What Should my Upgrade Plan Be?

[flashstar]

I've had my current computer for 3 years. While I've upgraded my monitor, cpu, video card, ram, psu, and sound card, my motherboard platform (skt 939) has stayed the same. Even with my motherboard, I think that I'm at the limits of my cpu. I cannot get this 3800+ X2 above 2.5 ghz no matter what I do because the chip doesn't like fsb speeds over 250mhz. At 2.5ghz, it seems like I'm getting a somewhat serious bottleneck even in games because UT3 and even Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II run like molasses (25-30 fps). I am therefore left with several options:

1. Get a new platform now (motherboard, cpu, and ram) and use an Intel quad core like a Q6700. I would then sell my motherboard, cpu, and ram and hopefully get nearly enough to cover the upgrade (these components together are worth $300).
2. Wait for the Bloomfield to come out and then upgrade. I'll have to wait at least 6 months for this.
3. Don't upgrade my desktop at all and instead invest in a Thinkpad Tablet for college next year. I'll wait for the new platform (Montevina?) to come out in this case.

I also have a 3200+ Skt 939 chip laying around that I can sell for about $30 hopefully. I'm also not interested in the Phenom simply because it does not provide enough of a performance upgrade from my current setup.

What should I do?

Thanks.

[cdawall]

may as well sell it all now while its still worth some money as a gaming rig you should put it in a case and sell it as a whole locally

[farlex85]

I'd wait, unless your itching for a change.

[Rurouni Strife]

Personally, I'd wait until AMD's 45nm come out. See what they offer price/performance wise. In the meantime, see if you can raise northbridge voltages or try for lowering the memory divider, assuming you havent done that alerady.

Edit: Thats what I'm doing right now actually. I have a new 780 system and have OC'd the Brisbane to 2.6, but the mobo is holding me back I think. It games quite well but for 3D rendering I really could use the power of a quad. So I'm holding out for lower power 45nm Phenoms. Gives me a change to save money for it to.

[flashstar]

Originally Posted by cdawall

may as well sell it all now while its still worth some money as a gaming rig you should put it in a case and sell it as a whole locally

Thanks for the suggestion. Do you think that I could sell the entire thing including case minus my video card, sound card, and 750 watt psu for $600? I could put in a good 400 watt psu and a 7400 pci-e video card in the case as well. That would allow me to upgrade completely without losing money.

Edit: Thanks for the suggestion Strife but I've added as much voltage to the northbridge, memory controller, and cpu as safe without benefit. My motherboard should still be worth around $200 though since it is the best 939 board ever made and comes with a front lcd readout with a cmos reset button. I'm just worried that by waiting, it's value will depreciate too much... hm

[cdawall]

if you want i can send you a XFX 8600GTS XXX 730m and you can call it a high end gaming PC for $80 and then a 400w epower would run all that just fine

[flashstar]

Originally Posted by cdawall

if you want i can send you a XFX 8600GTS XXX 730m and you can call it a high end gaming PC for $80 and then a 400w epower would run all that just fine

That might work. Would a high end gaming pc make much more than a pc equiped for a gaming video card? Btw, the psu is a Fortron Source 400watt. It was $80 when I got it, so that might add to the value.

[cdawall]

yea have you seen how people mark up computers with 8500GTs? lol this is a top of the line 8600GTS

[leonard_222003]

For gaming a cheap 2160 or 2180 with a gigabyte or asus p35 motherboard and a good cooler you can overclock it to at least 3ghz and probably more to speeds like 3.4 ghz.
Quad core for gaming is not going to help you to much then if you do some work like 3d rendering or video editing or ...something that needs cpu proccesing power then a quad core qould be nice but for gaming a cheap 2160 or 2180 is enough or you could go for 8200 and go for 4 Ghz overclock (this one is on 45nm and goes further than 65nm processors).
For the motherboard part there are many choices from asus and gigabyte and very cheap p35 MB's that are very well made with quality components suitable for overclocking and you won't have the MB holding back the cpu overclock in any way.

[flashstar]

The only thing that I'm worried about is getting a motherboard that will work with crossfire. However, I am not sure if that's really worth while because P35's are $80 and X38's (support crossfire) start at $200. Assuming that I can sell my computer without a fancy video card, sound card, or large psu for $600 then I'll probably just stick with a p35. Thanks for the offer Cdawall, but I don't know if I can make back the $80 by classifying the computer as a gaming machine. I also went with an E8400 because they can easily get to 4.2 and they don't break the bank. You're right though, I won't be video editing that much so I won't need a quad core.

