Upgrade Advice

[malfeasance]

I am currently running an Asus P5B (vanilla), an E6420( OC'd to 2.8 and cooled by a Zalman CNPS7700Cu cooler), OCZ SLI-Ready 4 x 1GB PC2 6400 and an Asus EAH4850, powered by an Antec 2 SmartPower 500W PSU.

I like my current rig, but am looking to the future as certain parts are beginning to show their age (except the 4850.) I would like to ramp up to at least 8GB of RAM to handle the data crunching and PhotoShop work that I do.

I am considering dropping in an ATI 4890 to drive a 24" 1920x1200 lcd - primarily for gaming (BF2, COD, Fallout 3, etc)

One of my main question is should/do I need to upgrade the mobo to a PCIx 2.0 (looking at the Gigabyte EP45-UD3p, but concerned about whether the cooler will fit) and should I also look into faster RAM sticks? Also, should I be looking for a more robust psu?

Will I be horribly cpu limited (even @ a 30% overclock?)

I tried to do some searching in the forums, and either my syntax was atrocious or I just overlooked the answers. Any advice I can get would be humbly appreciated and I apologize for all the questions at once.

Many thanks,

Mal

 

[Dangman]

One of my main question is should/do I need to upgrade the mobo to a PCIx 2.0 (looking at the Gigabyte EP45-UD3p, but concerned about whether the cooler will fit) and should I also look into faster RAM sticks? Also, should I be looking for a more robust psu?

Will I be horribly cpu limited (even @ a 30% overclock?)

No, no, yes, try to see if you can up the OC to 3.2Ghz if you can.

To elaborate more on my yes to the PSU question:

Get a new PSU for the new system. The Truepower I and II series as well as the Smartpower series were well known for their above average death rates due to a poor choice in caps and cooling design. In more specific terms, Antec/CWT specified/used caps that did not respond well to heat. Unfortunately, Antec made the decision to have the PSU fan only ramp at really high temps in an effort to keep the PSU quiet. However, just medium to high temps were enough to screw up the caps so really high temps were murderous. Over time, this degraded the quality and performance of those PSU series.

So I recommend replacing the PSU, especially if you hear a squeal, whine, or any odd noise coming from the PSU.

 

[kirbyrj]

I don't think you "need" a PCIe 2.0 slot. I'd just OC the CPU further, get a different PSU, add more memory (memory speed won't make that big of a difference depending on what multiplier you're using) and then drop in the 4890.

If you're going to swap out a bunch of parts, I'd just look for deals on i7 components and go that route.

 

[malfeasance]

Thanks for the advice. I'll have to crunch the numbers on the budget and decide whether I want to take the plunge and move on up to the I7 platform.

Thanks again.

 

[InvisiBill]

I wouldn't put too much money into the old system. While they could change the i7 socket (like with the early P4's) and make it impossible to upgrade, 775 is basically already dead as far as upgrades go. The PSU and video card can be moved to a new system and DDR2 is cheap (I got 4x2GB of Corsair PC6400 for $30 AR in December), but buying a new CPU or mobo seems like a waste of money to me. If you can't afford an i7 system right now, maybe just put a few bucks (as little as possible) into the old system to get you by until you can upgrade. If you can hold off long enough and aren't a big "enthusiast" you might even be fine with an i5 a little later too.

I still like this Kribi graph for showing the jump an i7 will give you. You can get an X58 board, i7 920, and 6GB of DDR3 for under $550. You can probably get a C2Q/mobo upgrade for about half that, but it just doesn't seem smart to me when you can spend a couple hundred more to get a more powerful system all-around, probably with much more upgrade potential.

I was in the same position a few months ago. However, my board was only AM2, not AM2+, so a PII wasn't a drop-in upgrade. If it had been, I probably would've gone that route. However, buying a new AM2+ board and CPU just seemed like a lot of money and effort for a relatively small upgrade. AM3 was better, but involved more waiting plus buying DDR3 anyway. In the end, i7 just seemed like the smart thing to do.

 

[kirbyrj]

Yeah, I agree. I just put together a Q9300 system for myself, but the total cost of it was $230 or so for the CPU/Mobo/RAM. I'd like to go i7, but the CPU by itself costs that much (or more).