My system is starting to show its age and with Black Friday approaching, I am looking into ways to price effectively upgrade so I can jump on a good offer. I have read through several other system building and upgrading topics, but still have some questions I hope to resolve.
My computer is primarily used for gaming although I also use it for light office work such as working with Excel and various development IDE's. I play a variety of games such as StarCraft 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and Dragon Age: Origins. I would like to stay around $500 for the upgrade, but am flexible within reason. I don't favor any one brand over another and all parts will be bought and delivered within the United States. Based on what I have read in similar threads, I have modified the parts I am looking at. I am not planning to overclock and I game at 1440x900 resolution.
My current system is a Core 2 Duo E6600 from which I would like to keep my case, 550 watt power supply, DVD burner, 300 Gig SATA 3.0Gb/s HHD, monitor, and Radeon HD5770.
Currently, I am considering the AMD Phenom II x4 955 along with the ASRock 870 AM3 motherboard, G.Skill 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM kit, and a second HD5770 to run CrossFire. I would also like to pick up something along the lines of the Crucial 64GB RealSSD to use as a boot drive if I can find a good deal. Lastly, I plan to buy an OEM copy of Windows 7 Home Premium.
Since I have never used it or known anyone personally who has, my questions really revolve around CrossFire. I have poked around for information, but still remain anxious of how such a build would turn out.
From what I understand, two cards each running at x8 rather than both running at x16 is not something I should worry about. Is this really the case or do I need to dig deeper for a more appropriate motherboard? Would one card running at x16 and one card running at x4 be better, worse, or the same?
Judging from the benchmarks I have seen in various places, the performance improvement from CrossFire should be noticeable. However, benchmarks are not too handy in the real world and some people seem to have problems when running cards in CrossFire mode. Are the drivers really ready for prime time or do only certain games properly support CrossFire? Will CrossFire actually improve gaming considerably? By that I mean can I expect consistently higher FPS without significantly more heat and noise being generated inside the case?
Currently, my system bogs down tremendously in StarCraft 2 custom games when hundreds of units appear on screen even when settings are reduced to low. I realize such custom games are taxing on any system, but would there be a noticeable improvement after the upgrades above?
Any feedback on the components or more information on CrossFire would be appreciated. Thanks!
My computer is primarily used for gaming although I also use it for light office work such as working with Excel and various development IDE's. I play a variety of games such as StarCraft 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and Dragon Age: Origins. I would like to stay around $500 for the upgrade, but am flexible within reason. I don't favor any one brand over another and all parts will be bought and delivered within the United States. Based on what I have read in similar threads, I have modified the parts I am looking at. I am not planning to overclock and I game at 1440x900 resolution.
My current system is a Core 2 Duo E6600 from which I would like to keep my case, 550 watt power supply, DVD burner, 300 Gig SATA 3.0Gb/s HHD, monitor, and Radeon HD5770.
Currently, I am considering the AMD Phenom II x4 955 along with the ASRock 870 AM3 motherboard, G.Skill 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM kit, and a second HD5770 to run CrossFire. I would also like to pick up something along the lines of the Crucial 64GB RealSSD to use as a boot drive if I can find a good deal. Lastly, I plan to buy an OEM copy of Windows 7 Home Premium.
Since I have never used it or known anyone personally who has, my questions really revolve around CrossFire. I have poked around for information, but still remain anxious of how such a build would turn out.
From what I understand, two cards each running at x8 rather than both running at x16 is not something I should worry about. Is this really the case or do I need to dig deeper for a more appropriate motherboard? Would one card running at x16 and one card running at x4 be better, worse, or the same?
Judging from the benchmarks I have seen in various places, the performance improvement from CrossFire should be noticeable. However, benchmarks are not too handy in the real world and some people seem to have problems when running cards in CrossFire mode. Are the drivers really ready for prime time or do only certain games properly support CrossFire? Will CrossFire actually improve gaming considerably? By that I mean can I expect consistently higher FPS without significantly more heat and noise being generated inside the case?
Currently, my system bogs down tremendously in StarCraft 2 custom games when hundreds of units appear on screen even when settings are reduced to low. I realize such custom games are taxing on any system, but would there be a noticeable improvement after the upgrades above?
Any feedback on the components or more information on CrossFire would be appreciated. Thanks!
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