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Upgrade Suggestions

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Anchen

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 3, 2007
Messages
263
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming like Dragon Age, Starcraft 2, COD:MW2, Borderlands, various FPS with some eye for the future, namely the soon coming FF14 and Crysis 2 next year. General usage like office and email, multimedia, Photoshop. Encoding video files for my Ipod Touch/Droid Incredible for viewing.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$500 before taxes and shipping
3) Where do you live?
NJ, USA
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
Not definite but currently thinking: GPU, SSD, OS
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Corsair HX620, 4 GB DDR2, Q6600, TRUE, Asus P5K-E (P35), DVD Burner, possibly 8800GTX, 2 1TB hard drives. Also currently have a 150gb raptor.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Already did to 3.3 (was 3.6 stable but dialed back during summer)
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Recently upgraded to 24" (1920 x 1200)
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
ASAP
9) What features do you need in a motherboard?
N/A
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
Currently use Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit. Thinking to upgrade to Windows 7.


These are the parts I was thinking about:
$200 - Intel 80 GB X25M Mainstream SATA II Solid-State Drive (SSD) Retail Package SSDSA2MH080G2R5
$100 - Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit System Builder 1pk
$170 - GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-768I GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Here's my current reasons for upgrading, primarily I want to replace the raptor which I got for cheap a while ago but is proving to be rather loud, and I'd like to replace it with a better performing and quieter SSD. 80GB seems to fit my needs although I am willing to look at other brands and sizes for price/size/performance. I'd like to put my OS, my most commonly used apps (some encoding programs, photoshop, office), and a few select games at a time.

I figure this would be a good time to make the jump to Win 7 also, and I'd prefer to do a clean install. As for the graphics card it was more a general upgrade since some games feel a bit worse off now that I have upgraded to a 24" monitor from a 20", but I am finding performance for the moment still acceptable for my main current game Starcraft 2, but that is not a very graphically intense game in general. However not sure about FF14 (I haven't tried the beta but other friends plan to give it a try so I will too), and Crysis 2 is definitely a game I want to play next year. I am looking at a cooler, lower power and quieter card also if possible and the gigabyte is supposedly rather quiet. I think the 1GB version though would give better performance at my resolution and if it is recommended I can either wait til the 6xxx AMD series comes out to see if they are better/nvidia price drops, or to just spend the extra to get the 460 1gb. I'd rather keep in the 500 dollar pre tax/shipping budget but I'm also willing to listen on suggestions.

Edit: I am also open to upgrades of things not listed but I feel like my ram/cpu/motherboard are currently ok for my purposes. I will probably do a more formal upgrade when mainstream 6 cores from intel are released, but again I am listening if anyone has suggestions not listed. These were my thoughts for my current purposes.
 
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Yeah definitely spend the extra cash for the 1GB version. Also OC your Q6600 as it high as it can. Sadly, the Q6600 is already becoming a big limitation in gaming performance.
 
Danny Bui said:
Yeah definitely spend the extra cash for the 1GB version. Also OC your Q6600 as it high as it can. Sadly, the Q6600 is already becoming a big limitation in gaming performance.
Click to expand...

Is the Q6600 limiting these days? I assumed that at 1920x1200 or above it would still be mostly GPU limited but I admit I haven't followed the cpu/gaming performance in a while. I know there was some CPU limited benchmarks on some games run at 1680x1050 and lower but I assumed above I could mostly just upgrade the vid card for now. I'll probably kick the OC back up to 3.6 or so as it gets cooler, as I generally don't run air conditioning so I dialed it back in the summer (+ it was way hotter and for more days this summer than I ever remember).

@lt_shiro: I saw some people with decent heatware's (no negative) selling the intel 80gb at 150. I know that the vertex benchmarks slightly better but 20gb is a fairly significant amount and I think for main OS usage the random small read performance is still top notch on the intel. I may go that route and use the savings to get the 1gb version as suggested. Otherwise I'll pick up the vertex you suggested. What do you guys think?
 
Anchen said:
Is the Q6600 limiting these days? I assumed that at 1920x1200 or above it would still be mostly GPU limited but I admit I haven't followed the cpu/gaming performance in a while. I know there was some CPU limited benchmarks on some games run at 1680x1050 and lower but I assumed above I could mostly just upgrade the vid card for now. I'll probably kick the OC back up to 3.6 or so as it gets cooler, as I generally don't run air conditioning so I dialed it back in the summer (+ it was way hotter and for more days this summer than I ever remember).
Click to expand...
With many newer games these days, they're now CPU and GPU limited. I.e. GTA 4, ME2, and BC2. So at high resolutions, the CPU still matter.
Anchen said:
@lt_shiro: I saw some people with decent heatware's (no negative) selling the intel 80gb at 150. I know that the vertex benchmarks slightly better but 20gb is a fairly significant amount and I think for main OS usage the random small read performance is still top notch on the intel. I may go that route and use the savings to get the 1gb version as suggested. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

I'd go with the Intel since they're more trustworthy IMO than OCZ.
 
Danny Bui said:
With many newer games these days, they're now CPU and GPU limited. I.e. GTA 4, ME2, and BC2. So at high resolutions, the CPU still matter.


I'd go with the Intel since they're more trustworthy IMO than OCZ.
Click to expand...

Ok, checked the results. Seems to make sense, although it seems with a decent overclock things aren't too too bad. If we go with this now:

$150 - OCZ vertex2 60gb or a resell of 80GB Intel X25-M
$100 - Win7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM
$225 - MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi)

Would be a good fit for what I am trying to do? Would you do anything different from a general day-to-day performance and gaming perspective?
 
I'd go for a Gigabyte branded card but besides that, looks like something I would do,.
 
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