How much benefit am I likely to see from this upgrade?

[GodlessAstronomer]

I'm looking to build a new PC in the next few weeks, but the more I price things up the more concerned I am about not seeing enough performance benefit to justify the cost. I'm currently running
AMD64 5200+
2gb el-cheapo RAM
Asus M2n-E SLI mobo
Sapphire 4830 512mb video card
Various assortment of old HDDs

Looking at something like
AMD AM3 945/955
4gb [something] memory
Gigabyte 5770 1gb video card
2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb

I primarily use the system for programming (Visual Studio, a heavyweight IDE), Photoshop (RAW photo processing mostly, sometimes 200+ RAW pics at a time) and of course gaming (latest and greatest titles).

Is the upgrade worth the cost? Also can someone recommend a PSU for this setup that is reasonably priced? I know my current unit is old and probably not worth preserving but please don't recommend one of those insanely expensive units I see people pushing around here, I've always used cheaper PSUs in the past and simply will not spend huge money on one when I've never had a failure. I'm willing to spend more than I have previously, but be reasonable.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

It looks like you do some Cpu intensive stuff so I would go with an intel quad and maybe a 4850 gpu for bang for the buck unless dx11 is important to you and if it is then that 5770 is the way to go. As far as a cheap power supply maybe this http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817171031. I would go with a reliable brand on a psu. Also as far as difference in the new build and the old build it would be significant.

 

[Ayah]

What exact power supply do you have? If it's a decent quality 400-500W, it'll be good enough, though you might need an adapter or two here and there.

Since you seem to be more CPU-orientated, I'd go i7 860 or 920. HT on those sucker will scream past anything else. Even more if you overclock it.
A 5770 is slower than a 4870 1GB, and costs like 20-30$+ more. Not that significant of an upgrade over your 4830 for the cost.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I should have mentioned I don't buy Intel products due to their shady business practices. Thanks for the advice so far. Yes I'm more CPU oriented but I do still love to play my games at high details on a 1920x1200 monitor. Is there much benefit in going for a DX11 card, or should I look more at the 4890/4870? My current PSU is a 450 watt Raidmax which is probably up to the task but I'd like to replace it because I've butchered some of the wires for my Frankensteinian fan setups in my younger days.

 

[Seier]

Hi Godless,

I love your user name, because I too am an atheist. My name is pretty ironic too, Christian . Okay on to the techie stuff. I can respect your desire not to monetize Intel, however AMD CPU's tend to overheat more frequently and their motherboards die more often. I say that from personal experience as a computer repairman. That being said. I wanted to recommend a better power supply, the one suggested is hardly better than what you had before. I just installed one of these 750 Watt Sunbeams myself and love it. I'm not one of those people who likes a bunch colored LED lights coming off of his hardware. So on the back of that sunbeam, there's an on and off switch (yay!). If your older video card is working fine, I wouldn't waste your money upgrading to a DX11 card right now. There aren't any games that support it yet. Why not wait until DX12 cards come out and then pick up a DX11 card with a rebate? By then you might have or at least want a game that supports DX11.

Cheers,
Christian

 

[Seier]

How about buying this in November instead of a new video card? Rumor has it that New Egg will have this high performance SSD for 85 after rebate. Sorry, That's based on Intel technology. Well maybe you could look up some other manufacturer's SSD like OCZ or something.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Appreciate the input seier. I can't find that Sunbeam PSU in my country, but that's about the right price point. 750 watts is probably overkill, but if the price is right I'll go for it.

I'll be building this setup piecemeal, I intend to purchase the CPU/mobo/memory in the next couple of weeks, followed by case and PSU and then storage and video around Christmas when they're likely to be cheaper. The SSD is intriguing, price drops like that tend to trickle down to New Zealand markets after a couple of weeks so I'll keep my eyes open. I would love an SSD but it's not a priority for me, I'm more interested in reasonably fast mass storage which is why I'm looking at the Spinpoint F3.

 

[Seier]

Wow that SpinPoint F3 is really a fast magnetic drive, I just wish it were bigger. I also noticed some of Samsung's drive have an insane 7 year warranty. Of course it still can't compete with SSD's once you factor in access times (says the guy who doesn't own one .

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I was just looking inside my case, I'm actually not running the PSU I thought I had, it's a newer Thermaltake 430W unit, is this enough to run the system I posted?

Edit - nevermind, I just read a couple of reviews for this PSU and it's basically a 300W model with a 430W sticker, better replace it.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: seier
Hi Godless,

Okay on to the techie stuff. I can respect your desire not to monetize Intel, however AMD CPU's tend to overheat more frequently and their motherboards die more often. I say that from personal experience as a computer repairman. That being said. I wanted to recommend a better power supply, the one suggested is hardly better than what you had before. I just installed one of these 750 Watt Sunbeams myself and love it. I'm not one of those people who likes a bunch colored LED lights coming off of his hardware. So on the back of that sunbeam, there's an on and off switch (yay!). If your older video card is working fine, I wouldn't waste your money upgrading to a DX11 card right now. There aren't any games that support it yet. Why not wait until DX12 cards come out and then pick up a DX11 card with a rebate? By then you might have or at least want a game that supports DX11.

Cheers,
Christian

Are you smoking crack or something? That's pretty much 100% misinformation .Similar intel and AMD processors generally put out similar amounts of heat, and if anything intels would overheat less because they ship with much shittier stock HSF's. Also there is no reliability disparity between the two, since excluding EVGA they both share the same major board manufacturers


Also, you point out that that CM PSU is not much better than the raidmax, but then you recommend a Sunbeam? Kind of a backwards step there buddy


There are a couple DX11 games for the record, though not that it matters

Why not wait until DX12 cards come out and then pick up a DX11 card with a rebate? By then you might have or at least want a game that supports DX11.

But by then why not wait for DX13 and get a DX12 card for cheap! or wait til 14 and get a 13 card for cheap!!

:



That kingston SSD is like 60-70% of the intels seq read speed, worse writes. Even though SSDs are bought largely for random IO I still wouldn't recommend one unless you can afford the full intel

 

[Seier]

Well you tell me what's better a 500 Watt PSU for 30 or a 750 Watt PSU for 55? No not all PSU's are created equal, but it'd be a rare 500 watt PSU by anyone that could outperform a 750 watt PSU with a 600 watt workload. This is the best PSU calculator I've found http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp. If you compare the newegg ratings of Cooler Master with Sunbeam, you'll see that customers have a very similar satisfaction ratio. In each case, only two models were 5/5 eggs. The power supply I recommended was 5/5 eggs, the one you recommended was 4/5 eggs. As for the DX11 games argument, what I'm saying is that he should wait until there's a game he likes that utilizes DX11's new features. After all, the price of components can only go down and he has a perfectly decent video card in the interim.

 

[MangoX]

AMD CPU's tend to overheat more frequently and their motherboards die more often.

AMD cpus overheat more than Intel? That's utter bull and completely false. Better take off those blue shades - blindness can occur. The stock retail heaksinks from the green team are bigger and can dissipate heat more efficiently than those from the blue team.

Never... ever use a PSU calculator. Trust me on that one. But at least you are right that PSU's are not created equal. Don't look at the total wattage, instead look at the voltage rails.

For example this Raidmax 450w (http://www.directron.com/rx450k.html).
+3.3V@28A,+5V@34A,+12V@21A,-12V@1.0A, +5VSB@2.5A

Quick math, 21A * 12 = 252w on the 12volt rail. 192 watts less that the 450w advertised. Push more that 252 watts on it and it'll likely explode.