recommended upgrade for current rig

[MraK]

*Please see sig below*

Have been seeing better processors and graphics cards out nowadays and have been wondering what would be a suitible upgrade to my current rig, to further its dependability in this year and a year more to come?

I was thinking upgrading my CPU to a Q6600
my memory bumping it up from 2GB to 8GB (since memory of this sort is getting cheaper)
changing my 8800GTX to probably a GTX285 (which brings me up to a question regarding the PCI-E slot, my board has (3) PCI-E 1.0 slots, but the the card I want to get is shows I need a PCI-E 2.0 slot. would the new card work on my board? and if it does would the restriction of the the slot being only 1.0 degrade the card in any way as in terms of playing games?
And wanting to use Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit(since I feel its time to upgrade my OS from XP to Vista


Nowadays I'll be using this rig of mine mostly for Adobe software use such as photoshop, illustrator, and flash. And I've been getting into CAD for designing landscaping work and structures such as houses and commercial buildings. (basically I need to upgrade my current rig to run fluidly for using it to do these things)

Hope someone could help me

 

[DaveSimmons]

Does your CAD software do real-time rendering with a GPU? If not, you can skip the GTX 285. Also cards that support PCI-E 2.0 don't need it, they just might be bottlenecked.

Also, the quad may not overclock to anywhere near 3.4 GHz so it will be slower for most tasks since most won't use the extra cores.

Perhaps you should wait a few months for price drops then get an i7 setup with 6 GB of triple channel memory and a faster quad core

 

[Blain]

I would forget the old school 65nm quad in favor of a 45nm Q9550.
Toss in 4GBs of quality (Mushkin, Corsair XMS2 or G.Skill) PC2-6400 rated for 1.8-1.9v and you're ready for 64-bit Vista.

The PC2-6400 running at it's spec would get you an OC on the Q9550 up to 3.4GHz.
That's assuming your cooling is in order and the CPU can reach it.

 

[alexstreff]

Pretty sure pci express 1.0 can run up to like 256 GB/s and pci express 2.0 is twice that. A graphics card will run on any pci express 16x slot.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: Blain
I would forget the old school 65nm quad in favor of a 45nm Q9550.
Toss in 4GBs of quality (Mushkin, Corsair XMS2 or G.Skill) PC2-6400 rated for 1.8-1.9v and you're ready for 64-bit Vista.

The PC2-6400 running at it's spec would get you an OC on the Q9550 up to 3.4GHz.
That's assuming your cooling is in order and the CPU can reach it.

This, but first make sure your motherboard will support the 45nm quads. Many of the 680i boards will not and they were unable to update the BIOS to fix the problem (some kind of electrical issue - the boards could not provide what the chips need or some such).

I'll second what Blain said - just drop in two 2GB sticks along with the 2GB you've already got for a total of 6GB.

And get a GTX 275 instead of a GTX 285 - much cheaper and ~95% of the performance.

 

[MraK]

Originally posted by: AVADirectJoe
I would wait untill you literally can't stand your current configuration any longer, and then buy a new PC. With the amount of bottleneck you will be facing, due to the PCI E 1.0 limitation, it really is not worth upgrading the GPU. Core i7 is the newst platform, and it the way to go if you want to make the most out of your hardware and it's performance. It really is not as expensive as people think either

so basically just sell my current rig for as much as I could get rid of it for and just build a new PC? I like the i7s but just wondering why are their only 3 models? (the 920, 940 and the extreme) I'm just thinkin Intel will yet again come out with another CPU family of CPUs before the end of this year.

 

[fourdegrees11]

it would be nice to know what your budget is... Here's what I got anyway:

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3L LGA 775 Intel P45 $94
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128372

Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz $220
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115131

GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $90
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820144240

MSI N260GTX-T2D896-OCv2 GeForce GTX 260 $190
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814127409

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64 $180
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tem=N82E16832116493[/L

$775 total. No need to do a complete build if your PSU and case are still good, unless you can sell your comp for more then the price of new parts...

 

[MraK]

well I think I could get rid of the tower by it self (with the goodies inside) for around $750-$850 at our local fleamarket, where i live, since people in my area are looking for those old 2+ year gaming computers for a cheap price, so lets just say I cot rid for it for around $750 (most realistic price probably) + say $800 (from savings or what not) I got a budget of around $1550 for a gaming rig (minus the keyboard,mouse,speaker system and monitor *which is a HP 24" inch LCD* since I'll be using those parts for the new rig)

 

[fourdegrees11]

Well see that just changes everything. If your willing to spend that much you can pretty much go all out. If its not really needed just go with the cheaper components posted earlier and add a PSU and case. Have fun!

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz $290
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115202

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 $200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128375

OCZ Reaper HPC 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820227415

BFG Tech BFGEGTX2851024OCPE GeForce GTX 285 1GB $330
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814143170

PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817703009

COOLER MASTER HAF 932 $150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811119160

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136284

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64 $180
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tem=N82E16832116493

LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R $25
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16827106282

$1485

edit: forgot DVD drive...

 

[Denithor]

DO NOT buy Vista Ultimate right now. Windows 7 is right around the corner - you could even download the beta and run that until the official launch.

From all the feedback Win7 is a much refined Vista with better performance nearly across the board (especially in gaming).

One suggestion - if you're going i7 then take advantage of it.

EX58-UD3R-SLI $210

Pick up that board instead and get a pair of GTX 260s ($160AR each) which will kick the crap out of a single GTX 285 - for the same price. The i7 architecture was made to accelerate SLI rigs (read all about it).

 

[MraK]

hmmm thanks for the tip Denithor, Sounds like a plan,