Any point in upgrading from an MSI P6N Diamond 680i to EVGA 780i?

[niggles]

I have a Q6600 on an MSI P6N Diamond with 2 8800 GTS 640 meg cards in SLI config with 4 sticks of 1 gig Crucial DDR2 6400

I'm trying to work out if there is any benefit to upgrading to the 790i EVGA mother board which offers faster RAM with DDR3.

I've read that DDR2 isn't actually slower than DDR3 in real applications, only bench marks.

Do I not have all the details, is it worth upgrading? This board is on sale today only and I really want to make sure it's worth doing before I throw around my money. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Zap]

Don't bother. What do you use your computer for? If gaming, you'll see a HUGE gain with upgrading your graphics card (in your sig as an 8800 GTS 640MB). If you use your computer for content creation (Adobe and stuff) then you might see a gain from having more RAM and running all 64-bit software/OS. If you just want your computer to feel "snappier" just doing normal day-to-day tasks, then you might want a faster HDD like a VelociRaptor (if you have a lot of installed apps) or better yet an SSD (Intel, or one that uses Indilinx controller).

Heck, if you're going to be buying a new motherboard with DDR3, may as well jump platforms to Core i5/i7 at the same time and get a faster processor in the process.

 

[niggles]

Yes, I pretty much only use the desktop for gaming. At one point I upgraded to a 285 GTX, but aside from it being highly unstable I was told that was too much GPU. Having two 8800 GTS cards seems to be ok according to benchmarks, it's just my RAM that appears to be the bottle neck. upgrading the mobo and the RAM would cost about $400, upgrading the GPU to a 285 GTX was $450 (canadian). I don't want to upgrade the entire platform until I really need to as that would carry a much more significant dollar value. I having conflicting info here. Is upgrading the GPU really the best way to go on this?

 

[faxon]

yes, the problem though is that the GPUs you would want to upgrade to are limited by the pcie 1.1 bandwidth provided by the 680i motherboard. if you were to upgrade your graphics cards you would want to upgrade your motherboard at the same time. is your CPU overclocked? if not, you would want to overclock it just to reap the full benefits of your faster graphics card as well, and doing so would again probably require a better board. 680i chipset was just not a very good chipset as far as OCing was concerned. i replaced the 680i board i got (for $20 no less) with a P45 UD3P from gigabyte instead due to various issues, and the fact that the board was on its way out. i would say if you want a faster system for gaming, sell what you have now in whole, since it's still a fairly good system even by todays standards, and then use the money you have to spend + what you get for it to upgrade your entire platform. wait 2 months though, socket 1156 boards and CPUs are on their way in, and AMD is about to release new graphics cards around the same time frame, bringing significant performance gains yet again.

ed: ooh and newegg.ca has GTX285s for $350 canadian now, so unless you were looking at the 285 months ago, you really need to buy your parts from a better place, cause tbh you're getting ripped off. you could have got an XFX 790i + 2x2gb of DDR3 1600 for $280 as well, again significantly cheaper than what you would have paid from the source you cited.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/P...esult=True&Order=PRICE

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/P...e%20790i%20Ultra%20SLI

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/P...x?Item=N82E16820227320

 

[niggles]

first, thanks for the info, I ended up getting a GTX 275 OC and I'm hoping that I get some kind of benefit from this.

I'll look at selling my 8800 GTS based system though and hold onto the 275.

We can't buy from Newegg in Canada which sucks. The best we can do is NCIX or Canadacomputers, I have yet to find a cheaper place. I go back and forth between the two as they go back and forth being cheaper.

I have another couple of questions about running the 275 and the 8800 at the same time, but I'm going to start a new thread on that as I think I'm off topic now.

 

[niggles]

oh great, ok so I looked further into this and I thought the P6N diamond with the 680i had PCIe 2.0, the P6N 650i platinum 1.1... Guess I was wrong... which means that the bottle neck on this new 275 GTX is the PCIe slots, right?

OK, so if I was to grab a EP45-UD3P here it'll cost $132 (and that's on sale) things aren't as cheap here... I'm thinking of doing this so that I can simply not bother buying more RAM and keep the same RAM and cpu...

found it here
http://canadacomputers.com/ind...pid=020609&cid=MBD.157

They've got one left that I intend to get tomorrow... but does that make sense? I kind of want to double check here to make sure I'm not making another bone headed move.

 

[Spikesoldier]

hold out on the video card until the next generation and get the top model card. months later, you will be better off compared to jumping to ddr3. a year later, you will still have a capable card and system. if you really think memory is going to hold you back go get yourself 8gb of ddr2.

 

[niggles]

ok, I already have the video card. My question is more should I bother going up to this a 780i, or something else that'll take a Q6600 running DDR2 6400, or should I simply upgrade the entire system not including GPU as I have this 275 some time a few months from now. (I can't afford the new Intel processors they're crazy expensive here)? I think I'm answering my own question here, I should simply get a 780i board of some type for the SLI, unless someone can suggest a better board for a Q6600 with DDR2 6400

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

PCI-E 1.1 won't bottleneck your 275 so don;t worry about that but I think you should keep your setup the way it is.