Upgrade PC or Buy Extreme PC

[s1lent]

Ok, with what I am running right now. What can I do to upgrade this PC to make it run like a dream? I love playing FPS online and I want to have a fast PC. I also want it to be able to run CRYSIS at full specs. Would it be better to just upgrade my PC or should I buy an EXTREME GAMING PC like Alienware PC or Dell XPS or something like that?

What I am running right now.

Tower--Ninja (478x260x540mm)
ASUS Crosshair 941 pin motherboard (Nvidia chipset board)
AMD Athlon 64
x2 dual core 5600+ 2.91 ghz
XfX Geforce 9800 GTX + 512 DDr3
ValueSelect---4 gb
372 gb harddrive
Rocketfish 550w power supply
Vista 32bit


Any input would be greatly appreciated.

thank you

 

[AKM880]

That motherboard has very much upgrade options, its a AM2 socket. You can even run the 95W 7750 Kuma CPU. Quads are even available for your system. If I were you, I would just upgrade. A system like Alienware or XPS costs alot more than if you were to upgrade or ubild your own. That PSU isn't very reliable, its probably a generic?

I can confirm that the highest quad Phenom X4 supported is a 9950. And the 7750 Kuma is supported.
http://www.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=9s5xj9DAuUWX35gT

7750 Kuma 2.7Ghz x2 - 60.00 = GOOD DEAL!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103300&Tpk=7750%20kuma

 

[aevm]

You could just get a second 9800GTX+ and a Corsair 650TX. That in itself should improve your Crysis a lot, and it's under $300 total.

If you have a lot of cash and want a major upgrade, you could get something like Asus P6T Deluxe V2, i7 920, 3x2GB DDR3, Corsair 1000HX, one or two GTX 285 cards (and maybe a third later), Vista 64bit, WD 640GB Caviar Black or Velociraptor (or both).

Or, if you still like AMD, something like GA-MA790FXT-UD5P + Phenom II 955 + HD 4870 X2 + 750TX.

There are lots of good options. In general, if you're good at building your own PC you can save money compared to Dell or Alienware.

 

[s1lent]

That motherboard has very much upgrade options, its a AM2 socket. You can even run the 95W 7750 Kuma CPU. Quads are even available for your system. If I were you, I would just upgrade. A system like Alienware or XPS costs alot more than if you were to upgrade or ubild your own. That PSU isn't very reliable, its probably a generic?

I can confirm that the highest quad Phenom X4 supported is a 9950. And the 7750 Kuma is supported.
http://www.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=9s5xj9DAuUWX35gT

7750 Kuma 2.7Ghz x2 - 60.00 = GOOD DEAL!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103300&Tpk=7750%20kuma

So my mother board is OK? So my CPU is running right now X2 5600 2.91 ghz. The 750 Kuma 2.7Ghz x2 would be better than what I am running right now?

 

[aevm]

Yes, especially if you overclock it. A 3.0 GHz overclock is very easy with that Kuma.

However, your bottleneck in Crysis is the video card, not the CPU, so don't expect much improvement there from the CPU upgrade.

 

[Helloworld_98]

have you guys forgotten the major performance hit of HT downgrading?

 

[AKM880]

What do you mean HT downgrading? I JUST thought that the Hyper Transport is 3600MHZ compared to that of the Athlons which is 2000MHZ? I'm confused?

 

[JTP709]

Get this first:

Mushkin 550w PSU - $40 after rebate

No offense but your PSU is junk. It is made by a generic company that makes stuff for Best Buy (rocketfish is a Best Buy house brand). A bad PSU can fry and destroy your enitire system, and it isn't worth the risk. Sure, you may save $50 at first, but you run a very probable risk of destroying hundreds of dollars worth of PC hardware.

Next, upgrade your GPU:

XFX GTX 260 216 core - $180 (currently comes with a free copy of Call of Duty World at War from Newegg)

Then swap out your old CPU for this:

Anthlon 64 x2 7750 BE - $60

or if you have the money, the performance increase is worth it for this:

Phenom II x3 720 BE - $140 (even though it is an AM3 chipset it is compatible with an AM2+ socket motherboard)

If you have the patience to research, read, and digest all of the information you're going to need to know, then it is worth it to upgrade or partake in the fun of building a gaming computer. This is also much more economical than buying an Alienware or XPS, which can cost hundreds, even a thousand more. IMHO the only benefit to Alienware is a guarantee that every component will work and you'll have better/easier customer support in case something goes wrong. But as long as you do your homework, and understand what you are doing you'll be just fine. Besides, if you have any problems you got a ton of forums out there, especially this one, with experienced people who have more likely than not had the same problem you're trying to fix.

Good luck to you mate.

 

[AKM880]

+ 1, but i thought that rocketfish was Futureshop brand lol.

 

[jalpaugh1978]

I couldnt recomend that Mushkin PSU based on personal experience(BOOM!). I do think this is a good deal

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341022

 

[JTP709]

+ 1, but i thought that rocketfish was Futureshop brand lol.

It might be too, but I used to work for Best Buy and it was considered one of our in house brands. I love their cables, because they delivered equal performance to Monster, and with my discount I could get an HDMI for two or three bucks. And by equal performance I mean there is no way anybody could see a difference between the Monster or Rocketfish cables on our HDTVs, they even supported 120hz and 10.2 gbps bandwidth.

But a Rocketfish PSU? I wouldn't trust it.

