Upgrade Time?

[rawradrian]

Just bought a Samsung T240HD Monitor the other day and was wondering if I should make any upgrades to my computer. Right now I still use my 20" for gaming and the 24" is connected to my 360 and computer to occasionally watch a movie or do video editing. I game a lot and also do some video editing in vegas and Adobe AE. I was thinking of getting some better RAM and maybe getting my friend to OC for me.

Win XP SP2
Gigabyte p35c (rev 2.0)
E6550 @ 2.33ghz | OCZ Vendetta 2
EVGA 8800 GTS 640mb
OCZ Platinum 2GB 800mhz
250gb WD
Corsair 520hx

Think I should make any upgrades or will this last me 2-3 years before I build a new one?

Thanks, Adrian

 

[krnmastersgt]

What's the native resolution on your monitor? If it's less than 1680x1050 then your current hardware should be enough for the majority of titles for a while, if it is 1680x1050 however you might want to consider an upgrade on your video card. Getting your friend to overclock your cpu would be a great idea to get extra speed/performance out of your cpu. So unless you plan on PC gaming on the 24", your cpu should do well. Also, how much ram are you running currently?

 

[rawradrian]

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
What's the native resolution on your monitor? If it's less than 1680x1050 then your current hardware should be enough for the majority of titles for a while, if it is 1680x1050 however you might want to consider an upgrade on your video card. Getting your friend to overclock your cpu would be a great idea to get extra speed/performance out of your cpu. So unless you plan on PC gaming on the 24", your cpu should do well. Also, how much ram are you running currently?

The 24" is 1920x1200 and the 20" is 1680x1050 but I don't plan on gaming on the 24" other than with my xbox 360. I have 2x1gb ocz platinum at 800mhz right now.

 

[krnmastersgt]

How's your GTS been holding up for you with your gaming so far? If you want a little more power there's a few options. Most highly recommended would probably be 1 of these 3, an ati 4850, ati 4870, gtx 260. The 4850 is the weakest of the bunch but still quite a bit more powerful than your GTS is, the 4870 is second and comes in 2 flavors, a 512mb and 1gb version. More vram doesn't always mean better performance, but the 4870 is definitely a high enough class card that vram matters. And the most powerful(trades blows with the 4870 1gb, but usually wins) would be the GTX 260 core 216.
However, the 4870 and gtx260 are more suited for the 1920x1200 resolution and higher, so it might be a bit wasteful. Any of these cards would be a fine upgrade from your GTS.

And while it's not completely necessary, if you want to get more ram, I'd suggest getting a 4gb set of 2 sticks of 2gb each and replace the 1gb sticks as opposed to adding them. If you have all 4 dimm slots occupied you have to provide a little more power and also (usually) lowers the max overclock you can achieve, and you use a little more energy running 4 sticks of ram.

 

[rawradrian]

So far the GTS has been fine for my gaming. I get about 150-200 fps in cod4 at 1680x1050 and 0xAA (with some console commands). I don't really play crysis much but i'm not sure what games are coming out that might need a better video card. Maybe I will just get some ram first and get a video card later. Would 4gigs of Corsair dominators be overkill?

 

[krnmastersgt]

4gb is overkill in itself Just suggesting, if you're going to upgrade/increase your ram, a 2x2 set would be easiest for overclocking with. I'd go for this Corsair set, nice and cheap after the rebate, if you don't mind those, plus free shipping.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

I don't see why you would need to upgrade from an 8800GTS 640 right now. That's a very solid card, even today. And 2GB RAM for XP is fine for now. Just OC that proc; it's begging for it.

Why are you even considering an upgrade? Are you having some performance issues now?

 

[krnmastersgt]

He doesn't want to have to actively upgrade over time, more of a upgrade it once and leave it alone for a little while approach here. He wants to be solid for 2-3 more years, yes the tech and items will get cheaper, however some people just prefer to get everything done at once. I'm simply offering suggestions.

 

[Denithor]

You've got a pretty well balanced system right now. 2GB is plenty for most apps run in XP, if you bump up to 4GB you're only going to be able to use 3.25-3.5GB anyway (4GB cap, minus GPU RAM).

If you aren't gaming the GTS is already major overkill, no reason to bump that up at all.

If you do a lot of encoding in Vegas either overclocking your e6550 or dropping in a quad-core CPU would help speed up the process. Vegas really likes quads.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
He doesn't want to have to actively upgrade over time, more of a upgrade it once and leave it alone for a little while approach here. He wants to be solid for 2-3 more years, yes the tech and items will get cheaper, however some people just prefer to get everything done at once. I'm simply offering suggestions.

I did not infer that from his posts.

To qualify my response, my answer to the original question remains a solid NO, you need no upgrades if you are not experiencing unacceptable performance to you. As suggested, a Quad could improve encoding tasks, but the E6550 is a capable proc that will benefit from overclocking if you're not dying to spend on two more cores. You've also stated that your gaming experience is acceptable, so upgrading your video card is obviously unnecessary. I also really don't think the difference between 2GB and 3.5GB addressable RAM will be that noticeable, nor would getting sticks with higher specs.

Unless you're really in the mood to spend some money, just wait until you actually have a reason to upgrade. Then examine the pricing landscape and see if it would be better to upgrade or spec out a new rig. I think your current hardware should last you quite a while; you may last the 2-3 year timeframe you've set for yourself before you feel the need to replace a single component.