[cdawall]

lol damn that stupid 8600 still wont bloody sell put in a $25 8400GS and call it gaming PC anyway with DX10 capability

[farlex85]

A 2160 or 2180 would yield very little difference in gaming. A q6700 can easily reach the speeds of the two former procs w/ an extra 2 cores and 7mb of cache to boot. Also won't effect gaming that much atm, but if your gonna upgrade, might as well really upgrade. If benchies are important, I think the q6700 would be a fine choice. If gaming is the main concern, a new mb capable of cf + an extra 2900xt if you can land it would be the best bet. Or you can sell the 2900xt and get a pair of 3870s or a 4870 for later. Or, since you already got the sli board, sell the 2900xt for a 8800gts or two. And maybe sell the x2 and get a faster one or a phenom to alliviate bottleneck. Just moving over to intel for purely gaming wouldn't probably do too much though.

[flashstar]

Whatever I do, if I'm going to upgrade now it can't cost me anything. I need to be able to at least break even. That's why I'm not too worried about getting the greatest stuff out there. If I can get an 8400 going at 4ghz, that would be a 90% performance boost over my 2.5 ghz X2 in cpu power. My friend with a 3.5 ghz E6600 gets twice the frame rates as me in UT3 even with an 8800gts 640mb and the only problem that I can find with my system is my slower cpu.

I'll probably wait for the 4870 and then sell my 2900pro at a loss later.

Should I try listing on Craigslist?

[cdawall]

yea craigslist should be good

[cdawall]

this is selling for $600 on craigs were i live
http://houston.craigslist.org/sys/701464321.html

Processor : AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ (2 CPUs),~2.8GHz(overclocked)

Memory : 2046MB RAM(2gig) 800mhz

Sound Card : Creative SB X-Fi

Hard Drive : 160GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT(overclocked alittle to act like a 8600)

Monitor : Dell E773c 15" (im pretty sure)

Keyboard : Saitek 2 RED/BLUE/PURPLE LED

Operating System : Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_gdr.071023-1545)

Network card : Intel Pro Gigabite 10/100/1000 Network Card

Motherboard : Asus M2N SLI NVIDIA nForce 560 SLI MCP Chipset DDR2/800 SATA RAID PCI-Express MBoard w/GbLAN,IEEE1394,USB2.0,&7.1Audio

Cd drive : 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER

Power supply : 650 watt

Flash media writer/reader : INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer

This computer is very fast and for serious gamers! can be used for others but i recommend gamers so you can use it to its full potential! i play wow EASLY NO LAG, i play COD4 my favorite SO SMOOTH! BF2142 is great also any questions?

[farlex85]

Originally Posted by flashstar

Whatever I do, if I'm going to upgrade now it can't cost me anything. I need to be able to at least break even. That's why I'm not too worried about getting the greatest stuff out there. If I can get an 8400 going at 4ghz, that would be a 90% performance boost over my 2.5 ghz X2 in cpu power. My friend with a 3.5 ghz E6600 gets twice the frame rates as me even with an 8800gts 640mb and the only problem that I can find with my system is my slower cpu.

I'll probably wait for the 4870 and then sell my 2900pro at a loss later.

Should I try listing on Craigslist?

Well, breaking even is gonna be tough, unless that extra stuff pans out. You can't expect to get new stuff at the same price that you can sell your old stuff for. Plus intel/nvidia is more expensive. Unless your somehow able to sell your stuff for more than its worth (which I suppose is entirely possible) or selling more parts than your getting back, you won't break even.

An 8400 at 4ghz is over a 100% increase from that x2, they clock for clock are much faster. Still, all you really need for gaming is something powerful enough to allow for full capabilities of the video card. A higher clock x2 or phenom would do that fine. If you can sell the mb + cpu+ ram, then get cheaper mb and ram, you can of course move up in cpu, and that would get you rollling.

[flashstar]

Originally Posted by cdawall

this is selling for $600 on craigs were i live
http://houston.craigslist.org/sys/701464321.html

Processor : AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ (2 CPUs),~2.8GHz(overclocked)

Memory : 2046MB RAM(2gig) 800mhz

Sound Card : Creative SB X-Fi

Hard Drive : 160GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT(overclocked alittle to act like a 8600)

Monitor : Dell E773c 15" (im pretty sure)

Keyboard : Saitek 2 RED/BLUE/PURPLE LED

Operating System : Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_gdr.071023-1545)

Network card : Intel Pro Gigabite 10/100/1000 Network Card

Motherboard : Asus M2N SLI NVIDIA nForce 560 SLI MCP Chipset DDR2/800 SATA RAID PCI-Express MBoard w/GbLAN,IEEE1394,USB2.0,&7.1Audio

Cd drive : 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER

Power supply : 650 watt

Flash media writer/reader : INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer

This computer is very fast and for serious gamers! can be used for others but i recommend gamers so you can use it to its full potential! i play wow EASLY NO LAG, i play COD4 my favorite SO SMOOTH! BF2142 is great also any questions?

Well, in that case I'll just list it for yuks I guess.

I'd rather have a quality motherboard and psu than an 8500gt though imo.

Edit: I agree that all I need is a better cpu. The problem with getting an AM2 platform is that I would be looking at a 3.3 ghz X2 (overclocked) or a 3 ghz phenom (overclocked). Those would be similar to either a 2.8 ghz C2D or a 2.5 ghz C2Q. I'd need an X2 at 4 ghz to make the upgrade worth it.

[leonard_222003]

There are few games available that are CPU intensive or cpu bottlenecked by a dual core.
This few games are at some degree cpu intesnive : ut3 engine games , half-life 2 based engine games , some strategie games and this games are limited when you pair a dual core like yours with a hign end card like 2900xt but you don't limit your card by much upgrading to core dou won't give you spectacular framerates hd2900XT is still slow with AA enabled.
That's why i say a 2160 or 2180 overclocked to 3ghz would max the hd2900xt in any game quad core would not give you anyhting more unless you play at 640x480 or you want some 3dmark score but in reality when you add some AA and some details to a game the video card beggins to show it's limits.
Take crysis from the start this game is video card limited on your current configuration no matter what cpu you add you will still have the same unplayable moments at some point in the game.
Take UT3 with current configuration a cpu can bring you more framerate but if you play at high resolutions (1440,1680) video card limitations come in and you won't be getting more framerates even if you add a quad core or 4 ghz dual core.
At your videocard a core duo is enough and unless you plan to upgrade to gt280 or 4870x2 you don't need a fast CPU.
My advice is to go cheap because there is no need for expensive motherboards or cpu's your choice for a 8400 is great because of the 4 ghz clock you can get and the motherboard choice i advice you to get one asus or gigabyte motherboard because they use all solid capacitors and provide a lot of overclocking options at very cheap motherboards range.
Things are different now no more shity motherboards if you go mid range you can really get a capable motherboard without breaking your wallet and there is no need to pay more for a firewire,more s-ata's or usb's or some stupid stickers and some software you will still get the same overclock and the same stability just look at the motherboards from gigabyte and asus they look just great and screams quality.

[philbrown23]

Q6700, they are bad ass


<<<<look there I have one!

[flashstar]

I think that I'll go with a dual core C2D if I upgrade now definitely due to price, etc.

Look at my first Craigslist reply:

"7400 vid card and a 3800 dual core wont play any games lol "gaming ready" what a joke. wake up dude you've got a $300 computer here"

[farlex85]

Originally Posted by flashstar

I think that I'll go with a dual core C2D if I upgrade now definitely due to price, etc.

Look at my first Craigslist reply:

"7400 vid card and a 3800 dual core wont play any games lol "gaming ready" what a joke. wake up dude you've got a $300 computer here"

Haha, don't let that discourage you there are plenty of uninformed people out there. What do you have it listed for?

[flashstar]

Originally Posted by farlex85

Haha, don't let that discourage you there are plenty of uninformed people out there. What do you have it listed for?

$650, but I'm accepting $600.

I was never really expecting to get $600, but like you said it's worth a shot.

[cdawall]

Originally Posted by flashstar

I think that I'll go with a dual core C2D if I upgrade now definitely due to price, etc.

Look at my first Craigslist reply:

"7400 vid card and a 3800 dual core wont play any games lol "gaming ready" what a joke. wake up dude you've got a $300 computer here"

it will to play games i bet it runs solitaire just fine! and it can go for $600 lol i have seen worse go for more its like a dell haha