Oh help me jeebus! The upgrade itch is so strong! --UPDATE--

[thecrecarc]

Get an X4(OC), a new PSU(if you need it, what's your current one?), and stick your extra 260 in for SLI. That should boost performance significantly.

 

[Wyndru]

If you like wasting money for the sake of having the latest and greatest, then be a man and buy a mac

 

[Wnh5001]

isn't ivy bridge suppose to be coming out sometime during Q1-Q2 2012? you should probably wait til then.

 

[Jeeebus]

not sure I can help you with this one.

 

[BladeVenom]

The i3 is better than any AMDs for the same price...

Looks about even, so it depends on what you're doing. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=102

 

[brianmanahan]

It might be...if there was such a thing. Until Intel invents one, maybe he could settle for the i5-2500K or the i7-2600K...(for most of us, the i5-2500K is the better choice...it really depends on the use)

youi know what i meant (i5 2500k)

 

[JoeKing]

Review your finances / redo your budget. That's usually a good way to kill the itch for impulse spend.

I've finally reached that point in my life where finances are great and I've got a bit of disposable income (wife is a nurse now, woot!). In the past when I would do a middle of the road upgrade (not the fastest, but far from the slowest) it always costs ~$500.

This time I want to drop $1000 to see what I can come up with.

This might be the best option. I was thinking you could stick a z68 board in, a G530 or something, and wait for an Ivy Bridge to plug into it; but you'd need DDR3 RAM too.

Are there no computer shops where you are, where you could pay insane taxes instead of insane shipping fees?

Do not upgrade your GPU yet; the AMD 7000 series on 28nm is coming soon. (Probably next year.)

Edit: P.S. I have an upgrade plan: Nothing this year, a new Ivy Bridge laptop next year for low power consumption, and Haswell to replace my desktop in 2013. But I'm running a Q9400 now.

the reason I can't take advantage of all of the insane deals I'm seeing online is because I'm in the military and currently stationed in Italy. Newegg charges a boatload to ship here, along with the majority of the other vendors stateside. And buying on the economy?! The markup on electronics in Italy is insane, not to mention it's in Euro...

Get an X4(OC), a new PSU(if you need it, what's your current one?), and stick your extra 260 in for SLI. That should boost performance significantly.

Current PSU is a Corsair 650w running on shoddy 220v power, I don't want to push it too much, and if it blows, well it's not a big loss.




Hmm maybe I can get a little scratch satisfaction with an x4 upgrade lets see how much one costs...

bah over $100 for a none power hog x4? I'll pass

 

[Red Squirrel]

I've been itching to upgrade badly too, but I just don't have the cash. My main rig is an Athlon X2 with 3.5GB of ram. It's time for something more modern like a quad core with 8GB of ram, and go with Windows 7, or maybe even Linux.

Then there's my server, it's desktop hardware that was later on ported into a rackmount case. It's a core2quad with 8GB of ram. Looking at supermicro gear makes me drull. I want to build a new massive server with over 40GB of ram and like 2 6 core processors. Oh, the temptation.

 

[disappoint]

Damnit! I'm trying to hold out the 8 months until I get back to the states and can save on the insane shipping fees. Halp me OT, keep me from doing a full upgrade! Tell me about how I if I wait X amount of time there's gonna be this super new thing out and how everything will be cheaper and faster.

If you wait newer/better/cheaper/faster components will be out.
If you wait hopefully by some miracle you will be smarter and wiser and not buy anymore AMD PHAILNOM shit.

 

[jman19]

Jeez I've been out of the upgrade game for way too long

 

[JoeKing]

I've been itching to upgrade badly too, but I just don't have the cash. My main rig is an Athlon X2 with 3.5GB of ram. It's time for something more modern like a quad core with 8GB of ram, and go with Windows 7, or maybe even Linux.

Then there's my server, it's desktop hardware that was later on ported into a rackmount case. It's a core2quad with 8GB of ram. Looking at supermicro gear makes me drull. I want to build a new massive server with over 40GB of ram and like 2 6 core processors. Oh, the temptation.

Ugh I just realized I want to upgrade my HTPC as well, it's a Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale with 3 2TB HDs in a mATX case. I've been looking to throw a Radeon HD 6570 in there just so I can play most of the games I bought on Steam on the big screen. But I really want to build a power sipping ITX HTPC with a network fileserver (maybe one of those ReadyNas units by Netgear) to take care of my media library.

