What should I be upgrading in my computer?

[XcvcX]

I built this a little over a year ago. I don't see too many problems except the graphic card could use a little work I assume. I still haven't overclocked my system yet either... I was also thinking of maybe getting an SSD or should I hold out on it? Also, what type of cooling would you recommend for overclocking?

My current specs are:

Intel core i7 920 @ 2.67Ghz

EVGA X58 Motherboard 3X SLI

You must be registered to see links

6GB OCZ Triple Channel Ram

Power supply is 750Watt



Radeon HD 5770 1GB

 

[x42]

o.o If you still don't have an SSD then get one of those, huge performance increase over traditional HDDs.

 

[Rishwin]

What's your budget?

 

[XcvcX]

What's your budget?

$400 for minor upgrades, preferably the graphic card. I mainly play BC2 and alike games.

Random question but related.


Friend of mine needs to upgrade his card. He's running a Radeon 5500 and would like to upgrade his. His budgets around $200. He wants to play Rift I believe.

 

[s-p-n]

For your friend, if he really wants to spend that much on a gamer video card:

You must be registered to see links

As for you, if you want to spend that much on upgrades, this is a great investment:

You must be registered to see links

Your video card is just fine. If you don't think so, keep the tempature of your PC in mind, and over-clock it.

Set your motherboard to shut-down on overheat, or have a program running which alerts you when your card reaches a certain temperature.

As for your processor, yours is delicious. The next best thing is a 6-core:

You must be registered to see links

You don't need one.

As for your motherboard, I need more info. What's the model number?
There are lots of EVGA X58 Motherboards. All of which look very nice, and don't need to be replaced.


You have a nice gamer computer even without upgrading.

For the biggest bang4yourbuck, go with a Solid State Drive. You should without-a-doubt, notice the difference in operating system startup, game startup, and many day-to-day tasks.

If you don't like these parts, send them back- you only have to eat the shipping. It beats Buyer's Remorse on a 256GB hard-drive for almost $2/gb. (The first hard-drive I bought was 70GB for around $140... $2/gb for a HDD was a GREAT deal back then, I figure it's not bad 10 years later for a SSD)

 

[Sardaukar]

a 5830 is extreme? Hah, how about. Not.

All of yoru computer is fine, and you answered your own question above as to what you want to upgrade. Your GPU could use a bump..


I would recommend these two cards:

EVGA GTX 560Ti, priced at ~245 across the board.

You must be registered to see links

Radeon HD 6950, priced at ~245 across the board.

You must be registered to see links

Those cards are equal, they toss the benchmark numbers back and forth between them.. THe 560Ti has a lower power usage on average, while the 695- holds a few more of the benchmark numbers.




After you purchase one of those cards, you have enough cash left over to purchase this as well:


OCZ Agility 3, 60gb SSD

You must be registered to see links

fantastic benchmarks on the Agility 3 series, and it will blow away all of your old Sata drives.

 

[Rishwin]

For your friend, if he really wants to spend that much on a gamer video card:

You must be registered to see links

As for you, if you want to spend that much on upgrades, this is a great investment:

You must be registered to see links

Your video card is just fine. If you don't think so, keep the tempature of your PC in mind, and over-clock it.

Set your motherboard to shut-down on overheat, or have a program running which alerts you when your card reaches a certain temperature.

As for your processor, yours is delicious. The next best thing is a 6-core:

You must be registered to see links

You don't need one.

As for your motherboard, I need more info. What's the model number?
There are lots of EVGA X58 Motherboards. All of which look very nice, and don't need to be replaced.


You have a nice gamer computer even without upgrading.

For the biggest bang4yourbuck, go with a Solid State Drive. You should without-a-doubt, notice the difference in operating system startup, game startup, and many day-to-day tasks.

