Need advice on a possible upgrade

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WarLust

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 20, 2004
Messages
329
My current gaming rig is in my signature and I am thinking about upgrading a few components. I wanted to get some opinions from my favorite community. I mostly game with some office work thrown in. The games I play are some of the most demanding, so I try to keep everything updated yearly.

1).. Will an i7 920 be a substantial upgrade for me over my 3.6 OC Q6600?
2). If Yes to the first question, would I benefit the most from an ASUS Rampage II Extreme since I love my Maximus II Extreme?
3). 6 or 12 GB for DDR3? 1600 or 2000? I do plan to OC and my goal will be 4.0
4). Any suggestions on a new video card? I feel the 512 MB on my 4870 is holding me back from higher resolutions, AA, etc. Would a new card be justified? I'm usually an nVidia fan, but the 4870 was dominating last year. Is the new 295 worth the money or would I be better off getting a 4870x2 or 285?
5). Will I need a bigger PSU like the Corsair 1000HX?

I don't plan to change my case, monitor, peripherals, or sound card.

Thanks for the input guys ;)
 
WarLust said:
1).. Will an i7 920 be a substantial upgrade for me over my 3.6 OC Q6600?
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For your purposes, probably not.
WarLust said:
2). If Yes to the first question, would I benefit the most from an ASUS Rampage II Extreme since I love my Maximus II Extreme?
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Also probably not. Although the Rampage II Extreme is a great board, if you don't need all the bells and whistles you could probably get just as much from a cheaper board like the ASUS P6T or P6T Deluxe, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5, or EVGA X58 SLI.
WarLust said:
3). 6 or 12 GB for DDR3? 1600 or 2000? I do plan to OC and my goal will be 4.0
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1600 will be sufficient for hitting 4GHz assuming your CPU is capable. 6GB will be enough for gaming and office work, although you may want to upgrade to 12GB anyway at some point just for the extra capacity.
WarLust said:
4). Any suggestions on a new video card? I feel the 512 MB on my 4870 is holding me back from higher resolutions, AA, etc. Would a new card be justified? I'm usually an nVidia fan, but the 4870 was dominating last year. Is the new 295 worth the money or would I be better off getting a 4870x2 or 285?
Click to expand...
What higher resolutions do you want to play at? A GTX285 would be sufficient for maxing out most games (in other words, everything except for Crysis) at the native resolution of your monitor. A 4870X2 would be slightly faster in some things. Whether or not it's worth going with the X2 is something you'll have to research and decide for yourself.
WarLust said:
5). Will I need a bigger PSU like the Corsair 1000HX?
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For an i7 system with a single video card, no.
 
Well, Zero82z pretty much nailed that one totally. If you're mainly an FPS gamer (first person shooter, not frames per second :p ), then i7 won't make much difference for you unless you go SLI or Crossfire, in which case i7 will do better overall. RTS gaming will definately benefit from an equally clocked i7 over a kentsfield, I have both sitting side by side. The i7 can hold it's own WAY further then C2Q into some of the crazy modded out massive RTS battles I've gotten into. Flight Sim X and other sims will benefit quite a bit from i7 as well. The X3 series of games has stood out to me in playing though some of the thicker battles much better on i7 as well.

Load up Farcry 2 or Crysis or CoD and you won't feel any kind of real difference. Load up WiC or FSX and the kentsfield gets buried. Gaming is a real mixed bag for i7 over the previous generation.

Encoding, content creation, folding@home, and some other more processor intensive apps also will show i7 in more of an overall positive light. The busier you can keep your CPU, the more you'll appreciate getting a 920 and pushing it to the same clocks as your Q6600 without batting an eyelid, before you even get REALLY started overclocking it :p
 
Thanks guys. I would like some more opinions, but I am starting to think I should maybe wait until the new revision of the X58 boards come out (May?). At this point, I know I don't need to sink anymore money into a dead end tech (Socket 775 and DDR2). I'm thinking I will need a new video card at least. I am willing to try SLI or CF (maybe two 285's) later this year, so I might as well upgrade my PSU to the 1000HX. I could wait on the other things in the mean time, but if anyone else wants to chime in, that would be great.
 
I'd wait. i7 is fast, but for gaming, a 3+Ghz quad is all you need for just about everything save FSX.
 
silent-circuit said:
I'd wait. i7 is fast, but for gaming, a 3+Ghz quad is all you need for just about everything save FSX.
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Did you not read what I typed above? There's a few games that do better on i7 over C2Q. No, a 3Ghz quad won't handle quite a few gaming scenarios. Nothing short of a 3.6Ghz i7 will handle the kind of RTS gaming I do.
 
moshpit said:
Did you not read what I typed above? There's a few games that do better on i7 over C2Q. No, a 3Ghz quad won't handle quite a few gaming scenarios. Nothing short of a 3.6Ghz i7 will handle the kind of RTS gaming I do.
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I play SupCom too, man. Not exactly hurting here.
 
silent-circuit said:
I play SupCom too, man. Not exactly hurting here.
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Then you play little scenarios. How many times have you played it on an 80km x 80km map with 7 Sorian (an AI mod that makes the enemies MUCH smarter) AI's? Don't tell me C2Q plays that all the way through, I will call shens. I know for a fact it won't. I've been trying to finish the map called World Conquest for over 2 years now. I wasn't able to play it to it's conclusion until I got a Core i7.

I hate it when people barely stress a game and then claim that's how it will always run. Try pushing your game engines a bit more THEN come back and talk. If you use the canned benchmark, you have no clue what your talking about. The canned benchmark is a GPU test, it never stresses the CPU. 2 AI's with less then 300 units each? HAHAHA! That's lame. Try 80 THOUSAND units, 10K per side, 7 AI's + your units, and put all that on the biggest map SupCom supports. THAT is a real test. Not the wanna be test that comes with the game.
 
moshpit said:
Another game that puts i7 to good use, indeed!
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haha yep.

Actually, FSX didn't run too badly on my 32-bit Vista laptop, with a 2.53 Ghz Duo Core, but I uninstalled it because I needed to make room for all my torrents. I look forward to playing it again someday when I have a sweet (desktop) rig.
 
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