Best path for preformance upgrades

S

sKum

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
Messages
256
I recently bought a bare bones computer and outfitted it with the following:

evga geforce 8800 gts
MSI P6N Platinum
4x1gb ddr2 800 Corsair XMS2 4-4-4-12
E6600 C2D OCed @ 2.8GHz
80GB SATA drive
Enermax 535w PS


What upgrade would give me the best increase in performance? Faster memory, a better cpu, or a faster video card
 
Really it depends on why you want to upgrade. Are games not fast enough? Do you do a lot of video editing/compression and want it to be faster?

Is that an 8800GTS 512MB? If it's a 320MB or 640MB then you could do better, but it wouldn't be a great use of money to upgrade it now, in my opinion.

You don't really get any faster RAM than that in terms of timings, and DDR2-800 is fine (the only reason to get DDR2-1066 is if you're overclocking higher than DDR2-800 will allow; the speed difference is otherwise negligible).

I expect you could overclock that E6600 further with the right cooling. If you wanted to upgrade that to a faster dual core, there's the E8400 (may require a BIOS update), or depending on what you're doing you could look at getting a quad core, if you did video editing etc. I've heard they're not at their happiest on older nVidia chipsets though, and I'm not sure if the upcoming 45nm ones will work on it.

Mostly I don't think I'd be looking to change anything there myself just yet, though, but maybe wait until Nehalem - except the hard drive! That must be a pretty old, slow drive to only be 80GB, and that's not a lot of space?
 
Heh, seriously, what are you doing thats slow?

If you're gaming, what resolution are you gaming at?

Please also answer Mithent's questions.
 
Just gaming right now. I'm really happy with the performance compared to my older PC (socket 438 haha) but in terms of overall progression which would give me the most performance the easiest.

Quad core is always an option but i've read most games don't utilize it and while I could think of several applications that I would use that might, a faster clocked dual core might be better.

I was going to wait till Nvidia released the 9 series before doing an upgrade, since the 8800gts is simply the best card i've ever owned and spending hundreds more for a few more FPS seems pointless.

Would a faster SATA HDD show noticeable improvement? Or perhaps would my money be better spent getting better cooling and seeing how far I can stably push the machine?
 
Please answer enginurd's question about the resolution you're gaming at... and while you're at it, please give use the specific model of the monitor and hard drive you are currently using.
 
It's a Hitachi CRT 21" I think, and I usually play at 1600x1200


HDD Is just an 80GB Wester Digital I pulled from an old dell system I had.
 
Okay, now we need to revisit Mithent's question:

Does the 8800GTS you have contain 320MB, 512MB, or 640MB of memory?

Unless it is the 512MB version, which uses the newer G92 GPU, you may be having problems getting good frame rates with the monitor/resolution you're gaming at.
 
tiraides said:
Okay, now we need to revisit Mithent's question:

Does the 8800GTS you have contain 320MB, 512MB, or 640MB of memory?

Unless it is the 512MB version, which uses the newer G92 GPU, you may be having problems getting good frame rates with the monitor/resolution you're gaming at.
Click to expand...

It doesn't sound to me like he's having any performance issues, but just wants to upgrade for the sake of upgrading something... idk :confused:

Anyway, if I were to upgrade something I'd get a new HDD. If you're happy with the performance is there a reason for your desire to spend money?
 
The question about the 8800GTS is a relevant one. The 320MB card would struggle at 1600x1200; the 640MB card may not be able to play all games at med/high graphics settings; and the G92 512MB would have little trouble playing most games.

But, before I offer a solution, I want to narrow down all of the available possibilities as to why the OP isn't getting great performance.
 
It's the 320MB but I was just thinking down the road, not a right now upgrade
 
You have a CRT... lower the resolution if you want better gaming performance instead of plopping down a huge chunk for a new card, even when the 9000 series comes out -- unless you can sell your current card for a nice price.

You can probably push that E6600 to 3Ghz on the stock cooler. Test it out... try 9x333 at stock voltage and see how high the temps get during Orthos. If they reach over 60°C, stop the test and back it down a bit. Though, you may want to pull two of those ram sticks out when trying the OC... if you have problems at first.
 
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