I was reluctant to recommend a Mushkin PSU, but several websites listed them as reliable and this one had such a great deal. However that OCZ PSU jalpaugh1978 posted is definately a better deal and I have yet to hear any horror stories about OCZ power supplies.

 

[s1lent]

Get this first:

Mushkin 550w PSU - $40 after rebate

No offense but your PSU is junk. It is made by a generic company that makes stuff for Best Buy (rocketfish is a Best Buy house brand). A bad PSU can fry and destroy your enitire system, and it isn't worth the risk. Sure, you may save $50 at first, but you run a very probable risk of destroying hundreds of dollars worth of PC hardware.

Next, upgrade your GPU:

XFX GTX 260 216 core - $180 (currently comes with a free copy of Call of Duty World at War from Newegg)

Then swap out your old CPU for this:

Anthlon 64 x2 7750 BE - $60

or if you have the money, the performance increase is worth it for this:

Phenom II x3 720 BE - $140 (even though it is an AM3 chipset it is compatible with an AM2+ socket motherboard)

If you have the patience to research, read, and digest all of the information you're going to need to know, then it is worth it to upgrade or partake in the fun of building a gaming computer. This is also much more economical than buying an Alienware or XPS, which can cost hundreds, even a thousand more. IMHO the only benefit to Alienware is a guarantee that every component will work and you'll have better/easier customer support in case something goes wrong. But as long as you do your homework, and understand what you are doing you'll be just fine. Besides, if you have any problems you got a ton of forums out there, especially this one, with experienced people who have more likely than not had the same problem you're trying to fix.

Good luck to you mate.

So you don't think I need to upgrade my MOBO?

 

[JTP709]

I don't think so, and actually after just reading about your mobo I am not positive if it will support the Phenom II x3, it should, but if you decide to upgrade to that processor I would contact Asus and verify compatibility.

But if you want to upgrade, I would get this: Gigabyte GA-MA790GP for $130. The 790GX Northrbridge will improve performance with a new graphics card (even more so with an ATI, but its nothing you would really notice), and the SB750 Southbridge will allow you to take full advantage of your CPU's overclocking potential. Overall it will really improve performance with a new AMD CPU.

But before you make a CPU/mobo upgrade you must replace that PSU, and then I would upgrade your graphics card because that is where you'll see most of your performance increase.

 

[photonboy]

Your current system is nicely balanced an upgrading would be a waste of money. Personally, I think it's a great computer.

Anyway, you should be building a whole new system. Based on your attitude I'm going to say build around X58

it's not hard after that. example:

1) X58 Mobo
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=34542&vpn=GA-EX58-EXTREME&manufacture=Gigabyte
2) Core i7 920
3) 6GB DDR3 kit (3x2GB) i saw Corsair at Newegg for $82 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145236
4) graphics: (2x NVidia GTX 275 896MB)
5) case (Antec 300?)
6) Heatsink Fan combo for CPU
7) 2x 120mm case fans
8) Seagate 7200.12 500GB or the WD Black 640GB if the extra noise isn't an issue maybe 2 drives in RAID 0 (Windows drive)
9) WD Green 1TB (backup, downloads, media etc)
10) PC Power and Cooling 750W

This is expensive. As I said, I think your current system is nice.

Why don't you hold off another year and build a system which includes these specs:

- DirectX 11 Graphics card
- SATA 3.0 (600MB/sec throughput, SSD is going to kick SATA's ass soon)
- Windows 7
- 32nm CPU, possibly 6-core 4GHz
- Larrabee?
- better support of HDMI audio

Noise and Power wishes:
- we will see overall noise and power optimizations but most importantly we hopefully see something like "HybridPower" come back so the graphics card can turn off completely and use an efficient on-board graphics chip. I'd love to see that applied to the CPU as well. imagine adding a simple connection (like the new ATI XGP) that allows a CPU/GPU external brick to be plugged in?

With the new "ION" nettops coming and the low-end Mac Mini being able to idle at 13W I am expecting an increase in the drive for a PC gaming system that can idle cool and silently.

I think we'll see a huge change from now to a year from now in the gaming PC.

I do think NVidia's 3D solution will catch on eventually. It currently requires the computer to run twice as hard; the monitor must be driven to 120Hz for you to see games at 60FPS through the goggles which filter one eye each frame. However, this issue will be easily solved by a "frame doubler" chip prior to the output which would consume very little power.

 

[JTP709]

Core i7 is overkill right now IMO, a 5% increase in game performance isn't worth the extra $200+ over a Phenom II for me. Just my opinion.

DX11 cards are supposed to be available this winter, so its up to you if you want to wait, but new video cards are realeased every year already, and seeing the little to no performance or support in DX10 compared to DX9 I'm not expecting too much from DX11 over DX10.

Windows 7 isn't a reason to wait to upgrade a computer, you can upgrade your rig now and then install Windows 7 when it becomes available, and even get the Windows 7 release candidate for free on May 5th (officially announced today). While it is just a test candidate, the Windows 7 beta in my experience is faster and more stable than Vista Ultimate 64 SP1.

SATA 3.0 won't improve game performance, except when you're loading maps or installing games. Actual game performance won't be affected. And if you really want SATA 3.0, you can simply buy a PCI expansion card.

Considering games don't take advantage of multiple cores at the moment, there isn't any reason to wait for a 6 core system. The fact that it is 32nm and may have a higher overclocking potential maybe, and how the chip is manufactured, but 6 cores won't improve game performance until developers start supporting the technology.

The only reason I could see holding out until this winter/spring is to see how well the Core i5 will be, and what the Larrabee offers.