Thinking of upgrading

farna_boy

Hey all,

SO it's been a long time since I spent any money on my PC so I have been thinking about breaking out and buying something again. I have about €200 to spend at an absolute maximum, but I am not sure what to buy. The specs of my PC at the moment are:

Asus P5Q-E
Intel E7300
4 GB OCZ Reaper
Sapphire Raedon 5770
250 GB Hard Drive
750 GB RAID 1 Drive
Coolermaster 632 Mystique
600W OCZ Stealth Xtreme
Windows Vista Business (64 bit)

At the moment I am playing on a fairly small screen, but I am wondering would I be better off spending my money elsewhere, maybe on a new CPU.

I could get a Q9400 for about €200, but I am wondering is it worth it? Would I be better off saving for a Q9550 or would a Q8x00 be better (value for money)? Or should I invest in something else?

Thanks for any help!

marco_polo

Occasionally you can pickup Q6600s on adverts for about 80 euro or so, if you found one you could overclock it leaving you with plenty of CPU power for another couple of years, and 120 to spend on a new HD monitor .

farna_boy

Would a Q6600 still be better than a Q8x00? I only use the PC for gaming so would an E8400 be better?

Since I am only using the PC for gaming, would I be better off spending the money elsewhere?

Cheers!

B00MSTICK

Have you overclocked your current processor by much?
An e8400 is only 400mhz faster than your e7300...

Like you've said most games are only utilising dual cores atm so going quad might be overkill for your needs.

Are you not happy with your PC performance or do you just want a boost?

farna_boy

To be honest, this all started because the girlfriends brother can't play COD:Black Ops so he is looking for a new processor (he has an E4500). I started looking at processors for him and then was thinking about selling my E7300 to him for cheap and buying a new processor for myself.

So far I have no trouble running any games on stock speed but he is looking for a cheap upgrade and I was trying to figure out if it was worth my while upgrading my processor.

Now I am starting to wonder would he be better off just buying an E8400/Q9400 for about €140 and would I be better off overclocking my processor and spending money elsewhere.

B00MSTICK

You wouldn't happen to know the spec of your girlfriends brother's PC?

Personally I'd check how far that e4500 will go before upgrading, but that's just me.
If you can up the CPU speed a good GPU might be a better buy if his current graphics card isn't up to much.

farna_boy

His PC is a Dell Inspiron 530 so its:

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E4500
Memory: 1GB RAM
Graphics: ATI HD 2400PRO.

The min requirements for COD:Black Ops are:

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750 or better
Memory: 2GB RAM
Graphics: Shader 3.0 or better 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT / ATI Radeon X1950Pro or better

So basically he needs a new CPU and more RAM, for as cheap as possible. I was recommending a CPU for about €140 i.e. an Q8400, and another stick of RAM. I don't think it's worth his while spending much more than that on a CPU and he would be better off putting money aside for a better graphics card.

The alternative was to sell him my E7300 for cheap and then I could buy a Q9400/Q9550 for myself, but I am not sure if it is worth spending a lot on one of these processors, and would I be better off upgrading the graphics card or something.

B00MSTICK

The 2400 Pro is killing him here, its almost comparable to the onboard graphics of recent motherboards.

I doubt the Dell mobo allows overclocking either unfortunately.

He'll definitely need a better GPU so I recommend you buy that 1st and see the difference.

farna_boy

Well I think he needs a new processor first since his current one is below the min specs of the game, whereas his current GFX card is above it.

Either way, back to my own PC.

Would I see a bigger benefit by overclocking my PC and upgrading the graphics card or by getting a new CPU?

If it is a new CPU, is it worth buying a Q9xxx for ~€200, or would a Q6600 or Q/E8x00 CPU be better?

Thanks!

