what to buy?

[Enmity]

Ive been running this system for a couple of years now. Ive saved a lil bit of cash, a couple of hundred and want to get something for my system. The 790fx platform is getting old and the phenom 2 940 is the best cpu my board can handle, the 5850s are kinda being bottlenecked by that... but theres not much i can do about that right now. Using a xigmatek achilles for cpu cooling i can get 3.8ghz relatively stable so my thoughts are would maybe a corsair h50/70 help mesqueeze a lil more out? The only other thing i can think of buying with my limited cash is a 80gb ssd since i need to format anyway lol....whats your guys thoughts? I mainly play games but i get shitty with the pc taking like 4 mins to boot up with my raid 0 seagate 7200 rpms (which are very old now) over 5 years old lol. Suggestions?

 

[MustangGT2142]

get a 1 tb WD caviar black or Samsung spinpoint F3 and a ssd that fits your budget

 

[Fourstaff]

+1 to new harddrives, I think the real bottleneck are your hard drives rather than your processor. Processor is still fine by the looks of it, and you will want to wait for 2011 lines if you are upgrading the processor+mobo+ram.

 

[claylomax]

OK here are my suggestions: either one Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb or two of these new Samsung Spinpoint F4 320Gb in RAID0: http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives-storage/848382-samsung-spinpoint-f4-various-raid-benchmarks.html Scroll down, the only problem is the access time as with all hard drives, but for £60 you get a nice performance boost. EDIT: They were released in the summer but just got here to the UK last week, you're in NZ, I don't know if they are available over there.

 

[Zen_]

You probably won't be able to squeeze much more than 3.8 GHz out of a 940 without a custom h2o system and major tweaking. The return on a new cooler would be pretty low.

The 320GB Samsung F4 is a great choice for a primary drive that's relatively fast, quiet and cheap.

 

[Enmity]

thanks for the replies guys. Yeah i think i'm gonna go with the 80ish GB SSD for the OS and a 1tb samsung Spinpoint F3 - the F4 doesn't seem to be available here yet plus id rather get more than 320GB.

So now it's a matter of choosing a relatively cheap SSD now. I did see the OCZ Vertex 2 90GB SSD is a good price here in NZ. The site I use is www.computerlounge.co.nz if you can find anything comparative/ or better

the Vertex 2 90GB goes for $399.00NZD so I dont really wanna go much higher than that if possible.

also you can see on that site that the Spinpoint F3 1TB is $99.00NZD too as a comparison.

 

[GSquadron]

Sell the 2x5850 and get a 6870 as a start
Sell the mobo, ram, cpu as a bundle as i am sure you will sell them all
With the cash you have buy crosshair IV extreme or formula (i like them but this is my own suggestion, cuz you can be a gigabyte or msi guy)
buy x6 thuban cpu
Corsair dominators as ram
Now you have a somewhat "future-proof" system, as you can expand it with more when you will have more cash!

 

[Enmity]

I appreciate your suggestion however I'll be overhauling my system mid to late next year when bulldozer/sandy bridge arrive since either platform will be using a whole new socket(s) rendering any current system available obsolete.

My rig does everything I want it to do for the time being and two 5850s are faster than a single 6870. Id rather upgrade my gpus to either the 6970, which will be likely a little quicker than my dual 5850's once released or just wait for the 7 series. by the time I do my overhaul, being 28nm - the 7 series would be a much better option for me along with a new platform, new cpu architecture and new gpu architecture all at once.

Plus I'd be able to salvage the SSD for the new 2011 build.

 

[Enmity]

With my next system im going to make sure i can do trifire, id love to give eyefinity a go this time round

 

[Volkszorn88]

Trifire, 3x 5850s? Sounds nice

 

[Fourstaff]

CF 5850 is good for a few years, just like 4870 CF can still kick butt right now. Trifire is not that efficient, you are better off investing your money somewhere better. SSD sounds quite good, you might want to grab that.

 

[Enmity]

Does huh? Except itll be likely trifire 7850s or 7950s id imagine.yum!

 

[Enmity]

DYeah im def gonna get an ssd, the os is performing like a dog atm, takes ages to boot up even with my startup apps n services tweaked. Im pretty sure my raid 0 is the culprit for a lot of my slowdowns since theyre such old drives. Plus i hate the crunching sound of machanical drives haha.

Edit.
Probly doesnt help that i havent done a format in over a year too lol

 

[Crazykenny]

I'd go for some new drives aswell. CPU and the rest is pretty decent actually

 

[JATownes]

I think the over whelming vote is new drives. But I will throw my vote in too. Definately new drives. Your 940 is still more than enough at 3.8, it happens to be the exact same processor I am running as well.

 

[Enmity]

Question: what is it about the Samsung spinpoint F3/F4 drives that makes everyone recommend them? My knowledge of drives is pretty lacking and/or i haven't noticed any revolutionary changes in mechanical drives for years so when i look at a drive i first look for 7200rpm+ and 32mb cache....so what is it about a spinpoint f3 because at least on the surface i can't see any difference when compared to say a seagate barracuda ( which i've always used for some reason)

 

[Enmity]

I think the over whelming vote is new drives. But I will throw my vote in too. Definately new drives. Your 940 is still more than enough at 3.8, it happens to be the exact same processor I am running as well.

Awesome man, nice to see someone else still using this processor how do you find it? at 3.8ghz i cant even crack 1300 cpu points in vantage which seems extremely low even in comparison with a Q6600 or Q9400. Kinda sucks lol. Ah well, i need the drives sorted first and foremost

 

[Fourstaff]

Question: what is it about the Samsung spinpoint F3/F4 drives that makes everyone recommend them? My knowledge of drives is pretty lacking and/or i haven't noticed any revolutionary changes in mechanical drives for years so when i look at a drive i first look for 7200rpm+ and 32mb cache....so what is it about a spinpoint f3 because at least on the surface i can't see any difference when compared to say a seagate barracuda ( which i've always used for some reason)

Well, the newer drives are preforming much better than the old ones, even thought the stats like 7200rpm etc are constant. Mechanical drive are already "matured" so any improvement are not going to be dramatic, rather its improvement bit by bit.

 

[DrunkenMafia]

Just a suggestion:

I was living in NZ earlier this year for work and used a company called Playtech. They were pretty good and had free shipping around NZ from memory.

Check em out:

http://www.playtech.co.nz/

I just had a look and the OCZ 90gb is only $319 shipped and they are in stock :

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139235/CATID=238/ID=14058/SID=813514375/productdetails.html

 

[Enmity]

Oh shit thanks man i really appreciate that, cheers for the heads up.

Edit:
Oh yep thats the vertex 96gb, the one at computerlounge is the vertex 2, wonder what changes they made between the vertex and the vertex 2?

 

[Enmity]

Ah, read/write speeds. The vertex is 235mb read, 170mb write. The vertex 2 is 285mb read, 275mb write.