Time To Upgrade - yea yea one of those

[Dahak]

First I will say that I have searched and read high and low on the forums probably to an extent that i have myself utterly confused


Usage: General Usage, Mid -> Heavy Gaming, Transcoding
Expected Life 4-5 years

Time to upgrade my aging p4 3.0ht, 1gb ddr, gf6800agp machine.
Going to stay with currently winxp but may upgrade to vista 32bit/64bit later on(dont know when)
Ok, about to take the plunge for a new upgrade and have most the parts down to what I want, which is shaping up to be the following

Case - Antec P180B ... was thinking of initially a Sonata III or Solo but cant really confirm clearance for the video card that im going it get

Power Supply Antec 650W ... have it already, got it at a good deal about a month back

Motherboard - Asus P5K Deluxe/Wifi .. why cant they make a none wifi version

**CPU - either Intel Quad Q6600 or Duo E6850** ... Be back to that in a minute

Ram - debating on if I want to got with 2GB of DDR2 - 800 or DDR2 1066 , costs about $50 more for the 1066 stuff
leaning more towards kingston's stuff, haved used it in other builds,for other people, more familiar with it
Aslo now leaning more towards 1066 stuff

4GB?? I know about the 32bit os stuff, may be upgrading to 64bit with vista

Video card - 8800GTS 640mb .. debating on brand

DVDRW Drive - Liteon or LG Sata Drive

Aftermarket cpu colling, will primarily be determined by cpu, but probably something like themalright ultra 120 or zalman 9700 series cooler


The biggest issue is between dual and quad, I can go with either and be happy with no troubles.
The main reason for quad would be, that some of the games that would be coming out of during the expected life of the machine may be more mutli-core optimized (ut3, valve's source engine, alan wake (iirc))
Also do run virtual machines often, but not daily and usually for only about that day or so, something usually use it to isolate and try new software without messing my main install

1) I would like to go to the quad, probably just because i may get more life out of it, but would want to overclock it more which I've personally never done any and still iffy on doing it and cant really confirm that if i order one that it will be the g0 stepping(but probably wont break the deal if cant get it)

2) Or just stay with the dual core at the faster clock and leave oc'in alone

3) Ram, usually easier for me to add more later, opinions? 800, 1066, 2gb or 4gb

 

[oynaz]

Get 2 Gb of RAM. You can always expand later.

 

[JustaGeek]

Or get 2x1GB and 2x512MB, for a total of 3GB - seems to be a sweet spot for me.

Honestly, I do not fully understand the 4-core hype. They are not as good oveclockers as Core 2 Duo's, run hot, and I really don't know what applications really benefit from 4 separate cores.

Perhaps someone could enlighten me...?

 

[Sinn707]

First I'd save some money and go with Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Great, stable board with nice overclocking cababilities, DDR2 & DDR3 support, newest P35 chipset.

Ram I'd pick 2GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 4-4-4-12, good overclockable ram, great deal on newegg, $79 total after rebate per 2GB. I'd suggest getting 2GB instead of 4GB, especially since at first you'll be using win xp 32 bit, and in the future when you upgrade to vista 64, who knows, maybe 4GB of DDR3 will be cheap by then.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820146565

With the money saved on MB you might wanna get EVGA 8800 GTX instead of GTS, monster card and evga protects your investment with their 3 month step up program.

Go Q6600, you are absolutely right, multi core support is the future of all games and programs, it wouldn't be wise to miss out on extra 2 cores, besides, an overlock to 3.0Ghz is fairly simple.

In terms of aftermarket cooling it all depends on how much you'd like to spend. Cheap? Go with Freezer 7 Pro from buy.com for $20. Semi-expensive? Pick Tuniq 120 Tower for $60. The best? Thermalright 120 Ultra + S-flex fan for ~$90. In addition to all of these buy the $5 Arctic Cooling MX-1 paste from newegg.

Good luck

 

[Dahak]

@sinn707, yeah I was debating between asus and gigabyte, but my experience with gigabyte is not the best, just something about there boards I don't like.

Was looking at that ram too. This is the kingston Kingston HyperX 2GB
main reason is lower voltage needed, 2.0 kingston vs 2.2 cruical
Getting most of my stuff from our vendors (work at a comp store up in Canada) so prices wont be too bad
also newegg is out for me anyway as they don't ship to canada

But I have been hearing good things about evga so may go with them for the video card.

As for the cooling, not going to skimp on it, going to get pretty much the best that is available, thats about the only thing that i would be getting online.