Upgrade Help

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ferrisnox

Gawd
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
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So I'm thinking of upgrading my main rig. I'm on a Phenom II 940 3.0Ghz Quadcore.
I play some games(COD,BCB2), lots of photo editing, sometimes 3D animation etc...

I recently put in a Geforce 470, but didn't get the boost I thought I would and consensus was I was processor limited. Here's what I'm thinking but am open to other suggestions:


  • GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 $199
  • Processor wise i7 I was thinking 930, but if I can go cheaper and do a reasonable overclock I'm open to that as well. (under $300.00)
  • Please recommend some decent memory (~$130.00)

Thoughts/Suggestions? This would probably be the last upgrade I would make for quite a long time so I'm also thinking not necessarily go cheap. How much of a performance boost would I see? Current specks are in my profile. Thanks
 
Sandy Bridge/ Bulldozer is next year. So it would be hard for me too suggest upgrading into near EOL socket.
 
There's gonna be a performance boost but not a large enough performance boost to justify the additional $500 to $630 for it. In addition, as lt_shiro noted, with Intel's new socket coming so soon, it's a tad hard to recommend an i7 setup these days. If you can, I'd hold off on the upgrade.

If you can though, OC that 940. That' should provide a decent boost.
 
ferrisnox said:
Thanks guys, thats good advice I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, even if Intel's new CPUs weren't coming, we still wouldn't have recommended the i7 930/950 in the first place for a gaming PC:

The 2.8Ghz Core i7 930 only provides about a 2 to 5FPS increase over the i5 750 as shown in this review:
http://www.legionhardware.com/articl..._debate,1.html

Additional proof: The $1040 3.3Ghz Core i7 975 Extreme Edition CPU is only 15% to 30% faster than the i5 750 with only a specific set of games and video cards:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...ames-2010.html

So considering the the i7 975 is faster than the i7 930 and 950 and yet only provides 15% to 30% under ideal conditions, the Core i7 930 or 950 is definitely not gonna be that much faster than the i5 750 or i5 760. In addition, there's very little real world difference between triple channel and dual channel RAM in real world apps and games.
 
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