Need help/opinions on new hardware

[Simulated-AI]

Hi all.

This is my actual rig:
Vista 64
Striker II Formula
Q9550@3,2Ghz
GTX285
4GB corsair pc 6400
X-Fi Extreme Music

But its not new anymore, and i think of replacing some hardware.

First i was thinking getting a GTX580 over my GTX285, because it would noticely increase my graphic performance. (and its easy).
Then again, why not get a new motherboard and a i7? ofcourse with new DDR3 ram. Then the bottle neck for the graphic card should be eleminated, if there would be any?

I could also use my GTX285 as a dedicated physx, but that would probably require me to upgrade my 620W Seasonic to a 750-850 Watt.

I would also say that my 4x1 GB ram is not identical! that means i have two different pairs that slows my bandwith due to not using dual channel optimal.

Overall i would say my computer is usefull, but i would like some kind af upgrade in the nearest future.

I hope to get some usefull replies, and all help/opinions are welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[Arclight]

I say plug in a new graphics card and get a 2x2GB low-latency kit.

Running cas4 ddr2-800 myself and using GTX460, on a P45 board and Q9550 3.4GHz. Imho it's still a capable enough gaming machine.

Also, at this point in time I'd go with an Sandy Bridge CPU if upgrading, but they're prolly a little hard to find atm.


Dedicated Physx... guess it's nice, but I didn't bother plugging my old 8800 in there. May well improve performance for games that use Physx extensively (Mafia 2 comes to mind) though.

[Jan Kyster]

...on a P45 board and Q9550 3.4GHz. Imho it's still a capable enough gaming machine.I concurr. Did that precise Core i7-update and can confirm it's not really worth the money... :D

Btw. the RAM dual channel or not... no difference worth writing home about. Same with RAM speed... More important is amount of RAM.

PhysX? I doubt we'll ever see that develope into something widely used...


GTX580? No comment. Being an ATI fan and all that... :shifty:

[Arclight]

The new architecture might make it worth it though. Sandy Bridge appears to be some 15% faster at the same clock. People looking to upgrade from Core2 should take note, maybe await the coming die shrink and see what that yields.


And the new GTX5xx is a fine series. The 470 and 480 were on the powerhungry, hot and noisy side. The 460 fixed a lot, but is not as powerfull, so now the new cards make a more viable choice for high-performance Nvidia cards. Heck, they make the old ones redundant, pretty much.

[Simulated-AI]

Thanks for the feedback.

Getting 8gigs of ram is not that expensive, and since i run on 64 bit system it should work just fine with some tweaking.

I think i will wait with the CPU, and check the market later.

But i will get the GTX580 for some increase in gaming performance here and now.

Is that total crazy?

[Arclight]

Don't think so. That CPU should only become the bottleneck in an SLI rig, I think.

Just make sure you have a PCI-e 2.0 board, but afaik that one has it.

4GB is enough, but going with 8 shouldn't be a problem. Personally I prefer only filling half the banks, so there's less stress on the memory controller, but the difference is negligable, if it even exists.

[Simulated-AI]

So far i got the 8 gigs installed running 800.

I didnt dare trying 1066 since they shouldn't run in 8gb on this board.

So far the load times are more fluid, and the most demanding games loads faster and runs minimal better, but ofcourse fps are the same.
The GTX580 haven't arrived yet, but it should make a good boost.

Then in a half year i can take a look at the sandy http://media.gtanet.com/gtaforums/images/html/emoticons/smile.gif

Any tips for systems with 8 gigs to make it better?

[Arclight]

Yes: don't mess with it. :lol:


Only tip I can think of in your case is running the CPU and RAM in sync.

CPU has a bus frequency and a multiplier, right? In this case, 333MHz X 8.5 = 2830,5; the default frequency for that Q9550.

DDR has something similar: DDR2 on a 333MHz bus runs 666MHz effectively.

So what you can do is run the bus at 400MHz for both. That gives you 3.4GHz for the Q9550 and 800MHz on the RAM, running in sync.
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj2/EZatHome/cpuZ.jpg
(note the 1:1 FSB : DRAM ratio)

To be honest though, I'm not sure it's still relevant. It's a "trick" they used to pursue in the past when overclocking.

[Simulated-AI]

Thanks Arclight (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=240241).

I will check it out.

[Simulated-AI]

Ok, things have been tested, but not without problems.

First i installed the GTX285 along with the GTX580, using the smaller for dedicated physx.

I got the Corsair AX1200W GOLD to make sure i didn't run out of power, lol. It nearly costs the same as a HD6950 or a GTX470, crazy.

I got some blue screens with physx card, it has now been removed, and computer works like a charm now.
I have been testing for 8 hours now, running 3 different game with no problems, and a light overclock.

It sure made things better by disabling speedstep and enable loadline calibration.

On my board i have two blue and one white slot for GPU, i used the two blue slots.
The physx card was displayed ok in driver settings, but like i said, it gave me problems with blue screens. Any ideas?

Games i have been testing:
Crysis, the GPU is great for that game, huge increase in performance.
Battlefield Bad Company 2, Nice with the DX11 effects now, i feel the lightning is better and some sun effects, also the FPS increased noticely, especially with AA, great uprgade.
GTA4, the game is damanding i good CPU, so the boost is not that noticed in this game.
I will be testing more games later, but the upgrade is worth it.

Now i will feel the marked on new CPUs and Motherboards.
I'm still not sure which socket i should get?
This is where your ideas come in :yeah: