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Neon
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Posts: 18935
Location: Poland
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 Posted: Fri, 9th Jul 2010 21:51 Post subject: It's uuuupgrade time! |
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So, since I'll have my 18th birthday in August I'm going to receive some extra cash, about 1000 dollars. Now, since Mafia 2 will be released on the same month, I thought about upgrading my PC.
My current rig:
Core2Duo E8400
GF 8800 GTS (640 mb one)
3 gb ram
1440x900 resolution
Now, I've always had nvidia cards (mainly because ATI's drivers suck, but also because I never buy gpus as soon as they're released, I wait a few months before buying). I don't care that much for Physx though.
So, the main question is, should I upgrade to a quad core, or an i7? I do know I need to upgrade my GPU, but seeing as more games require(at least in theory) quad cores, I started thinking if E8400 is enough.
So, any help with making my rig better with around 1000 dollars of budget would be greatly appreciated.
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Werelds
Special Little Man
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| Posted: Fri, 9th Jul 2010 22:02 Post subject: |
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At that resolution, you're fine.
However, if you plan on spending some of that cash on a new monitor as well: i5-750 with an HD5850/5870 - drivers haven't sucked in a long time, so don't worry about that. 750+5850 would come down to about $500, plenty left for a bigger monitor and mobo+ram to go with the CPU 
And if you still want PhysX, keep your 8800 (or sell it and replace it with a smaller+faster card like 9800GT/GTS-250 for a few bucks more) and stick that in next to the ATI card
If I'm honest though, you should wait a bit longer; your current rig should be able to deal with Mafia 2 at that resolution, and both ATI and NVIDIA have some new cards planned for later this year (October for ATI, NVIDIA might be pushed back to Q1 2011). Not to buy those new cards, but to get the old cards cheaper, especially in ATI's case that'll mean you can get a bargain
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Neon
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Location: Poland
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Frant
King's Bounty
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| Posted: Sat, 10th Jul 2010 12:25 Post subject: |
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Core i5-750 is perfectly enough (for me anyway), it's the one I'm going for. A "little" overclocking and I'm good to go.
I'd get a 5850 or 5870 to replace the old GPU.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
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Werelds
Special Little Man
Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
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| Posted: Sat, 10th Jul 2010 12:40 Post subject: |
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| Neon25 wrote: | Thanks
Is there much difference in power between an i5 and i7? Also is it better to go i5 with the frequency lower than my current CPU? Sure, it's a quad, but I thought frequency on cores was more important than the amount of cores itself...
Any other suggestions regarding my new rig? |
Amount of cores doesn't matter at all really, since most games are still terrible at handling multiple cores.
What matters in this case is the architecture: Nehalem (i-series) is tons faster than the Core2 architecture, so an i5-750 is faster than the E8400 even at stock speeds for both. Given that the 750 can also be overclocked higher than an E8400 when using air-cooling, you can see where this is heading 
As for i5 versus i7: obviously the i7's have some added benefits with Hyperthreading and what not, but like I said, games hardly make use of it. So the 755 with its 4 cores actually does better than an i7-920. Basically, right now, the i5-750 is probably the CPU out there with the best performance per dollar, and most games aren't gonna take full advantage of its power any time soon
As for other suggestions: don't go overboard on the RAM, a lot of people spend more on this than on motherboard+CPU combined because they go for some incredible low-latency super-mega-oc crap. That's only for stat whores, it gives you like 5% gain in synthetic benchmarks, and does fuck all for games 
I'll have a look in a minute and have a look at some actual prices here in NL. Not sure how much the difference with Poland will be, but considering my aunt prefers having her family send stuff over from Poland I think you guys get it cheaper
Edit:
Something like Gigabyte's GA-P55-UD4 or MSI's P55-GD65 would be a good choice for the motherboard, can be found for around 120 euros. For the RAM, OCZ and Corsair have a bunch of dual channel 4GB kits available that do well with overclocking, around 90 euros.
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Neon
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Location: Poland
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LeoNatan
☢ NFOHump Despot ☢
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Location: Ramat Gan, Israel 🇮🇱
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| Posted: Sat, 10th Jul 2010 14:30 Post subject: |
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Why are you not going to overclock? It is almost criminal to buy such a CPU and leave it at stock speeds! 
