Upgrading my 2007 system..need your advice!

[packaholic]

Hi all,

Not sure if i'm in the right "subcategory" but I would appreciate some advice. I am not very tech savy as far as building/upgrading rigs but I do love gaming.

I bought my current system back in late 2006. It is getting a bit old. Considering that I have never done anything more than replacing a video card and adding RAM....what would you all reccomend to upgrade this system that would not involve doing any complex work/installations. I can spend $700 or so to upgrade if needed. Again the primary purpose of this system is GAMING. Will just buying a Radeon 5870 GPU do the trick? Am about to buy a new ViewSonic VX2739WM 27-Inch monitor to go with it.

Thanks!


Processor: Intel Core 2 CPU E6600 @2.4 Ghz

GPU: ATI Radeon 4850 1 Gig (old card 8800GTX died)

Ram: 2 x 2 Gig Corsair XMS Xtreme Performance DDR2
2 x 1 Gig Corsair XMS Xtreme Performance DDR2

MB: P5N32-SLI-SE-Deluxe

HD1: NVIDIA Stripe 596 Gig

HD2: Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 320-GB Hard Drive

Raid

Power Supply: Antec 550W true Power Trio

Microsoft XP 32

 

[dndhatcher]

Is it a Core2duo E6600 or a Core2quad Q6600?

If its a quad then overclocking it to 3GHz should keep it viable with a new graphics card. You will probably have to replace the PSU when you get a more powerful graphics card.

I'm not sure about that monitor. 27inches is pretty big for 1920x1080. Unless you sit pretty far away it might look blocky. 1920x1080 seems best at about 24 inches to me, 22 is a bit small and above that looks less crisp, but that may just be personal preference.

 

[packaholic]

It's a Core 2 Duo E6600.....bought this system back in Feb 2007.

 

[dndhatcher]

You could overclock the CPU, upgrade to win7 64 and get a new PSU and GPU. You probably wont get full benefit of the GPU, but will be in a good spot to replace the CPU/Mobo/RAM/HDD later.

About your current RAM, do you really have 6GB in the machine? You really should only have either a 2x2GB set or 4x1GB set in there. XP wont address more than 4GB of RAM and you dont want to mess up the dual channel interleaving with disparate RAM sticks.

 

[packaholic]

Thanks,

Yeah I just added the 2 x 2 gigs ram...will pull out the 2 x 1 gigs...knew XP didn't recognize more than 4 gigs (in fact telling me I only have 3.25 gigs right now)..didn't think it would do any harm to leave the extra two sticks..but out they will go!

As far as overclocking I have absolutely no clue how to go about it. Sad but true.

 

[Mr Pizza]

Its telling you you have 3.25 because you have 32 bit.. ^

I would say get a 5970.. but that would be a big bottleneck.. XD
Go with a 5850 and get a 750w PSU

 

[dndhatcher]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/259899-29-core-overclocking-guide

 

[packaholic]

Hi guys,

Thanks to all that replied. I really appreciate it. I have read over th eoverclocking guide and will see if I can pull it off!

My old 8800GTX died...got a bunch of red dots on my monitor etc. Replaced it with a Radeon 4850 which booted up fine..but now when I boot up everything is fine but after about 10 minutes my display gets blurry and not sharp..so not sure whats up. I have an old Acer 17" AL1715 monitor. I just ordered a ViewSonic VX2739WM 27-Inch so will see if that will solve my problem.

Thanks again guys.

 

[dndhatcher]

You just at least doubled, maybe almost tripled your screen resolution, which means you will get half or less of the FPS you used to get if you run at native resolution. Monitor resolution more than software is the reason graphics card requirements have skyrocketed over the past few years. Once you play on a nice widescreen LCD, it is unpleasant to drop back to anything smaller.

 

[packaholic]

You just at least doubled, maybe almost tripled your screen resolution, which means you will get half or less of the FPS you used to get if you run at native resolution. Monitor resolution more than software is the reason graphics card requirements have skyrocketed over the past few years. Once you play on a nice widescreen LCD, it is unpleasant to drop back to anything smaller.

Uh oh. I like the fact that I will have a nice big screen but I don't like the fact that my FPS will drop by half.....should I order the new GPU 5850 as well? Will that help my FPS enough to be worth it?

 

[dndhatcher]

You can always wait and see. A 5850 will be a huge (double-ish) increase. You will probably appreciate it more if you try with the 4850 first, otherwise you are trading equal for equal and wont see the difference and maybe wonder why you spend so much money.

 

[packaholic]

Best answer selected by packaholic.