System Upgrade Suggestions

[djcincy]

I built a system around a year and half ago and am looking to upgrade in a couple of months. would like some suggestions on exactly what i should upgrade to hold me over for another couple years. below is my belarc information. if there is anything else i can post up to help, just let me know. also on a side note i got blue screens in windows 7 on this system, to what i believe is faulty ram, however on xp it continued to work, so i am more than likely going to need a completely new set of ram.


Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Model EP45-DS3L


Property Value
MONOLITH_1 (Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. EP45-DS3L)

CPU Name Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz

Maximum Capacity 4096 MBytes
Maximum Memory Module Size 1024 MBytes
Memory Slots 4
Error Correction None
DRAM Frequency 400.0 MHz
Memory Timings 6-6-6-18 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)
Manufacturer OCZ
Part Number OCZ2P8002G

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+ [Display adapter]

also running a 600gb HD, will probably upgrade to a 1TB

 

[rammar16]

first off you should definately figure out if your ram is faulty. to do this you should run memtest86. do a google search and you will quickly find a tutorial on how to do this.

as for upgrades this completely depends on what you do with the system.

If you do a ton of video editing/photoshop work then i would suggest upgrading the cpu to an Intel Q9550.

if you game all day then upgrading to either a GTX 465, 470, or ATI 5850 would be a great choice.

it really depends on what you do with the computer. so let us know a little more about your interests, and i am sure you will get much better advice. (also post what your Power supply and budget are)

 

[djcincy]

will run memtest asap and load results here. im going to be using the computer to do mainly gaming. but will also do some graphics design and programming. i was looking at the sapphire toxic 5850. Im running a 850w power supply, cannot remember brand, but i paid a pretty high price for it. im currently having two issues with my computer, other than performance being outdated. the biggest problem is if i upgrade past xp, i get blue screen crashes at random times multiple times per day. which leads me to believe when im using the full amount of ram it hits a bad sector in the ram. secondly when i start my computer it loads up, but does not connect to the monitor, the work around ive found is letting it load till the mouse lights, the ctrl alt del reboot, then it loads fine. again i figured this to be something with the ram, but if the test comes back clean it may be the mobo

 

[djcincy]

so i stopped memtest at 24% in with 86 errors

 

[Hard Line]

that is a good indication for bad ram.. however I am curious.. are you trying to install win 7 64 bit? if so you must enable hpet and change to 64 in bios for 64 bit windows to work

 

[djcincy]

i will double check when i get the new ram, im almost positive its faulty ram, which is also causing my monitor not to load on first boot

 

[djcincy]

im trying to avoid replacing the mobo, so getting the additional ram is worth it anyways, even tho its ddr2 instead of 3, i hear it doesn't make enough difference to get another mobo

 

[djcincy]

Best answer selected by djcincy.