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Werelds
Special Little Man
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| Posted: Sat, 10th Jul 2010 14:42 Post subject: |
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UD3 should be fine, as far as I know the only difference is that it lacks the SATA3 ports or something like that.
Leo's quite right though, even with boxed coolers the i5-750 can handle a 1GHz overclock without becoming hot really, cheap and easy performance gain
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Frant
King's Bounty
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| Posted: Sat, 10th Jul 2010 17:27 Post subject: |
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| Frant wrote: | | iNatan wrote: | | Why are you not going to overclock? It is almost criminal to buy such a CPU and leave it at stock speeds! |
I concur. I've haven't bought CPU, RAM and GPU that I haven't overclocked since 1997. It's just stupid NOT to take advantage of the existing potential in the hardware. |
I think it's really a personal choice. At last you would need to gather some info on how to do it properly (although these days there are tons of sites describing the process), plus some ppl just haven't got the need to do it. I say if it works leave it alone 
"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson | chiv wrote: | | thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found. |
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Slizza
Posts: 2345
Location: Bulgaria
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Neon
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Location: Poland
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Neon
VIP Member
Posts: 18935
Location: Poland
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| Posted: Sun, 11th Jul 2010 22:41 Post subject: |
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What do you think about this rig:
Intel Core i5 750 2,66 GHz BOX
Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B
CoolerMaster Elite 330 Black-Silver (it's a case, I'm not sure about this one)
Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3
Corsair DDR3 2X 2GB 1333MHz CL9
Corsair CMPSU-550VXEU - 550W
Samsung SpinPoint F3 750 GB (SATA II, 32MB cache)
Radeon 5850 Asus 1GB 2xDVI&DP (PCI-E) Direct CU
Last edited by Neon on Sun, 11th Jul 2010 23:15; edited 1 time in total
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Slizza
Posts: 2345
Location: Bulgaria
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| Posted: Sun, 11th Jul 2010 22:58 Post subject: |
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Looks pretty good.
Are 1600mhz ram kits not still about the same price as the 1333 kits?
For overclocking purposes .
Corsair 750D :: 750W DPS-G:: Asus x370 PRO :: R7 1800X ::16gb DDR4 :: GTX 1070::525gb SSD::Coolermaster 240MM AIO::
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Neon
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Location: Poland
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Werelds
Special Little Man
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Slizza
Posts: 2345
Location: Bulgaria
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Neon
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Location: Poland
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| Posted: Sun, 11th Jul 2010 23:27 Post subject: |
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Well, it's not like it's going to have problems handling anything, so why would I overclock?
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Slizza
Posts: 2345
Location: Bulgaria
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| Posted: Sun, 11th Jul 2010 23:36 Post subject: |
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| Neon25 wrote: | | Well, it's not like it's going to have problems handling anything, so why would I overclock? |
The gains from overclocking are quite obvious, it's just faster more performance/value.
The more difficult question is...why wouldn't you overclock?
Corsair 750D :: 750W DPS-G:: Asus x370 PRO :: R7 1800X ::16gb DDR4 :: GTX 1070::525gb SSD::Coolermaster 240MM AIO::
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| Posted: Sun, 11th Jul 2010 23:38 Post subject: |
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I was thinking of buying myself Cooler Master Elite 332 ^^ decent looking case 
"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson | chiv wrote: | | thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found. |

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Werelds
Special Little Man
Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
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| Posted: Sun, 11th Jul 2010 23:42 Post subject: |
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@ Neon: You kind of do want to overclock the 750 a bit, for games that are oblivious to multiple cores. That's what gives this CPU its edge over the dualcore and other quadcores: the turbo mode which in turn gets affected by a higher baseclock. Basically, even if you don't feel comfortable doing a big OC, you can easily get it up to 3.2 or 3.4 without even having to fiddle with voltages
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Neon
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Location: Poland
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| Posted: Mon, 12th Jul 2010 11:06 Post subject: |
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| pwerelds wrote: | Solid kit there, not sure about the case, quick Google session tells me it's quite small, which might affect the heat.
