Upgrade Path

T

thedocta45

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2007
Messages
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Well its getting to that time again, upgrade time.
Last time I was looking my job prospects dried up right before I pulled the trigger.

I am looking to get the best bang for buck upgrade I can get.

With the 660 coming out soon I am thinking of picking one of those up, or after reading the review maybe jump to a 7870.

My current mobo is having some issues overclocking, it wont stay stable outside of stock speeds any longer, it could be the RAM, but I don't think its worth throwing 50 or 100 bucks at to find out, what part is acting up. Truth be told it was never a stellar overclocker to begin with.

PSU is a Corsair 750TX i think it might be a 650, but that should be enough.

So given stock clocks on a Q7800, am I going to see much of an upgrade?

Also if anyone has a LGA775 board on the cheap with ram for under 50 I might consider that as well.
 
I think you might be heavily CPU-limited for either of those GPUs if you stay on a LGA775 platform--or rather, I would say if you care about bang-for-buck, you could probably get away with a much cheaper GPU and not notice a bit of difference with the Q6700. What resolution are you planning to game with? Or better question--do you generally play current games?

If it were me, I'd sooner upgrade the CPU/mobo/RAM.
 
Wouldnt cost you anything to run a memtest -- boot off a cd or something and let it run overnight to see if there is any failures on the memory.

I am torn, your entire system is kinda dated. Normally i would still recommend to get a new video card, but since your having issues with cpu/ram/motherboard might be wise to replace that instead of going with a GPU. Also, no reason you need to buy current generation, i just picked up a used PNY 470 GTX for $80 and really digging the performance per dollar ratio
 
LoL, wow just realized that there is no such thing as a q7800, going to have to fix my sig.
Yeah I am looking into a CPU/mobo/RAM upgrade as an alternate

I play at 1650x1050.
Would be nice to see DX11.
Most recent game I played was the new Max Payne and that ran okay.
I would like to check out Sleeping Dogs.

Do you think I would see a bigger jump staying with a 260 and spending 300 or so on an i5/mobo/RAM upgrade, and then picking up a gpu a later next year?

Would actually be 400 after all is said and done.

CPU:i5 2500k
Mobo:Asus P8Z77
RAM:Samsung 8GB
 
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[H]ardOCP has done extensive testing in the past that showed GPU performance to be several times more significant to game performance than CPU or memory. Unless your CPU is a real dinosaur, and in my opinion it isn't, a GPU boost provides the biggest results. CPU helps, but we're talking 10% gains vs. 50% here. There are a handful of games that are supposedly more CPU dependent, but they are rare.
 
For your resolution a 670 would be more than enough, and a 660 would probably hit the sweet spot. That is assuming that you have a quad core of some type...
 
I had a q6600 @ 3.4GHz and the original GTX260. Had a 1680x1050 monitor. After a while I upgraded to a GTX460 and noticed a large difference in some games, and pretty much no difference in other games (like WoW). Now I changed to a 3570k and saw a huge boost with that same card in most newer games, especially in BF3. And I still didn't have a chance to overclock this thing.
If I were you, I'd buy a SB/IB system, then upgrade the GPU sometime later this year. I'd imagine a 660 or a 660ti would be more than enough, since even my ancient GTX460 runs BF3 multiplayer at 40++ FPS set to medium/high @ 1920x1200. So with any of those cards high/ultra should be running perfectly.
It really depends on a game you want to run, but the Q6xxx CPUs are quite dated by now (five years). You wouldn't really keep a gpu for five years and hope that it will run everything without a hitch.
 
I doubt I would pickup an a 670, after all is said and done, its just to much money for me to drop on one part.

If I upgrade my gpu this year I won't upgrade my cpu until this coming summer, and vice versa.

Slightly off topic for this forum but will the heatsink in my sig work on the 1155, I have found mixed info on the compatibility?.
 
thedocta45 said:
I doubt I would pickup an a 670, after all is said and done, its just to much money for me to drop on one part.

If I upgrade my gpu this year I won't upgrade my cpu until this coming summer, and vice versa.

Slightly off topic for this forum but will the heatsink in my sig work on the 1155, I have found mixed info on the compatibility?.
Click to expand...

I'm not 100% sure, but there should be a separate bolt-thru kit for a 1155. What happened to me, though, was that I found some people saying that a lot of 1155 motherboards have 775 hole patterns. This made me happy, since I had a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and was pleased with the performance. The problem was, that my ASRock z77 Extreme4 had a plastic clip thing on the backside of the motherboard (behind the CPU socket) which didn't allow me to use TRUE's own metal clip. I think it's an engineering solution for this socket in general, so you will have to check the exact motherboard for compatibility with your old heatsink
EDIT: Ignore those last two sentences. Just checked and saw that your heatsink uses push-pins and not bolts. It should be compatible, as long as the motherboard you choose has a set of 775 holes.
 
Well where you are now the biggest upgrade with be from video to a 660 Ti. That said if there is instability you may want to be prudent and upgrade your mb/cpu first. Consider an x79/3820 combo if there is a Microcenter near you. Otherwise Z77/IB will be a nice upgrade - but don't expect video to perform significantly better.

BTW, whats your typical usage, I'm guessing some gaming?
 
Usage is gaming and video editing.
I might just lurk around trying to pick up a 470 or 480 on the cheap, and upgrade my proc down the road, a 400 investment is a big high for me to manage atm.
 
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