Building my first computer (ish)

[Nokiacrazi]

I have had a thought... Scrap the entire plan!

My current system specs are:

MSI K9A2 CF
AMD Athlon 5600+ Dual Core 2.6GHz
GeCube Radeon 3870 512MB
4GB (4x1GB) OCZ DDR2 (Speed I think is 667 or 800)

Monitor is Samsung SyncMaster793DF.

Would I be able to play most modern games at good settings etc if I was just to get a 6870, and a decent monitor? Or is my build falling behind now..?

[Dent1]

Originally Posted by Nokiacrazi

I have had a thought... Scrap the entire plan!

My current system specs are:

MSI K9A2 CF
AMD Athlon 5600+ Dual Core 2.6GHz
GeCube Radeon 3870 512MB
4GB (4x1GB) OCZ DDR2 (Speed I think is 667 or 800)

Monitor is Samsung SyncMaster793DF.

Would I be able to play most modern games at good settings etc if I was just to get a 6870, and a decent monitor? Or is my build falling behind now..?

No because your 5600+ X2 is far too old and slow, it will cause bottlenecking. If you want to keep your processor you need to aim a lot lower on the video card, like a Nvidia GTS 250, ATI 5750 or slower, and even then you'll probably still bottleneck it.

You are going to need a modern processor as well as a new video card. Luckily for you the MSI K9A2 CF is AM3 ready, so you can patch the motherboard's firmware and upgrade it to a Athlon II X3/X4 or Phenom II X3/X4/X6 and it'll happily run a ATI 6870 without issue.

I'm not sure what your budget is but the best compromise might be to buy a ATI 6850, 5850 or GTX 460 768MB or 1GB and use the money saved on a Athlon II X4. This can be done for around £200 total if you are smart about it

[MohawkAngel]

Dump in a Phenom X2 AM3 socket 85watts 550BE.

[gumpty]

Mohawk has the right idea.

Do a bit of research and flash your bios to the latest version and find out what processors it supports. Then price it up from that.

Your monitor is quite a low resolution. You'd see a huge benefit from getting a larger LCD. If you keep your current one, even a HD6850 would destroy any game at 1280x1024 - so going for a 6870 would be overkill if your planning on keeping it. You can get a full-HD 22" monitor for as little as £100. A lot of people rave about getting higher quality screens but for me, if all you're doing it playing games and surfing the net, then I'd just get one at the cheaper end. It'll be such a huge difference from your current screen that you wont notice the 2-5% better picture that the extra 50-200% cost gives.

[MohawkAngel]

Please note that if your board begins with this serial number, 601-7388-010, your board will only support cpu’s of 95 Watt and lower. You cannot connect a CPU of 125 Watt since this will damage your board.

[Nokiacrazi]

Originally Posted by Dent1

No because your 5600+ X2 is far too old and slow, it will cause bottlenecking. If you want to keep your processor you need to aim a lot lower on the video card, like a Nvidia GTS 250, ATI 5750 or slower, and even then you'll probably still bottleneck it.

You are going to need a modern processor as well as a new video card. Luckily for you the MSI K9A2 CF is AM3 ready, so you can patch the motherboard's firmware and upgrade it to a Athlon II X3/X4 or Phenom II X3/X4/X6 and it'll happily run a ATI 6870 without issue.

I'm not sure what your budget is but the best compromise might be to buy a ATI 6850, 5850 or GTX 460 768MB or 1GB and use the money saved on a Athlon II X4. This can be done for around £200 total if you are smart about it

Absolutely, I have been thinking about upgrading to this:

Case + PSU
Motherboard
CPU #1 or CPU #2
GPU
RAM

Would come to around £650 including delivery.

Obviously a little pricey, and that is when I thought - hang on, my current motherboard works fine, so it will last a while longer!

Originally Posted by MohawkAngel

Dump in a Phenom X2 AM3 socket 85watts 550BE.

For most games I am aware that a Dual Core would be absolutely fine. But I may aswell think about getting a Phenom II x6 for the future.

Originally Posted by gumpty

Mohawk has the right idea.

Do a bit of research and flash your bios to the latest version and find out what processors it supports. Then price it up from that.

Your monitor is quite a low resolution. You'd see a huge benefit from getting a larger LCD. If you keep your current one, even a HD6850 would destroy any game at 1280x1024 - so going for a 6870 would be overkill if your planning on keeping it. You can get a full-HD 22" monitor for as little as £100. A lot of people rave about getting higher quality screens but for me, if all you're doing it playing games and surfing the net, then I'd just get one at the cheaper end. It'll be such a huge difference from your current screen that you wont notice the 2-5% better picture that the extra 50-200% cost gives.

