Time To Upgrade, Part 2: Picking The Parts To Replace

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After looking at whether or not it makes sense to replace a PC built back in 2007 with a more modern machine, we decided to examine three component upgrade options—graphics, storage, and the motherboard/CPU/RAM platform—separately.

Test Systems And Benchmarks

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System Hardware Header Cell - Column 1
Hardware Details
Performance Benchmarks
Base System
Motherboard (Socket LGA 775) MSI P35 Platinum (Rev. 1.0), Chipset: Intel P35, BIOS: 1.C (30/12/2009)
CPU Intel Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (65 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8 MB L2 Cache, TDP 130 W)
RAM DDR2 (dual) 4 x 1 GB DDR2-800 (Corsair CM2C1024-6400C4 5-5-5-15)
Graphics Zotac GeForce 8800 GTS, GPU: G80, Graphics RAM: 320 MB GDDR3 (900 MHz), Stream Processors: 96
Hard Drive Western Digital Raptor, 150 GB (WD1500ADFD), 10 000 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, 16 MB Cache
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling, Silencer 750EPS12V 750 W
Upgrades
Upgrade I: Platform
Motherboard (Socket LGA 1156) MSI P55A Fuzion (Rev. 1.0), Chipset: Intel P55, BIOS: 1.0 (07/12/2010)
CPU Intel Intel Core i7-870 (45 nm, 2.93 GHz, 4 x 256 KB L2 and 8 MB L3 Cache, TDP 95 W, Rev. B1)
RAM DDR3 (dual) 2 x 2 GB DDR-1333 (OCZ3G2000LV4GK)
Upgrade II: Graphics
Graphics Card MSI R5870 Lightning TwinFrozr II, GPU: Cypress (900 MHz), Graphics RAM: 1024 MB GDDR5 (2400 MHz), Stream Processors: 1600
Upgrade III: Hard Drive/SSD
SSD G.Skill Phoenix 100 GB SSD (FM-25S2S-100GBP1), SandForce SF-1200, SATA 3 Gb/s
System Software & Drivers
Operating System Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Updated on 2010-07-29
Drivers and Settings
ATI Radeon Driver ATI Catalyst 10.7 Suite for Windows 7
Nvidia GeForce Driver GeForce Driver Release 256 258.96
Intel Chipset Drivers Chipset Installation Utility Ver. 9.1.1.1025
Intel Storage Drivers Matrix Storage Drivers Ver. 8.​9.​0.​1023