All on an upgraded gigabit switch of course... damnit!

 

[JoeKing]

If you wait newer/better/cheaper/faster components will be out.
If you wait hopefully by some miracle you will be smarter and wiser and not buy anymore AMD PHAILNOM shit.

hey 2+ years later I still have OK upgrade options with AM3 for relatively cheap. That and I think price/performance wise this was the best option at the time, especially since I was planning to try to unlock the 3rd core... then my dumbass bought the wrong board of course.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ugh I just realized I want to upgrade my HTPC as well, it's a Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale with 3 2TB HDs in a mATX case. I've been looking to throw a Radeon HD 6570 in there just so I can play most of the games I bought on Steam on the big screen. But I really want to build a power sipping ITX HTPC with a network fileserver (maybe one of those ReadyNas units by Netgear) to take care of my media library.

All on an upgraded gigabit switch of course... damnit!

I forgot about the HTPC, I want to upgrade that too! It randomly locks up and reboots. It's an old HP someone gave to me, so I can't complain, but I still want to upgrade it. :awe: And yeah a 24 port managed gigabit switch would be nice too. Make that two, one would be iSCSI dedicated. Need a SAN too.

Actually, my ideal setup would be:

2 high end servers, with nothing but SSD for OS.
1 highly redundant SAN
1 gigabit switch for network
1 gigabit switch for the SAN/iSCSI.

The 2 servers would run a hypervisor of some sort with HA and load balancing.

I want to start studying for my MSCA, so I actually DO need all that stuff.

 

[Baked]

I don't even know what I have in my computer. I do know I need some more RAM though. 4GB on Win7 is definitely not powerful enough for multi-tasking.

 

[Aikouka]

Ivy Bridge and AMD's 7000-series will be out early next year... YOU MUST WAIT!

 

[IronWing]

Upgrade to 1Meg. Extended memory is where it's at. Also install a turbo button.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Upgrade to 1Meg. Extended memory is where it's at. Also install a turbo button.

They need to bring back the turbo button. Imagine if you could configure two overclock settings, a normal mode and turbo mode. So if you are rendering a video or something and just need more power, you hit the button, at the expense of more noise (could hook it up so the fans rev up when it's pushed). would be awesome!

 

[Jeff7]

Word is that the DoubleSight DS-277W is a decent 27" IPS monitor.
I'd get one (or two), but alas, the money would be better put against student loan payments, and toward paying for a new car, as mine is slowly dying of exposure to the environment of the Rust Belt.


My first experience with an IPS monitor has been on my EP121 tablet. The off-angle viewing is better than a TN LCD, no doubt. The brightness drops off quite a bit when viewing off-angle just as it does with a TN screen, but the colors remain quite consistent, which is something that a TN can't do.

Other upgrade options along those lines:
- Keyboard
- Mouse (I'm now partial to Evoluent's VerticalMouse4, as my wrist and various fingers no longer complain loudly at me. However, a fond farewell to my Logitech G500, and its many buttons and exceedingly awesome scrollwheel.) If your arm can tolerate it though, yeah, the G500 is fun. Lots of programmable buttons.
- Chair
- Desk
- Speakers/headphones


So your computer can remain quite good as it is, but you may have some room to improve the human/computer interface.

 

[JoeKing]

Just to give an update, I did end up buying a new processor got a AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz for cheap and things are now NOTICEABLY faster. What freaked me out was it took literally 5 mins to install the CPU. I told the wifey I'd be in the office for a while working on the computer thinking it would, well take a while. But nope 5 mins and done. Motherboard picked it up right away, Windows 7 said cool let me restart once, and now I'm online crunching away... plug... and play?! Whoa it's finally happened.

Now to fire up handbrake and let it get to crunching. Itch is scratched... for now... dun dun dun.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I just did a similar upgrade, OP. PhII x4 940 @ 2.4/3.6Ghz to a 1090T @ 2.6/4.0GHz. I'm very happy with the upgrade for the money spent and time involved.

 

[rasczak]

Good for you OP. I'm hopeful that I can do my own upgrade early feb, once all the xmas crap dies down. I'm soooooo looking forward to it. My last full upgrade was december 2003.