Hi everyone, I've done a lot of reading about this subject, but would appreciate some advice for my specific situation.
Since January 2009 I've been running the following:
MB: DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS
CPU: Q9550 OC to 3.4GHz
RAM: 2x2GB OCZ reaper DDR2 1066, 2x1GB OCZ reaper DDR2 1150
Last October I upgraded my old 8800GS 384MB to a HD6950 2GB (ASUS Directcu II) and have unlocked the extra shaders by modding its BIOS.
Also upgraded the PSU to a Corsair TX650.
Last week there was a power surge and the circuit breaker in my house tripped. When I powered the machine back on I found the CMOS was corrupt and the system didn't register any keypresses in the BIOS (pressing keys during POST worked, but once in the BIOS I couldn't get past the "Advanced mode? Y/N" screen).
I have since plugged the machine into a surge-protected socket (the socket was always there, but for some reason at some point the computer had been plugged into a different socket).
I managed to get round the BIOS problem by hammering ESC and F1 during POST to get the boot selection popup to appear, and flashed the BIOS with the latest beta BIOS available on the DFI site (I first tried reflashing my current BIOS but that didn't fix it).
Now last night the machine powered off during a Prime95 stress test I was running after I had pushed the OC to 3.6GHz to try and gain some extra frames per second in the game DCS World.
Leaving the machine to cool down completely for an hour and trying to power it on again resulted in a loud pop and flash, so I pulled the plug immediately.
That's the history, here's my question:
Should I look for a replacement LGA775 board or should I look to upgrade? My Q9550 is a lovely CPU that still holds its own. I haven't wanted to upgrade until Haswell comes out, but last night's motherboard failure has forced my hand.
Option 1 - replacement board: I can't find a single P45 board for sale anywhere. I live in Spain and my primary sources for cheap computer bits are pccomponentes.com and amazon.co.uk
All LGA775 boards on sale online these days are G41 chipsets, so I'll have to look around for a physical shop that might have a P45 board.
Also, I have 1 SSD drive and 3 SATA HDs, plus an optical SATA drive - there are no mATX LGA775 boards on sale that have more than four SATA ports.
Option 2 - upgrade: I've got my eyes on a core i7 2700k for 262 euros, an ASUS Maximus V GENE for 195 euros, and 2x8GB of G-Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 RAM for 102 euros.
Daily use:
I work on this machine - mainly SSH and text editor use really these days, though will also have a couple of browsers with many open tabs, photoshop, and probably a virtual machine or two all running at once. Occasional Visual Studio and Eclipse use. I have had no complaints with the performance of my Q9550, so wonder how much better a core i7 will be (I've seen countless benchmarks, but it's hard to translate a 10% increase on a chart to how it'll feel to actually use).
I also game on this machine - the main games I play: EVE online, Civilization 5, DCS World (DCS: A10C Warthog), Falcon BMS, GTA 4, Skyrim, ARMA 2, Battlefield BC2.
I have found that all of those games play very well with my Q9550 with HD6950, with the exception of Civ5 in the late game, GTA4 with shader mod, and DCS World.
Most games I run at 1920x1200, but with simulators I like to run at 1920x2280 (I have a touchscreen monitor beneath my primary display).
In DCS World, if I load the training mission "A10 Startup" I get between 13-25FPS on the ground at that high resolution (am using SoftTH to get fullscreen mode and more FPS). Changing my graphics settings doesn't really affect my FPS (unless I turn AA up to something silly, but I normally leave it turned off) so I assumed the bottleneck is the CPu (hence my trying to push my OC up above 3.4GHz).
As you can see, I'm not very convinced with the need to upgrade my system as everything except a complex flight simulator at a high resolution ran very well for me.
Can you provide any useful advice?
Thanks for reading!
Since January 2009 I've been running the following:
MB: DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS
CPU: Q9550 OC to 3.4GHz
RAM: 2x2GB OCZ reaper DDR2 1066, 2x1GB OCZ reaper DDR2 1150
Last October I upgraded my old 8800GS 384MB to a HD6950 2GB (ASUS Directcu II) and have unlocked the extra shaders by modding its BIOS.
Also upgraded the PSU to a Corsair TX650.
Last week there was a power surge and the circuit breaker in my house tripped. When I powered the machine back on I found the CMOS was corrupt and the system didn't register any keypresses in the BIOS (pressing keys during POST worked, but once in the BIOS I couldn't get past the "Advanced mode? Y/N" screen).
I have since plugged the machine into a surge-protected socket (the socket was always there, but for some reason at some point the computer had been plugged into a different socket).
I managed to get round the BIOS problem by hammering ESC and F1 during POST to get the boot selection popup to appear, and flashed the BIOS with the latest beta BIOS available on the DFI site (I first tried reflashing my current BIOS but that didn't fix it).
Now last night the machine powered off during a Prime95 stress test I was running after I had pushed the OC to 3.6GHz to try and gain some extra frames per second in the game DCS World.
Leaving the machine to cool down completely for an hour and trying to power it on again resulted in a loud pop and flash, so I pulled the plug immediately.
That's the history, here's my question:
Should I look for a replacement LGA775 board or should I look to upgrade? My Q9550 is a lovely CPU that still holds its own. I haven't wanted to upgrade until Haswell comes out, but last night's motherboard failure has forced my hand.
Option 1 - replacement board: I can't find a single P45 board for sale anywhere. I live in Spain and my primary sources for cheap computer bits are pccomponentes.com and amazon.co.uk
All LGA775 boards on sale online these days are G41 chipsets, so I'll have to look around for a physical shop that might have a P45 board.
Also, I have 1 SSD drive and 3 SATA HDs, plus an optical SATA drive - there are no mATX LGA775 boards on sale that have more than four SATA ports.
Option 2 - upgrade: I've got my eyes on a core i7 2700k for 262 euros, an ASUS Maximus V GENE for 195 euros, and 2x8GB of G-Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 RAM for 102 euros.
Daily use:
I work on this machine - mainly SSH and text editor use really these days, though will also have a couple of browsers with many open tabs, photoshop, and probably a virtual machine or two all running at once. Occasional Visual Studio and Eclipse use. I have had no complaints with the performance of my Q9550, so wonder how much better a core i7 will be (I've seen countless benchmarks, but it's hard to translate a 10% increase on a chart to how it'll feel to actually use).
I also game on this machine - the main games I play: EVE online, Civilization 5, DCS World (DCS: A10C Warthog), Falcon BMS, GTA 4, Skyrim, ARMA 2, Battlefield BC2.
I have found that all of those games play very well with my Q9550 with HD6950, with the exception of Civ5 in the late game, GTA4 with shader mod, and DCS World.
Most games I run at 1920x1200, but with simulators I like to run at 1920x2280 (I have a touchscreen monitor beneath my primary display).
In DCS World, if I load the training mission "A10 Startup" I get between 13-25FPS on the ground at that high resolution (am using SoftTH to get fullscreen mode and more FPS). Changing my graphics settings doesn't really affect my FPS (unless I turn AA up to something silly, but I normally leave it turned off) so I assumed the bottleneck is the CPu (hence my trying to push my OC up above 3.4GHz).
As you can see, I'm not very convinced with the need to upgrade my system as everything except a complex flight simulator at a high resolution ran very well for me.
Can you provide any useful advice?
Thanks for reading!
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