Upgrading next week need opinions

[Pete301]

Hi, I posted a month or so back stating that I was planning to upgrade my current PC. I have now got the funds to do so and am just waiting on the 7850 to be available to actually buy. I would just like to know if all of it is compatible and worth while. Ok here goes:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 (because it has a firewire port)
CPU: Xeon E3-1230
GFX card: 7850 2GB or GTX 560 448 Core
Ram: 16GB 4x4GB Corsair XMS3

The pc will be for gaming and audio editing/mixing/producing. I would prefer to go AMD graphics wise but if the 560 ti 448 core is significantly cheaper then I think I'd have to be stupid to go for it. My only query I have about choosing the 560 ti is whether my 550w xclio PSU will be able to give it enough juice.

Am I stupid to be going for the Z68 board instead of waiting a bit for the Z77? I feel like I have been waiting for ages. I already have the case, monitor etc. Is there any reason for me to get something different or to wait longer? I suppose it will depend on how much the HD7850 will be when it comes out.

Thanks in advance.

[Pete301]

Nobody got any thoughts? Just realised that ram is going up in price. However there is a today only for 16GB 1333mhz ram on scan for £63.

Is 16GB too much? Or is it worth getting it while it's cheap?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It looks fine. 8GB should be enough but it depends on what actual work you are doing. What model of PSU do you have??

The HD7850 2GB consumes much less power than a GTX560TI 448,although the latter is probably a tad faster ATM.

[Pete301]

It's a greatpower Xclio 550W. It's rated at 80plus, but not bronze or anything, it's about 3 years old I think. I think I will probably go for the 7850 if it hovers around £190 *crosses fingers*.

[EvanJackPenn]

AFAIK, the 7850 is out tomorrow going by this.

[bigdaz84]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...mark,3148.html

This says the 19th too. You would think there would be the option to pre order if it was.

Just get 8GB ram and put the extra money towards a psu. Why the Xeon instead of an i5-2500k for gaming? Easily hits 4.5Ghz where as the Xeon can't be overclocked. If you were video editing/producing I could see that hyperthreading could help but not for audio editing and gaming.

I was gonna get the msi gtx 560 ti 448 power edition from Scan this week but I didn't know the 7800 series was coming out. Now I don't know what to do so thanks for that . If you look at the benchmarks in the Tom's Hardware link it sits exactly where you would expect the 560 ti 448 to be. I always like to buy things where I can see proper reviews of the actual product and not an unmarked product from the manufacturer. I'd honestly just wait until the end of the week at least. See if there are any in depth articles on varying 7850 performance, power consumption, temperature etc. I'm gonna try and hold out til then but that pci express slot looks awful lonely.

Answer me this. I have an Asus gen3 board with a gen2 i5-2500k cpu in it. Am I right to think that it will be at pci 2.0 and not 3.0 because of the cpu. I'm not sure it would make a great difference anyway.

[Pete301]

The Xeon will help out in audio editing, and i dont plan to overclock, i would have to spend a further £30+ on a good air cooler which would put me over the price of the xeon anyway. As I will be doing a lot of sound for video, there will be a lot of stress on the cpu. I don't think that the mid-high range cards will get affected by being used in pci-e 2. I don't even know if the 7970 takes any advantage of PCI-e 3. Think I will tae you up on the idea of just having 8GB of ram then putting the saved amount towards a PSU if the current one can't handle it.