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need advice on upgrade

G

glasswalkerny

n00b
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Messages
9
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
PC Gaming, Video/Music Storage/Playback

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
<$500

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
White Plains, NY (prefer getting parts from Microcenter <Yonkers>)

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word
"Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU, Ram, Processor

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
PNY NVIDIA GeForce 460 GTX
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
Cooler Master HAF 922 Case
Cooler Master GX 750 (RS-750-ACAA-E3)
Asus Xonar DX PCI-E Soundcard
LG W2340 Monitor (1920x1080)
Western Digital Caviar Green Hard Drives: 1-1TB & 1-2TB
Western Digital Caviar Black Hard Drives: 2-1TB
OCZ Vertex Plus 128GB SSD
TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S203N Burner (Definate Future Upgrade as drive is getting "flaky")
Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Dragon Age II Edition Keyboard
Razer Naga Epic Mouse
Logitech G13 Gaming Keypad

6) Will you be overclocking?
No

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
1920x1080 23"

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Soon (current mobo/proc/ram dead unable/too expensive to find replacements on gen 1 intel parts)

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
Sata to handle 6 devices

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Situation: Intel I7 970/Asus P6X58D-E w/6gb ram died.. as getting anything besides the ram is a hassle and i am due for an upgrade anyway I'm looking to get newer gen stuff...

Questions:

As my budget for a gaming rig is so low should i go with an Intel I5 (2nd or 3rd gen) or go back to AMD which seems to not upgrade their sockets every 6 months?

What I was looking at so far was either
Intel:
Core I5 3450

Gigabyte
GA-Z77X-UD5H

Corsair
Vengeance Series 16GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL10 RAM

Total w/ Tax = $490

or would the following AMD setup be fine for gaming:

AMD:
AMD Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7GHz
Corsair
Vengeance Series 16GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL10 RAM

Gigabyte
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 or
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

$434 with UD5 mobo
$353 with UD3 mobo

I Play games like City of Heroes, Secret World, Fallout 3/NV, Oblivion/Skyrim, Rage.. etc and would like Skyrim(modded)/Rage (worst resource hogs I play) to run well

I know i'll eventially have to find a 2gb video card for the texure mods i want to run Skyrim with but that's a future upgrade...
 
glasswalkerny said:
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Soon (current mobo/proc/ram dead unable/too expensive to find replacements on gen 1 intel parts)
Click to expand...
Can you be more specific? Within 2 weeks? A month? How soon is soon?

So your Intel CPU, Asus mobo, and RAM no longer have warranty?

Intel all the way here. Significantly better CPU performance and an actual performance improvement (although a tad small) over your current i7. The AMD would be a massive downgrade in performance for you.

As for your planned Intel setup, the motherboard is overkill for your needs. You should be fine with the Asus P8Z77-V LK or Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H.
 
well my only hesitaion with Intel is due to the speed at which they replace socket designs..

Soon being hopefully the next week or so (otherwise no gaming rig til October)

I did change some of the parts around (dropped to 8gb ram, went with a current AM3+ proc due to availablity issues and made a decision about the AMD mobo)

So my 2 possibilities are (within $3 of each other too)

Intel Core i5 3450
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H
Vengeance Series 8GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL9 1.5v

OR

AMD FX6100 Black Hexa-Core
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
Vengeance Series 8GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL9 1.5v

Both come in at around $390 with tax.. and would be better on my budget than the $490 my original Intel rig idea was..

Is the AMD still a big performance hit compared to the i5?

I also have had better luck with Gigabyte mobos lately so I'd prefer staying with them.
 
glasswalkerny said:
well my only hesitaion with Intel is due to the speed at which they replace socket designs..
Click to expand...
When it comes to future CPU upgrade paths, you're better off just ignoring it. Simply put, both sides are bad when it comes to future CPU upgrade paths. AMD is guilty of changing socket numerous times as well: in the period between 2006 and 2012, AMD have released 5 sockets (AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1) with a 6th one (FM2) being released this year. Nor was it ever guaranteed that your AM2+ mobo would support AMD's AM3+ CPUs. During that same period, Intel released 4 (socket LGA 1366, LGA 1156, LGA 1555, LGA 2011) (5 if you're counting socket 775 with chipsets that supported the C2D/C2Q CPUs) new sockets. The newest Intel socket is coming out next year.

So neither Intel nor AMD offer compelling or cost-effective CPU upgrade paths. So basically, whatever CPU you get today, that's probably the CPU you'll stay with till your next CPU + mobo + RAM change.

glasswalkerny said:
Is the AMD still a big performance hit compared to the i5?
Click to expand...
Yup. Even the dual-core Core i3 2120 would beat the crap out of that FX6100 when it comes to gaming.
 
Ok well I guess i'll go for the Intel rig.. and Soon just turned into NOW (well in an hour when microcenter opens)...

and thanks for the advice...

I'll have to come back by here when I look into possible Video/CPU Water Cooling/Burner upgrades :)
 
trust me it's better than what i had before my last upgrade (couldn't run an i7 970/GeForce GTX 260 215/with 2 hard drives)... and if i *needed* it now i'd get it but it'll go in the future upgrade list.. my plan for a video upgrade is to get to a 2gb card.. i'll probably be only looking at the 2gb version of my card or something in the 500 series for now (not a bunch of spare cash at the moment)

Just for future reference, can you recommend a decent power supply for what i have with room to upgrade to a better video card (see above for what i'm looking at..) and possible Corsair H80 type CPU water cooler?
 
Last edited:
I'm a little late to the party, but if you're going to Microcenter, I believe they have the 3570k + free mobo for $170 (+tax) OTD.
 
glasswalkerny said:
Just for future reference, can you recommend a decent power supply for what i have with room to upgrade to a better video card (see above for what i'm looking at..) and possible Corsair H80 type CPU water cooler?
Click to expand...

The Antec Neo Eco 620C 620W PSU or the Corsair TX650 V2 650W PSU will be more than enough.
 
Please let me know, if you end up coming back here - how easy you found the board to set up.

I just got mine last week and I had a warm time getting it just right. The VIA ports are extremely unstable and the Intel ports are unreliable outside of Windows. My G19 keyboard and G930 headset also didn't play nicely with the system. I got mine stable today, after adding a usb 2 bracket with 4 ports and putting 2 hubs and most of my usb devices on it.

Let me know how it went for you.
 
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