Upgrade this week:Athlon II X3, MSI 770-c45 & nvidia 9800GT

What is best to buy within my set budget of £200. I'm hoping 'CAT-THE-FIFTH' see this as he seems to be an awesome help in other threads and helped me buy my last rig.

The rig is going to be used as a home computer, photo editing, playing ShogunII: Total War (maybe Skyrim as well) and the odd bit of Adobe CS5 chores. I'm just looking for something to do the job, and get some value for money.

Here is what I currently have:

Mobo: MSI 770-C45, AMD 770, AM3
AMD Athlon II X3 445
GPU: nvidia 9800GT Green 512MB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI_E
DDR: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3
HDD: WD Raptor 74 GB HDD (150 MBps / 10000 rpm) as a boot drive and I also have an old WD 500gb drive for storage.
Sunbeam 3D Storm Black Mid Tower Case with Unique Core-Fan Design - No PSU
Be Quiet Pure Power L7 530 W Power Supply (PSU)
Acer X203 20" Wide LCD Monitor 1600x900 50,000:1(Dynamic) 5ms - Black

I would suggest adding an SSD as the best bang for buck increase in useability, followed by either an extra 2x2gb (or 2x4gb of RAM and sell/use elsewhere the current XMS3) as you mention CS5. Keep the raptor for a scratch drive, and then use the 500gb drive for storage.

Cat-the-fifth will probably know, but what AM3 CPUs are available that are a speedboost? That would save changing everything else (which isn't bad). Graphics card would then be my next port of call, though if you keep the settings to an acceptable rather than 'wow' level you could probably keep the 9800GT for a little longer?

If it were me, I'd stick a 120 gig SSD in there as a boot drive (£70), move the Adobe cache files / pagefiles etc to the raptor. Pick a circa £100 GDDR5 graphics card (GTX560 maybe?). RAM is cheap, Maybe bump to 8 gig with another 2x2gig sticks to use your £200 budget up.

Cheers for the response. So I should be thinking of getting the following sorted:

SSD
It seems that I should be looking for a £83.00 Samsung 830 128GB or £83.00 128GB Crucial M4. I want something that is reliable first.

DDR to 8gb
By adding TWO of these £11.99 2gb sticks. Is it best to match / pair all this? Or shall I buy it all new and eBay the old sticks?

GPU
£131.42 for GeForce GTX 560
I also saw a AMD Radeon HD 6870 OEM - 1 GB GDDR5 - PCI-Express 2.1 for £102.70 @ Pixmania but not as good as 560.

Total = £238.40 over-budget, although i'm sure if I shop about it under.

PS: I may be persuaded to throw another £50-£100 at it but I am very mindful that I'm approaching a new build if I spend too much!

I used some of this in my machine - http://www.ebuyer.com/342352-crucial...d1609ds1s00ceu so I'd argue go for a 2x4gb personally and sell the other stuff on ebay/here.

CPU wise just had a quick look at scan and they only have two Phenom II's in stock which is the X6 1045T for £98 and the X4 965 BE for £88. Would come down to if more cores or CPU speed is more helpful for you.
Just stick with that Athlon X3 you have as its the strongest part of your system and upgrading the rest instead like your looking at doing. Then next time upgrade the CPU and motherbaord :p

If you don't do first person shooters with everything cranked up to the max, a GTX550 can be had for under £100 and still give you a boost. For example http://www.ebuyer.com/345289-gigabyt...gv-n550wf2-1gi As will pretty much anything modern with GDDR5. Or jump to ATI and get a 6770 for about £80 with very similar performance http://www.ebuyer.com/340798-powerco...6770-1gbd5-hv2


Personally I'd hit ebay for the RAM e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CORSAIR-4G...#ht_500wt_1413

Again thanks for the replies. I think I know the CPU was best left alone, although the i5 offerings look great!

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Personally I'd hit ebay for the RAM e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CORSAIR-4G...#ht_500wt_1413

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I'm after reliability and know people OC or swap stickers etc on the DDR sold on eBay. I'd rather not take the risk unless I hear otherwise?

Here is the latest thinking, with P&P costs:

SSD
£79.99 a Samsung 830 128GB with an 3.5" bracket / adapter kit.
+Scan P&P free for Hexus users

DDR to 8gb
£38.00 for Crucial 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ballistix Sport Memory
+£1.51 P&P

GPU
Still looking to spend about £80-£110 here. I've been looking at the comparisons of both the GTX 550 Ti 1GB and HD 6770 1GB
Or get the AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB OEM @ Pixmania - £102.70

Potential Total = £210 ish

As there isn't a difference in price go for the 1600mhz stuff - that way it is more likely to be re-useable in the next build :)

If you don't mind 2nd hand then there's a couple of good options in our for sale section atm :innocent:
and while I am selling a gpu, I was thinking of a the gtx460 768mb someone else is selling

if all the photo editing you're doing is along the lines of red eye removal, colour balance and resizeing/cropping
Then currently it's fine as is and I'd look at elements rather than full blown cs5 which is I'm sad to say rather clunky
Heck Paint.net is pretty good for basic photo editing and is free.

mobo wise your `limited` to sata2 BUT , given most sata 3 addon cards use the `omfg its awefully bad` marvell 9128 chip , then stick with the sata 2 as its faster - i know as i have both....

video card:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...56&subcat=1866

£83 is an option as well

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Originally Posted by Pob255

If you don't mind 2nd hand then there's a couple of good options in our for sale section atm :innocent:
and while I am selling a gpu, I was thinking of a the gtx460 768mb someone else is selling

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Do you mean the Hexus For Sale section? I saw the card you mentioned but is the GTX460 768MB [GDDR5] a good card for me? It gets a score of 30.9 HERE whilst the cards mentioned above get significantly higher scores.