If you don't like these parts, send them back- you only have to eat the shipping. It beats Buyer's Remorse on a 256GB hard-drive for almost $2/gb. (The first hard-drive I bought was 70GB for around $140... $2/gb for a HDD was a GREAT deal back then, I figure it's not bad 10 years later for a SSD)

Worst. Advice. Ever.

1. $200 budget and the best you can recommend is a 5830? A GTX560 or 6870 or 6950 would all be extremely good upgrades, and will last him for at least the next 2-3 years.

Sure we have no idea how much power his PSU can handle, but at the very least his budget allows for a 5770 and even a new PSU if he needs it. Best case scenario he can support a 6950, worst case is he settles for a 5770. Either one of those beats a 5830 anyday.

2. $400 budget and you want to spend ALL of it on an SSD? I don't see how a motherboard or CPU replacement is classed as a "minor upgrade" either.

@ OP: I would recommend a 6950 (2GB of you can get it otherwise 1GB is fine) and if you want to upgrade your hard drive, get a Vertex 2 SSD. Lots of stores will be trying to clear them out to replace with Vertex 3's, so you might be able to get a good deal.

 

[Warmonger]

I built this a little over a year ago. I don't see too many problems except the graphic card could use a little work I assume. I still haven't overclocked my system yet either... I was also thinking of maybe getting an SSD or should I hold out on it? Also, what type of cooling would you recommend for overclocking?

My current specs are:

Intel core i7 920 @ 2.67Ghz

EVGA X58 Motherboard

6GB OCZ Triple Channel Ram

Radeon HD 5770 1GB

You must be registered to see links

You must be registered to see links

  $269.99
  $119.99
[U]+   $9.02[/U] (Shipping)
= $399.00

Or something along them lines.

 

[Alfons]

I can vouch for the GTX560(it's probably the best bang for your bucks at the moment).Get an aftermarket cooler(scythe mugen v2 for example) and last but not least a ssd (preferably OCZ 3 series, vertex or agility).

You must be registered to see links

- $219,99

You must be registered to see links

- $49,99

You must be registered to see links

- $127,99

Palit is a decent brand, I've had a palit card before and never had troubles with it. 219,99 is dirt cheap for a 560Ti.

As for the mugen, I've read that the older v2 beats the new v3 but for some reason newegg doesn't sell that anymore.

OCZ Agility 3 60 gigs is just a beast, around 500mb/s read and write will seriously speed up your os and apps.

 

[XcvcX]

Thanks for the advice guys. As for the power supply it's 750watt and my motherboard is an EVGA X58 3XSLI motherboard.

Edited the original post

 

[Warmonger]

I can vouch for the GTX560(it's probably the best bang for your bucks at the moment).Get an aftermarket cooler(scythe mugen v2 for example) and last but not least a ssd (preferably OCZ 3 series, vertex or agility).



Palit is a decent brand, I've had a palit card before and never had troubles with it. 219,99 is dirt cheap for a 560Ti.

As for the mugen, I've read that the older v2 beats the new v3 but for some reason newegg doesn't sell that anymore.

OCZ Agility 3 60 gigs is just a beast, around 500mb/s read and write will seriously speed up your os and apps.

I would invest the extra $30 into a HD 6950. You get significantly better performance then the GTX 560. Also the x58 chipset for the board only supports 3gb/s. He wont be able to reap the benefits of a SATA III drive. So really is no sense in spending the extra money for one that supports SATA III. The Agility line seems to be faulty quite often as well. I would stick to the Vertex series as they are only a couple bucks more then the Agility. The Vertex also can handle 40,000 more IOPS over the Agility. I see no need to overclock so no need for a cooler at the moment. The 920 can push close to 3ghz under turbo, so really there is plenty of horsepower there. He could/should buy a after market cooler later on if he is using stock still, only to prolong the life of his CPU (maybe minor overclocking for fun).

 

[Rishwin]

The 6950 is an excellent card, and lets not forget the 2GB version is actually a 6970 board with a flashed BIOS... you can easily re-flash it and get a nice free upgrade.

