Upgrading system

fantomau

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 25, 2007
Messages
3,367
Thought about upgrading my sys with these:

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131365


Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225


G.SKILL PI Series 6GB (3 x 2GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231335


I already have a good video card, psu, monitor, and hdds.

Any suggestions?
 
If you want it, and need it, then I can't really think of anything wrong with it. The 930 will clock to the moon, and the ASUS board and G.Skill RAM will help it do that.
 
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
1a) What exactly you are trying to accomplish with this upgrade? Increased gaming performance?
6) Will you be overclocking?
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
8) When do you plan on upgrading the PC?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
 
are you near a Microcenter? If so, i7 930 is $200.

btw, if you sell your ddr2, pm me. ;)
 
What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
1a) What exactly you are trying to accomplish with this upgrade? Increased gaming performance?

Performance


6) Will you be overclocking?


I'd like to,Yes


7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?


I have a 25" lcd monitor


8) When do you plan on upgrading the PC?


Not in a rush


9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.


Well for 1 thing, I like my current mobo,except that the video card takes away a sata connection. I'd like to SLI in the future.
 
What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
1a) What exactly you are trying to accomplish with this upgrade? Increased gaming performance?

Performance



That answer does not help nor is it clear at all. Performance for what? A performance increase in what?

Read the above quoted questions again and answer again please.
 
I guess better performances in games and digital work.

What do you mean by digital work? Like video editing or photoshop?

Oh and you're not gonna see that much of a performance increase in gaming with a Core i7 930 over your current Q9650.
 
Yes, Video editing

Well in regards to the Asus mobo you chose: it's a good mobo but overpriced IMO for the features it offers. I recommend this mobo instead which has SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0:
$210 - Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 ATX Motherboard

Also, that RAM is overpriced considering for $30 more, you can get 2GB more RAM:
$220 - 2 x G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
 
Also, that RAM is overpriced considering for $30 more, you can get 2GB more RAM:
$220 - 2 x G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
Erm...what? The extra 2GB won't be any help to him anyways, since he wants, and you have given him a recommendation for, a motherboard for the X58 chipset, which has triple channel memory.

Ok, The sata6gb, Would I need a new hdd as well?
It's just that in the future if you decide to upgrade to an SSD then it has room to stretch with SATA 6Gb/s rather than saturating SATA 3G. You can use all your HDDs with SATA 6G, but it just gives you more options.
 
Erm...what? The extra 2GB won't be any help to him anyways, since he wants, and you have given him a recommendation for, a motherboard for the X58 chipset, which has triple channel memory.

The X58 chipset has been shown to run RAM in dual channel mode just fine In addition, the performance difference between triple and dual channel is pretty small from what I've seen and heard so far. That extra 2GB of RAM will be more useful in video editing than the triple channel RAM.

It's definitely not the most optimal solution but still a better solution for the money than the G.Skill set he had in his OP.

That eVGA mobo is fine. But the short 1-year warranty and the fact that the Gigabyte has more features for just $10 more makes it a less than ideal buy.
 
The X58 chipset has been shown to run RAM in dual channel mode just fine In addition, the performance difference between triple and dual channel is pretty small from what I've seen and heard so far. That extra 2GB of RAM will be more useful in video editing than the triple channel RAM.

Actually, 8GB (4 x 2GB) will run in a "Flex" memory mode in which 6GB will run in triple-channel and 2GB will run in single-channel. All three channels should be populated before the second DIMM slot of one of the channels can be populated; otherwise, the system may not POST. Some X58 motherboards will not allow you to run 4 sticks of RAM in dual-channel mode; thus, the Flex mode is the only mode you can use if you have such a motherboard. Others theoretically can - but there is no guarantee that such a pure dual-channel mode in an i7-9xx processor would even work reliably with 4 sticks.
 
Last edited:
I've run my X58-UD4P with 4 sticks before, and it ran fine. However, I'd still suggest either 6GB or 12GB instead, to make the most out of things. So, 3 of those 4GB kits Danny listed or 1 - 2 of these instead:
$170 - G.SKILL 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3-1600 F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ 9-9-9-24 1.5V – 1.6V

You can setup a RAMDisk with the excess RAM. :D
 
Can someone please comment on this?

I mean, are we going to see any significant or worthwhile improvement from his current setup?

There will be significant improvement in video editing over his current setup as shown by this review:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-975-950_9.html#sect0

The QX770 used in the above review is clocked 200Mhz higher the OP's Q9650 so it's a a fair comparison.

The above review does show a scaling, of sorts, as you go higher and higher in clock speed with the Core i7. Since the OP is planning on overclocking and the only major differences between the Core i7 CPUs in the above review is clock speed, one can use the above reviews as a scale of sorts for overclocking performance increases. A 3.2GHz OC is relatively easy to acheive with the Core i7 920/930.
 
Back
Top