How much does it cost? Something like an Antec 900, Lian-Li PC-50 or CM Haf 922 isn't too expensive and all 3 are amazing in keeping everything cool (got an Antec 900 myself) |
Antec 900 is a bit costy, but Antec 300 has a lot of positive reviews and it's a lot cheaper, is it any good?
@pwerelds
Well, seing as I really don't feel comfortable with ANY overclock (but I've done some in the past, OCed the old 1.7 celeron to 2.4 ) , is it as easy as just messing in BIOS and changing the frequencies step by step (and maybe voltage), testing if it's stable, rinse and repeat?
Oh, also, is the PSU good enough? Should I get a 650 or 700 W one?
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Frant
King's Bounty
Posts: 24643
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| Posted: Mon, 12th Jul 2010 11:36 Post subject: |
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| Neon25 wrote: | | pwerelds wrote: | Solid kit there, not sure about the case, quick Google session tells me it's quite small, which might affect the heat.
How much does it cost? Something like an Antec 900, Lian-Li PC-50 or CM Haf 922 isn't too expensive and all 3 are amazing in keeping everything cool (got an Antec 900 myself) |
Antec 900 is a bit costy, but Antec 300 has a lot of positive reviews and it's a lot cheaper, is it any good?
@pwerelds
Well, seing as I really don't feel comfortable with ANY overclock (but I've done some in the past, OCed the old 1.7 celeron to 2.4 ) , is it as easy as just messing in BIOS and changing the frequencies step by step (and maybe voltage), testing if it's stable, rinse and repeat?
Oh, also, is the PSU good enough? Should I get a 650 or 700 W one? |
It's easier, there's a new Turbo mode with the Core iX generation. No need to fiddle with stuff in the BIOS.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
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Slizza
Posts: 2345
Location: Bulgaria
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| Posted: Mon, 12th Jul 2010 13:55 Post subject: |
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| Frant wrote: | | Neon25 wrote: | | pwerelds wrote: | Solid kit there, not sure about the case, quick Google session tells me it's quite small, which might affect the heat.
How much does it cost? Something like an Antec 900, Lian-Li PC-50 or CM Haf 922 isn't too expensive and all 3 are amazing in keeping everything cool (got an Antec 900 myself) |
Antec 900 is a bit costy, but Antec 300 has a lot of positive reviews and it's a lot cheaper, is it any good?
@pwerelds
Well, seing as I really don't feel comfortable with ANY overclock (but I've done some in the past, OCed the old 1.7 celeron to 2.4 ) , is it as easy as just messing in BIOS and changing the frequencies step by step (and maybe voltage), testing if it's stable, rinse and repeat?
Oh, also, is the PSU good enough? Should I get a 650 or 700 W one? |
It's easier, there's a new Turbo mode with the Core iX generation. No need to fiddle with stuff in the BIOS. |
*facepalm*
Yeh, going upto 4ghz is not a overly hard task most of the time.
I think you can get upto 3.4ghz~ on stock volts... don't quote me on that though.
Psu is sound.
Corsair 750D :: 750W DPS-G:: Asus x370 PRO :: R7 1800X ::16gb DDR4 :: GTX 1070::525gb SSD::Coolermaster 240MM AIO::
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LeoNatan
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Location: Ramat Gan, Israel 🇮🇱
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| Posted: Mon, 12th Jul 2010 14:11 Post subject: |
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The most "difficult" task in overclocking these days is splitting the memory frequencies from the FSB frequency.
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Neon
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LeoNatan
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| Posted: Mon, 12th Jul 2010 14:37 Post subject: |
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Neon
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LeoNatan
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Location: Ramat Gan, Israel 🇮🇱
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| Posted: Mon, 12th Jul 2010 14:57 Post subject: |
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They look ~ on par, with 5850 having the edge, coming on top with a few more fps. The question is, what is the price difference?
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Neon
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Location: Poland
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| Posted: Mon, 12th Jul 2010 15:06 Post subject: |
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Around 80 bucks, so quite much.
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