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Originally Posted by Pob255

If all the photo editing you're doing is along the lines of red eye removal, colour balance and resizing/cropping
Then currently it's fine as is and I'd look at elements rather than full blown cs5 which is I'm sad to say rather clunky
Heck Paint.net is pretty good for basic photo editing and is free.

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I've got software thanks.

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Originally Posted by HalloweenJack

video card: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...56&subcat=1866
£83 is an option as well

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According to THIS LINK that card is terrible and scores 36.1
Is the OcUK one you linked different?

That link you just posted for the 6850 is for 1920 x 1200 resolution and crysis, which is far from shogun2 or skyrim
It'll depend a bit on the settings but you should get good results from the gtx460, although shogun2 seems to be a bit demanding on vram so a gtx560 (non-ti) or 6870 would probably be better for running at the maximum settings, for both the added vram and vram bandwidth.
But then again you are looking at less than half the cost for the 2nd hand gtx460 768mb and it's not that slow a card.
To put it into old card context, it's about twice the power of the 9800gt and about the same as the 4890 or gtx275
the 6850 is around 10% faster than the gtx460 768mb and the 6870/gtx560(non-ti) are around 25% faster.
They should still be plenty playable at 1600x900, you just might not be able to play at the superest-duperest with AA out the wazzo settings.

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Originally Posted by ERU

What is best to buy within my set budget of £200. I'm hoping 'CAT-THE-FIFTH' see this as he seems to be an awesome help in other threads and helped me buy my last rig.

The rig is going to be used as a home computer, photo editing, playing ShogunII: Total War (maybe Skyrim as well) and the odd bit of Adobe CS5 chores. I'm just looking for something to do the job, and get some value for money.

Here is what I currently have:

Mobo: MSI 770-C45, AMD 770, AM3
AMD Athlon II X3 445
GPU: nvidia 9800GT Green 512MB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI_E
DDR: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3
HDD: WD Raptor 74 GB HDD (150 MBps / 10000 rpm) as a boot drive and I also have an old WD 500gb drive for storage.
Sunbeam 3D Storm Black Mid Tower Case with Unique Core-Fan Design - No PSU
Be Quiet Pure Power L7 530 W Power Supply (PSU)
Acer X203 20" Wide LCD Monitor 1600x900 50,000:1(Dynamic) 5ms - Black

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Would,have answered earlier,but I was busy being soaked at an airshow!!:p

If you are doing any serious photo editing,I would try to calibrate your monitor and look to getting one with an IPS or VA panel in the future.

Have you tried overclocking your Athlon II X3 a bit??

Shogun II is meant to be a poorly optimised game only using one or two threads. Here is a comparison of different CPUs:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...k-cpu-review/6

However,it is a Bit-tech review and they use a GTX590 card for some weird and strange reason,instead of using a single card.

Skyrim only really stresses two threads heavily:

http://www.techspot.com/review/467-s...nce/page7.html

One of my mates plays Skyrim fine on higher settings on an HD5850 1GB and a Athlon II X3 at 4GHZ,although he is not measurebating.

Photoshop will benefit from more RAM,if you are processing RAW files for example. An SSD would also be a useful speedboost. However,you already have a fast HDD.

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Originally Posted by ERU

I also saw a AMD Radeon HD 6870 OEM - 1 GB GDDR5 - PCI-Express 2.1 for £102.70 @ Pixmania but not as good as 560.

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The GTX560TI is faster,but,more expensive than an HD6870. The HD6870 and GTX560 tend to be similar in performance but the GTX560 is more expensive.

There are many articles looking at GPU scaling in Shogun 2 but this one is useful to look at:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1627/2/

They use a Phenom II X4 965 and an HD6870.

Looking at the Hexus HD6870 review it does seem to do better than a GTX560:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...dition/?page=6

The HD6870 also appears to be faster in Skyrim than a GTX560:

http://www.techspot.com/review/467-s...nce/page6.html

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Originally Posted by ERU

According to THIS LINK that card is terrible and scores 36.1

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You're looking at the 6850 wrong there, comparing it with all the other top end cards that are currently around. Look at this comparison from Anandtech bench instead, which is the 6850 against an 8800GT (pretty much identical to your current card) and notice how the 6850 is at least 50% faster than your current graphics card in every game, and twice as fast in many ;) Yes, it's currently at the lower end of mid-range, but every graphics card above it costs over £100, and it will be a HUGE upgrade over your 9800GT Green.

Ok Thanks folks - I've gone for the items in my last list. All on order now!