B00MSTICK

Hi again Farna,

I think you've mixed the 2400 Pro with a different GPU.
(It's very easy to get mixed up mind you)

Here's a review of the "better" 2600 XT vs a 8600:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2007/08/14/radeon_hd_2600_xt_vs_geforce_8600_gt/16

The 8600 is the better performer and is the minimum requirement according to Black Ops.
So his 2400 is waaaay below the minimum.

Regarding your situation, a Quadcore really won't have much effect on your gaming.

If you could get a bit more grunt from your e7300 it would probably outrun a stock Q6600 (when it comes to gaming)
If you like to encode stuff while playing then a quad core would be an essential upgrade.

I'm building a cheap rig myself atm and will probably opt for a 5770, its a decent card that should keep me happy for a while at least.

I reckon if you're happy with your PCs performance now then hold onto your money and when you're suddenly not happy with your framerate, then upgrade.

Solitaire

Depends on the game, more and more really need three or more cores to run well. I'd look for a second-hand or heavily discounted Q9400 or up. Q8*00 are rubbish, a few can hit 3.7GHz OCd but most struggle to remain stable at just 3GHz Q9550 is awesome but you'd be mad to buy it for full price at this point, you could get an AM2+ mobo and a Phenom2 quad cheaper!! :eek:

Will the E7300 even work on his machine?! I think the E530 is 65nm only but I might be wrong... I suspect an OCd second-hand Q6*00 and a second-hand HD4770 or a cheap GTS240, HD5670, HD5770 or similar will be needed to get it running modern games well.

farna_boy

B00MSTICK wrote: »

Hi again Farna,

I think you've mixed the 2400 Pro with a different GPU.
(It's very easy to get mixed up mind you)

Here's a review of the "better" 2600 XT vs a 8600:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2007/08/14/radeon_hd_2600_xt_vs_geforce_8600_gt/16

The 8600 is the better performer and is the minimum requirement according to Black Ops.
So his 2400 is waaaay below the minimum.

Regarding your situation, a Quadcore really won't have much effect on your gaming.

If you could get a bit more grunt from your e7300 it would probably outrun a stock Q6600 (when it comes to gaming)
If you like to encode stuff while playing then a quad core would be an essential upgrade.

I'm building a cheap rig myself atm and will probably opt for a 5770, its a decent card that should keep me happy for a while at least.

I reckon if you're happy with your PCs performance now then hold onto your money and when you're suddenly not happy with your framerate, then upgrade.

Sorry, you are right of course. I forgot how crap naming conventions for graphics cards are.

Thanks for all the help!

marco_polo

My thinking was mainly that it is a shame to have a nice HD capable graphics card and such a small monitor.

It is certainly true that in games than cannot use more than two cores the Q6600 would lose a small % of FPS slower than your current e7300. However this small loss would be be insignifigant when compared to the performance gap between the two where a game can can take advantage of more than two cores IMO.

Certainly the 'faster dual core is better for gaming' was a very valid argument until quite recently however I feel that the list of games released that cannot take advanage of tri/quad cores is getting smaller and smaller all the time.

If you spend 150 odd on a just the processor, I just dont see what you could do with the remaining 50 to improve the rest of the system as it stands.

Lu Tze

Bare in mind the Inspiron 530 may not be able to take a quad core. I reckon he only needs a GPU upgrade, i had similar and was able to play Just Cause 2 at 1080p on medium settings once i stuck a HD5770 in there

farna_boy

OK so I was talking to him last night and he has roughly €200 to spend plus say xmas presents. He also said he ran a test which said his graphics card was ok, so maybe I got the min specs wrong.

So I came up with the following solutions with and without GFX cards:

Low Budget Option:
2GB DDR2 RAM ~ €50
E7500
(Graphics Card 5750 ~€100)

Alternative Build:
Motherboard: SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY PURE CrossFireX 890G - Socket AM3 €90

Processor: AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz €65

RAM:CORSAIR XMS3 Xtreme Performance 2 x 1 GB DDR3-1333 €40

This build is of course if his current case is big enough and takes ATX boards and his PSU is up to scratch.