About to pull the trigger on an upgrade. Any thoughts?

C

Cmdrmonkey

Gawd
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I already have a 1GB GTX 460, and I'm now looking to upgrade my CPU, motherboard, and RAM which are about four years old.

I currently have a Core 2 Duo E6600, 4GB Corsair XMS DDR2, Intel D975XBX2. I'm looking at upgrading to an i5 760, 8GB Mushkin DDR3, Gigabyte P55 USB3, which with a combo deal I can get on newegg for around $400 shipped. I'll be reusing my video card, case (Antec P180), power supply (PC Power and Cooling 610W), HDDs, optical drive, and Zalman CPU cooler (which also works on the 1156 socket type).

Is this a worthwhile upgrade? Should I wait for sandybridge? Does the hyperthreading on the i7 really make that big of a difference, or is the i5 just fine? I'm really tempted to go ahead because the prices, especially on ram, are dirt cheap at the moment.
 
At the very least waiting a week for SB should at get you some cheaper prices.

Right now the Core I5 700s are the happy medium on the Intel side.

As for the CPU, it really depends on what you do. Most people will be fine with a quad core without hyper threading. Only specific programs even take advantage of multi-core/threading right now. But browsers are getting multi-threaded as are games. So in a year or two hyper-threading might be a decent plus.

In regards to the amount memory you probably won't even notice much of a difference between 4GB & 8GB if you're not doing photo/video editing. EDIT: Forget this, I just checked 8GB is really damn cheap now.

Depending how often you upgrade spending an extra $50 - $100 on the CPU might be better for you in the long run. Wait until next week to see what happens, you might even be able to get a good deal on a SB CPU & mobo.
 
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I'm in the same boat as you (4 year old E6600 user) ... don't buy a 760 or whatever right this moment, wait for Sandy Bridge.
 
I agree with everyone elso so far, you would be a fool not to wait 7 days for Sandy Bridge, that doesn't necessarily mean you should buy SB, but prices on all current i7 cpus and mobos are going to drop once it hits.
If you do go sandy bridge (which I recommend, you can already buy 1155 motherboards, if you are eager to start putting things together... the cpus probably not till the 4th or 5th of jan.)
 
I'm an E6550 user and am waiting for SB. If I were you I'd wait too, that $200 chip looks to be an insane bargain versus the current i7 parts.
 
Cmdrmonkey said:
I already have a 1GB GTX 460, and I'm now looking to upgrade my CPU, motherboard, and RAM which are about four years old.

I currently have a Core 2 Duo E6600, 4GB Corsair XMS DDR2, Intel D975XBX2. I'm looking at upgrading to an i5 760, 8GB Mushkin DDR3, Gigabyte P55 USB3, which with a combo deal I can get on newegg for around $400 shipped. I'll be reusing my video card, case (Antec P180), power supply (PC Power and Cooling 610W), HDDs, optical drive, and Zalman CPU cooler (which also works on the 1156 socket type).

Is this a worthwhile upgrade? Should I wait for sandybridge? Does the hyperthreading on the i7 really make that big of a difference, or is the i5 just fine? I'm really tempted to go ahead because the prices, especially on ram, are dirt cheap at the moment.
Click to expand...

I have the exact same CPU, RAM and MB, I'm waiting for SB for a new
build after 3 1/2 years.

I will gut my Corsair 550HX PS, in favor of a bigger supply and a bigger HD
and SSD. Will go with at least 4 gigs RAM and a new video card.

Since I'm not an avid gamer, it only needs to be a good fast system for programming.

Will reuse my case.
 
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In the same boat here. Got a hafx case and thermaltake 750w psu for xmas. My e6400 and 2gb's ocz are aching to be replaced. I almost got the i5760 and gigabyte board combo deal on boxing day but decided to wait a few weeks and see if prices come down.
 
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