Advice needed: strip or minor upgrade?

[Ebeneezer Dahk]

Hello All,

I'm wondering if it’s worth doing some upgrades to my PC, I don’t really want to buy a new motherboard and processor as my current kit is strong. What do you think, would I end up with too much of a bottle neck on my old proc and mobo?

Current PC Setup:

Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6800 SKT775 (never been overclocked, just never got round to it)
Water Cooled 1x120mm & 1x240mm rads
8GB DDR2 (mish-mash of different modules)
DFI LANParty LT X48-T2RS Board (upgraded a few years ago from a ASUS Striker Extreme which was rubbish from day one)
Nv GTX 260 (used to be an ATI 4870x2 dual-core thingy which died, and before that a watercooled Nv 8800GTX)
Creative X-Fi Sound
Various HDDs, Samsung F1 & WD Raptors
Custom built Lian-Li chassis
Enermax Galaxy 850w (the really huge PSU, very good current over 5 rails if memory serves)(has four 6pin graphics card connectors)

Proposed minor upgrade:

Asus GTX 670 Direct CU II Top 2GB GDDR5
240GB SanDisk Extreme SSD
HighPoint Rocket 620 SATA-III PCI-E card

Total = £560 give or take

Or the complete strip:

SanDisk 240GB Extreme SSD - 2.5" SATA-III - Read 550MB/s Write 520MB/s
Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Socket 1155 VGA DVI HDMI 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache OEM Processor
G-Skill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz RipjawsX Memory Kit CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.5V
ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP 2048MB GDDR5

Total = £850 roughly

If it helps, here’s a list of my current CPU specs as I can't post links yet:

# of Cores 4
# of Threads 4
Clock Speed 2.66 GHz
L2 Cache 8 MB
Bus/Core Ratio 10
FSB Speed 1066 MHz
FSB Parity No
Instruction Set 64-bit
Embedded Options Available No
Supplemental SKU No
Lithography 65 nm
Max TDP 130 W
VID Voltage Range 0.8500V-1.5V

Reason for upgrade:

I can feel my machine getting a bit slower and abysmal FPS in BF3 makes it barely playable (shot in the face) even with all graphics settings turned to minimum and low resolution but that’s not how the game was meant to be played.

Thanks.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The second upgrade although I would get the Samsung 830 for under £150 instead.

Also,AMD is releasing a new version of the HD7970 running at around 1075MHZ soon,meaning you might be able to get some good deals on the HD7970 and HD7950. Aria last week an an HD7950 3GB for £249.99 with three games.

The cheapest option is probably to get an HD7850,GTX480,GTX560TI 448 or GTX570 for under £200,and overclock your CPU.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Posted insteading of editing previous post.

[Phage]

^^What he said. get yourself up to at least a 2500k (if you're on a tight / 2nd hand budget), or preferably a 3570k.

[Bugbait]

Since you're not OC'ing the current it seems reasonable to assume you're not intending to OC your next one either so you will see a jump in performance moving to the IB CPU. GPU is a must as well. If the budget allows definitely go for your option 2 (strip it).

EDIT: With the current and recent generations of Intel CPU's, you will see bigger improvements in games from an increased CPU frequency as opposed to larger L2/L3 cache, etc. You'll also get turbo boost on the CPU out of the box.

[csgohan4]

You might want to check other brands for your components especially Corsair for your ram, it might be cheaper and does the same job in terms of performance.

The Asus direct CUII is quite a big card, do you have enough slots to fit that with your sound card or other PCI cards like WIFI as it takes 3 slots on your motherboard. You might want to consider other brands like MSI or EVGA for example.

Even if you wanted to overclock your CPU, it looks like your water cooled case seems fine if you buy the current CPU plate.

I presume you don't intend to water cool your GPU's?

You can sell most of your gear like motherboard and CPU on Ebay and get some money towards your next build. I had an old Q9450 with a gtx 295 and got about £500 from it all.

The best retailers to look at is SCAN, amazon, Ebuyer.