I have been thinking about getting this monitor. Has good reviews, highly recommended, would suit my needs almost perfectly, probably slightly large for my liking, but in the end, the bigger it is the more uses it can have.

Originally Posted by MohawkAngel

Please note that if your board begins with this serial number, 601-7388-010, your board will only support cpu’s of 95 Watt and lower. You cannot connect a CPU of 125 Watt since this will damage your board.

Much appreciated.

It supports all Phenom II, which is what I will upgrade to. I have been looking at the 1090T, but that would then mean I need a new motherboard. So I guess it might well be the 1055T, which is excellent value for money and pretty future proof.

[Dent1]

Originally Posted by Nokiacrazi

Absolutely, I have been thinking about upgrading to this:

Case + PSU
Motherboard
CPU #1 or CPU #2
GPU
RAM

Would come to around £650 including delivery.

Obviously a little pricey, and that is when I thought - hang on, my current motherboard works fine, so it will last a while longer!



For most games I am aware that a Dual Core would be absolutely fine. But I may aswell think about getting a Phenom II x6 for the future.



I have been thinking about getting this monitor. Has good reviews, highly recommended, would suit my needs almost perfectly, probably slightly large for my liking, but in the end, the bigger it is the more uses it can have.



Much appreciated.

It supports all Phenom II, which is what I will upgrade to. I have been looking at the 1090T, but that would then mean I need a new motherboard. So I guess it might well be the 1055T, which is excellent value for money and pretty future proof.

I would avoid buying that case/psu combo. You can buy a seperate case and PSU and it will be of a better specification and cheaper.

So the consensus is to keep your existing motherboard and ram, and upgrade to the 95W 1055T.

[Nokiacrazi]

Originally Posted by Dent1

I would avoid buying that case/psu combo. You can buy a seperate case and PSU and it will be of a better specification and cheaper.

So the consensus is to keep your existing motherboard and ram, and upgrade to the 95W 1055T.

I guess it is, but the 95W 1055T is not so much for value for money

Using DDR2 RAM will not bottleneck the system, or limit its performance, will it?

Also, what other Case or PSU would you have in mind?

[Nokiacrazi]

Originally Posted by Nokiacrazi

I guess it is, but the 95W 1055T is not so much for value for money

Using DDR2 RAM will not bottleneck the system, or limit its performance, will it?

Also, what other Case or PSU would you have in mind?

Anyone.

[Corduroy_Jr]

dd2 to am3 for Amd is not much of a difference maybe 3 to 7% at most, now you're current motherboard is only 4+1 phase, don't expect a big overclock with even a 95watt cpu, with all that said you will be extremely happy upgrading from a amd 5600+ x2, to the 1055t

[Nokiacrazi]

I think I am going to wait till late January, early February.

I hope that current 6870 GPU prices will drop because of the 69xx series, and maybe, because of Sandybridge, perhaps AMD's current Phenom II prices will drop?

But if the prices drop enough, I may just go with my initial idea and get a brand spanking new system.

I just don't like spending a LOT in one go. I'd rather buy the system bit by bit, but...I guess its better when everything is bought at the same time, and constructed new...

[gumpty]

Originally Posted by Nokiacrazi

I just don't like spending a LOT in one go. I'd rather buy the system bit by bit, but...I guess its better when everything is bought at the same time, and constructed new...

I know how you feel. Only thing is, upgrading bit by bit you never really feel like the upgrades make any difference - you never really notice much change. What you end up with is a computer that is miles better than the one you started with a few years back, but it's very hard to judge how much better it is.

[Nokiacrazi]

Originally Posted by gumpty

I know how you feel. Only thing is, upgrading bit by bit you never really feel like the upgrades make any difference - you never really notice much change. What you end up with is a computer that is miles better than the one you started with a few years back, but it's very hard to judge how much better it is.

Thats exactly the thing.

I think, hmm, if I put a new CPU and GPU in, I will notice a difference.

But then I think, but if I just get it along with a complete system, with a SSD... /drool

[xbonez]

Don't worry about starting small and adding to that. When I initially built my PC, it was pretty decent for that time (an year ago), but I knew it wasn't going to play games that came out an year later. So I planned to upgrade bit by bit, and watch for deals. It doesn't hurt as much to spend a 100 dollars or so every few months. I initially started with an HD 4890, down the line bought another when I got a really sweet deal. After a while, got a Black Friday deal on a 470, so I bought that and sold both 4890s (net money out of my pocket = $0).

[Nokiacrazi]

My current monitor finally died.

Ordered this Samsung SyncMaster P2450H | Ebuyer.com, should be here tomorrow.

[Nokiacrazi]

Its here.

It is bloody huge! Bloody brilliant for movies, games etc.

Only thing now is - need to get better GPU for games