Upgrade Decision

Hi All,

Just want to pick your brains for a min.
I've got some cash saved up, around £400 at the mo, adding around £50 a month to the pot. Just bought Call of Duty 4 and tried Crysis demo and realised that my rig is beggining to really struggle to cope with the 1920X1200 resolution i use.

So do I either;

1 - Upgrade current rig with a pair of 8800GT's (when I can get my hands on some)

2 - Keep on saving till I can buy a complete new £1k rig in about 8-10 months time, and make do in the meantime?

What do you all think? Would the GT's keep me in the game as it were?

Current rig is

MD Athlon 64 X2 4800
ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
2 Gb Samsung ram
2 X Leadtek 7800GTX ViVo - In SLI
250Gb SATA 16mb buffer
500Gb Sata 16mb buffer
Soundblaster XiFi Fatal1ty
Creative T7900 7.1
Dell 2405 Widescreen Monitor
Razer Copperhead mouse

I'd say save and create a new rig next year. At least then we may be in a position to say whether DX10 is worth it or not.

system looks alright to me, save for cpu might be underpowered. is it overclocked, you could go for a cheap upgrade by getting a good after market cooler and blitzing the clock speed.

so for £40 max you'll have something that can last for until you have a complete overhaul. I'm guessing 2 x 7800GTX is alright for playing crysis at you res?!

X2 4800 at 2.4ghz is fine although a little overclocking is always the order of the day :devilish: I would use Fraps or run a Crysis benchmark etc and then compare it with the reviews of the 8800GT (and GTX) to see what sort of improvement you would get at your resolution.

As above I don't think it's worth your upgrading yet. If necessary sell the 7800GTXs and get yourself a 8800GT and overclock the processor to 2.7Ghz (that's a 12.5% overclock - easily achievable).

This should cost you basically nothing (sell the 7800GTX for approx. £70 each) and the 8800GT about £150-£160

Then get saving for the next 3 months. Build yourself a cash pot of £500 plus, and based on current tech:

Q6000 processor - £160
Gigabyte P35 mobo - £60
4Gb DDR2 PC6400 (2x2Gb) - £90
After market CPU cooler + 2 no. 120mm fans - £50
Second 8800GT? - £140? (in a couple of months)

= £500

Less the sale of your current main or second rig.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk

Gigabyte P35 mobo - £60

Second 8800GT? - £140? (in a couple of months)

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Two 8800gt will need an sli board :rolleyes:
An 680i chipset board is going to be twice the price.

Its not overclocked at the moment. I've never overclocked CPU before, always been too scared of killing off an expensive rig. But I supose that as its a few years old now and I'm considering upgrading its worth the risk.

If I can get a 10% oc on the cpu, and i'll try for a modest clock on the gpu's and see how i do.

On Crysis I could play at medium settings once i reduced a few options further, but not very comfortably.
CoD4 was much better, but I would of liked to have got a few more of the higher end options turned on as well. Considering running games at 1600 X 1200 (I can set the dell to just leave big black bars down the side so I get a native res effectivly) to get the extra fps. Seems a waste of the real estate though.

I'll bench it tonight on the crysis demo and see how it does vs the Tomshardware reviews, that should give me an idea. Thanx for that thought Iranu

7800 GTX's seem to be going for about £50 each at the moment on ebay, to my mind hardly worth selling them!! I'll hold onto them until this becomes my second rig.

Cheers all for your thoughts.