Advice on upgrade choices!

Which upgrade route?


  • Total voters
    0

cosmicspacehead

Distinguished
Feb 5, 2013
27
0
18,540
Hi all, i was planning to upgrade my 5 year old pc, at some point, but i have almost no money (lol).
i can really only afford to upgrade the following:
CPU+MOBO+RAM, Graphics card, or add an SSD.

Heres my Current Specs:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping @ 3.0ghz (O.C)
8GB(4x2GB) Giel Black Dragon 800mhz CL5 DDR2 RAM
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L iP35 Mobo
Sapphire Readon HD 6870 1GB
Hiper 630W 85% Efficiency PSU (Cheapo, but surprisingly good!)
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM Caviar Blue
Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro 7
Windows 7 Pro (retail - 32/64 Bit)
and a 22" monitor @ 1600x900
anyway, i have about £100 to spend, and i think i can get about £100 for my motherboard, cpu and ram, or around £80 for my 6870.

so i was thinking i'd get the Following:
an AMD FX 6300 for £90 or FX 8350 For £150 (if i got a bit more!),
a fairly good FULL ATX motherboard For £60-70
8GB(2x4GB) of DDR3 1600mhz RAM For around £50
if i sold my CPU, RAM and Mobo - Total would be between £190 - £240, minus what i get more my old stuff

or a Geforce GTX 660 Ti or AMD HD 7870 both around £180-£200, minus £80ish for my 6870.

or a Samsung 840 120/128GB SSD(or good other brand) for about £80-£100, but no trade in.

i'm just wandering what your thoughts on upgrades would be?
i'm just at a dilemma because i know a better CPU will help with editing, and a better GPU will help with games. but also my generally load times are slow too.
windows takes a good 3 minutes from cold boot to become usable!
(and i dont have a lot of crap booting at start up either!)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Approximate Purchase Date: within a month

Budget Range: £100 (plus extra from sales of old!)

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Games / Video Editing / Surfing

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: CPU, mobo, RAM - or GFX Card - or ADD SSD) **Hiper 630W 85% Efficiency PSU**

Do you need to buy OS: No

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: ebuyer.com - Amazon.co.uk - waeplus.co.uk - scan.co.uk

Location: Cornwall - England

Parts Preferences: AMD CPU for cost reasons (i5 3570K would be my only intel choice and its just currently too expensive)

Overclocking: Eventually

SLI or Crossfire: No

Your Monitor Resolution:1600x900 + FULL HD TV,

Additional Comments: none really

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Video editing abit slow, and pc generally old.
 

cosmicspacehead

Distinguished
Feb 5, 2013
27
0
18,540
lol no sata 3... that was a huge oversight!

wont an SSD work in sata 2? just a bit slower?
the smaller SSDs apparently don't run all that fast anyway.?

i'm leaning towards the CPU upgrade too... it'll help with both games and editing, and general running. lol
i may even be bottlenecking my 6870... i never even check cos it performs about the same as its benchmarks so i figured its ok for now.