Advice needed to upgrade a 2yr old system.

[trinityseven]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently seeking some advice in order to upgrade my current system which is around 2 years old. I mainly use it for gaming, and I prefer to be able to have the settings of the games up high, if not maximum, and have it all running smoothly.

My current specs are:

Core 2 Duo E6600
Gigabyte 965P-DS31S3
Silverstone 850W powersupply
4 gig G.Skill ram, DDR2 800
Gainward 8800GTX pci-e 768mb

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Soon, within the next month.

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming, currently playing EQ2 and Sims 3

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: I'm open to any suggestions

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: I'm in Australia, no preference.

PARTS PREFERENCES: No specific preferences at the moment.

OVERCLOCKING: I'm not technically minded so wouldn't be overclocking the stuff myself.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: Current maximum is 1650x1050 on my viewsonic.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I don't have a specific budget in mind, but preferably wouldn't like to spend over $1000 for total.

Any recommendations greatly appreciated as I have limited knowledge in this area. Thanks

 

[Fortunex]

I'd grab an Antec, Corsair, PC Power and Cooling or Seasonic power supply, first of all. Never trust your expensive rig in the hands of a low quality PSU.

Then your best bet would be to get a Radeon HD4870 or 4890, a Phenom II 720 or 940, and a new motherboard. If you get the 720, you could get an AM3 motherboard and DDR3 RAM, whereas the 940 is a quad core, but uses DDR2 RAM (which you already have). If you can fit it in your budget (not sure on how much more expensive things are over there in Aussie land), you could also look at a Phenom 955 with an AM3/DDR3 build.

 

[xc0mmiex]

here is my true and honest opinion... and i have a rig very similar to yours.....

grab yourself a 4870 or a 4890, and overclock the CPU to like 3.0 (easy as cake, and when i mean its easy... its really easy) ...that will play pretty much any game all maxed (try setFSB, no messing with bios but you have to spend 10 seconds every time you restart a rig to overclock)

I really do not think this is the best time to overhaul your rig, especially with 1k, if you wait for all the new dx11 stuff to come first, you willl get a lot more for the same price... its all about patience, and you could easily build an i7 rig with 1k very very soon

 

[lucuis]

I'd grab an Antec, Corsair, PC Power and Cooling or Seasonic power supply, first of all. Never trust your expensive rig in the hands of a low quality PSU.

Then your best bet would be to get a Radeon HD4870 or 4890, a Phenom II 720 or 940, and a new motherboard. If you get the 720, you could get an AM3 motherboard and DDR3 RAM, whereas the 940 is a quad core, but uses DDR2 RAM (which you already have). If you can fit it in your budget (not sure on how much more expensive things are over there in Aussie land), you could also look at a Phenom 955 with an AM3/DDR3 build.

He said he had a 850w Silverstone, hardly a low quality PSU.

 

[trinityseven]

here is my true and honest opinion... and i have a rig very similar to yours.....

grab yourself a 4870 or a 4890, and overclock the CPU to like 3.0 (easy as cake, and when i mean its easy... its really easy) ...that will play pretty much any game all maxed (try setFSB, no messing with bios but you have to spend 10 seconds every time you restart a rig to overclock)

I really do not think this is the best time to overhaul your rig, especially with 1k, if you wait for all the new dx11 stuff to come first, you willl get a lot more for the same price... its all about patience, and you could easily build an i7 rig with 1k very very soon

Hi, as I mentioned, I have no clue about overclocking, etc, is there a guide that will show me how to do this as you described above?

Thanks, seems to be the cheaper option if it works~!

 

[Fortunex]

He said he had a 850w Silverstone, hardly a low quality PSU.

Thought I read somewhere that Silverstones aren't that good. Meh, could be wrong.

 

[geofelt]

Silverstone is very good on this list, depending on the model:
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/323050.aspx
No worries there.

For gaming, to see a good improvement, look to jump your vga card several levels.
Look for a card at the GTX275 or 4890 level. anything else, and you will be disappointed.
Since you already have nvidia, I would stick with that. No driver changouts are necessary.

I would do some research and overclock your E6600 a bit. You may need a decent oem cooler for this.
I think you mobo will support a E8500 which is another option. The E8500 is strong enough to drive a GTX295.

Are you running a 64 bit os? You need one to use all 4gb of ram.
If you don'r run vista 64 bit, you might want to upgrade to windows 7, 64 bit version.
You can download the w7 release candidate for free now.

If the money is burning a hole in your pocket, consider a 24 " monitor, or a second monitor like the one you already have.

 

[croc]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently seeking some advice in order to upgrade my current system which is around 2 years old. I mainly use it for gaming, and I prefer to be able to have the settings of the games up high, if not maximum, and have it all running smoothly.

My current specs are:

Core 2 Duo E6600
Gigabyte 965P-DS31S3
Silverstone 850W powersupply
4 gig G.Skill ram, DDR2 800
Gainward 8800GTX pci-e 768mb

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Soon, within the next month.

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming, currently playing EQ2 and Sims 3

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: I'm open to any suggestions

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: I'm in Australia, no preference.

PARTS PREFERENCES: No specific preferences at the moment.

OVERCLOCKING: I'm not technically minded so wouldn't be overclocking the stuff myself.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: Current maximum is 1650x1050 on my viewsonic.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I don't have a specific budget in mind, but preferably wouldn't like to spend over $1000 for total.

Any recommendations greatly appreciated as I have limited knowledge in this area. Thanks

Your PSU is just fine, your CPU is only so-so... But with the i5's starting to come out, new i7's emerging and some rumours of i9's, I'd hold off doing a full upgrade for a wee bit.

I am sure that you know these websites, but I'll include them anyway.

http://www.pricespy.com.au/

http://www.staticice.com.au/

MSY.com.au has a pretty good deal on the xfx 1GB 4890 at the moment, can't really find any good deals on nvidia cards at the moment... MSY usually also has some decent deals on 22" - 24" monitors, but didn't really check them out.

I'd just upgrade the GPU at the moment, that will be your best bang for your AUD. If your monitor is not up to what you think you require, then that would also be a good spend. Neither part will go wasted when it is time for a full upgrade.

 

[trinityseven]

Hi, thanks for the replies. I've used setFSB and overclocked - seems to have made a difference actually!
I'll investigate getting a 4890, I already have pretty decent 22" monitor. Again, a couple of years old now but I like it
Probably will plan for a total upgrade next year sometime.

 

[shubham1401]

According to me no upgrade needed now.
Though you can change the CPU to a quad core.You can get a Monitor with better resolution,buy a bigger hard disk,new speakers.

As others said.overclocking te CPU will help greatly.