Also, Palit cards are re-branded Gainward cards, so they are very high quality. I would take a Palit/Gainward over XFX/HIS/EVGA/Gigabyte/Asus anyday.

@ Alfons: The GTX560 is $185-$195, so a Ti card for $220 seems a little expensive. Not to mention the 6950 comes in at around $240 and the 2GB versions are about $20-30 more. Well worth the cost.

 

[Alfons]

The 6950 is an excellent card, and lets not forget the 2GB version is actually a 6970 board with a flashed BIOS... you can easily re-flash it and get a nice free upgrade.

Also, Palit cards are re-branded Gainward cards, so they are very high quality. I would take a Palit/Gainward over XFX/HIS/EVGA/Gigabyte/Asus anyday.

@ Alfons: The GTX560 is $185-$195, so a Ti card for $220 seems a little expensive. Not to mention the 6950 comes in at around $240 and the 2GB versions are about $20-30 more. Well worth the cost.

Aye the 6950 is a good card indeed, but I'd still recommend him the 560Ti. It's really up to him though but if I had a motherboard that does SLI only I'd certainly go for nvidia. He can always throw in another 560 later on, where with the 6950 he's limited to one card.

According to multiple reviews, the 560Ti is about just as good as a 6970. The 560Ti being 220ish where the 6970 is 300+. Both cards perform pretty good, the 6970 performs a bit better in games such as AvP, Stalker and Metro. The 560Ti performs better in Dirt2, Farcry2 and HAWX. So if you compare their overall performance they're almost the same. I'd certainly go for the 560Ti because it's like 80-100 bucks cheaper (I wouldn't pay 100 bucks for about 5 extra fps in certain games), and he can always throw in another later on.

If your PSU is from a decent brand then you'll even be fine with 560Ti SLI'd. I'm running two 570's in SLI with a gigabyte 800w psu and it's just fine.

@Warmonger

His motherboard actually does have 2x sata-6 ports so he should be fine with the OCZ 3 series.

 

[Warmonger]

I built this a little over a year ago. I don't see too many problems except the graphic card could use a little work I assume. I still haven't overclocked my system yet either... I was also thinking of maybe getting an SSD or should I hold out on it? Also, what type of cooling would you recommend for overclocking?

My current specs are:

Intel core i7 920 @ 2.67Ghz

EVGA X58 Motherboard 3X SLI

6GB OCZ Triple Channel Ram

Power supply is 750Watt



Radeon HD 5770 1GB

What needs to be established here. Is which motherboard you have exactly. Because I know a lot of the FTW3 boards support both SLI and Crossfire setups. If you could provide us with a model it would help stretching your dollar.

 

[XcvcX]

What needs to be established here. Is which motherboard you have exactly. Because I know a lot of the FTW3 boards support both SLI and Crossfire setups. If you could provide us with a model it would help stretching your dollar.

You must be registered to see links

 

[Rishwin]

What needs to be established here. Is which motherboard you have exactly. Because I know a lot of the FTW3 boards support both SLI and Crossfire setups. If you could provide us with a model it would help stretching your dollar.

You must be registered to see links

Yea, that's what i thought. EVGA usually have only a chipset number in their motherboard model, followed by the amount of SLI slots it has. By comparison to other brands they don't make many motherboards at all, so they can keep their model numbers extremely easy to remember

I used to have a EVGA P55 SLI - That was the entire model number, lol. Best motherboard i ever bought tbh.

 

[Warmonger]

You must be registered to see links

Then yea, he only has SATA II support. So no sense in purchasing a SATA III drive. As for the graphics card it looks like the board only supports SLI setups. The decision boils down to you. You can get a 6950 which is a great card. It currently runs any game maxed out above 25fps. Or you could purchase a 5xx series Nvidia chip. Which would leave you room to SLI later on. I would personally get something along the lines of what I suggested earlier. By the time the 6950 is aged to where you can no longer play games smoothly on it. There will be a lot newer chips.