base ram for the 64 bit operating system. Any advice on this???

 

[ir_efrem]

I hear that it is harder to overclock with more than 2 sticks of RAM. This might not be the case with that motherboard though.

I have seen http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166 recommended a few times for overclocking...

With his current memory he should be able to get 3.6ghz with a 1:1 ram divider no problem...