Recent Upgrades & Results

[Justsomebloke]

So I have been buying myself a few bits & bobs & installing them in my gaming system, Some new, some 2nd hand, Here goes.

Swapped out my Quad core CPU for a E6600(conroe), 2.4Ghz @default but I slung it in @3.0Ghz for starters, I'll push for more after a good weeks burn in & I know 100% the overall system is stable etc.

Swapped out my 2 x X1950's & slung in a 8800GTX, Kin Humungous card that still pwns.

Swapped out my 2 x 1 gig sticks of Corsair XMSS2 800's for 2 x 2Gig sticks of Corsair XMSS2 1066.

Swapped out my white DVD drive for a Black Panasonic DVD drive SATA.

Installed anotehr 80mm fan to shift a bit more air out back.

Prior to this I got just over 9k in 06, After this with 2Gig I got just over 12k in 06. All just slung in so I will push for more once I am happy that temps are low & stable etc.
The 8800GTX has not been over 73c yet & my CPU peaks at 52c ;D Definately room for tweaking/clocking :cool:

Cost.

Old CPU = Sold for 75 quid, New CPU cost 55 quid so + 20 quid.
8800GTX cost 75 quid & I am expecting 55-60 quid for my 2 x pros & bridge so say - 20 quid.
4 Gig of ram cost me 50 quid cash coz I got it local rather than wait.
DVD drive cost 20 quid.
New case fan 15 quid.

Cost = 85 quid for a 25% improvement in graphical powerz :D (DVD drive was just cosmetic so 65 quid really)
In games like COD4 Everything is maxed out & looks Lovely, I played through COD4 again yesterday & stopped staring at some scenes that I walked past previously, Sheer awesomeness & cost effective :cool:


What you reckon & what you been buying/upgrading lately.

[divine]

Was the CPU change purely to get a bit of extra cash? As I can't imagine an E6600 clocks much better or worse than a Q6600 does it?

[Kreeeee]

My E6600 is sitting comfortably at 3.6Ghz, crank it up a bit!

[Justsomebloke]

Wasn't a Q6600 matey it was a Xeon X3210 (kentsfield) Quad core that wouldn't clock for ****, Stable & fast around the 2.4Ghz mark & No I have untold cash at the mo :cool:

[Justsomebloke]

My E6600 is sitting comfortably at 3.6Ghz, crank it up a bit!



Will do mate but what with all the other changes I wanted to know in my mind everything was stable before I really pushed it.

[Admiral Huddy]

Not had to upgrade anything on my PC for 18 months now.. I've had my 8800GTX for over two years and it's still going strong :) Since the consoles are stuck in time, there's no need for the developers to strain on the bleeding edge. I'll consider upgrading to Core i7 later this year with a new graphics card then.

[iCraig]

I've recently ordered a 1TB WD Caviar Black to sit alongside a standard 640GB Caviar. More HDD space and technically a faster drive to house XP and my Games on. Very unlikely I'll notice a difference in real world performance but still.

Case temperature is quite high though so I'll be looking at picking up some better casefans (currently using the ones that came with the case) that can push air quicker. Any recommendations for some powerful and quiet 120mms?

[Fayshun]

I need to upgrade. :(

[Garp]

I'm blatting various ideas back and forth in my head ready for when I know whether I'm staying here or going back to blighty. Either way I'll need / want a PC.

I'm rather tempted to get another Shuttle based one, has space for 2 HDD, my still very capable 8800GT, and a DVD-RW drive. Plus temps stay low, and the system is rather quiet. I hate having a computer that requires loads of fans to keep it quiet. The main noise on my old AMD X2 based shuttle was the GFX card. I used the integrated graphics for it's twin system (my linux rig) and it was so quiet you had to look at the front to see if it was switched on, even when running 100%

[Fayshun]

I'm not too faffed about gfx, want something that can decode/recode DivX/DVDs quickly and has lots of HDD space.

[loki]

Glad this thread has come up Malc. Rather foolishly, I swapped out my C2D Conroe E6600 for a Q6600 a few months back. Biggest waste of time or money. Still a bloody fast chip for encoding and ripping but game wise performance has really suffered. Load times for Company of Heroes is a good few seconds slower than on the old C2D.

I am thinking my next upgrade will be to go back to dual core and put this quad in a server.

Current rig

Q6600
2x2gb OCZ PC2 (5-5-5-18)
Sapphire ATI Radeon 4850
Foxconn P43 Mobo
Maxtor 160Gb S-ATA II HDD
Vista Ultimate 64

Scores on '06 are coming in at 11k. Lots of room for improvement there me thinks

[Pickers]

I really think we need a silenced video card for our downstairs computer. its using onboard gfx atm which is not great for Pheebs' design work, and really doesnt compliment the mobo and CPU we are running.

[Kreeeee]

I thought a lot of design apps don't use any form of GPU hardware acceleration.

[Garp]

I thought a lot of design apps don't use any form of GPU hardware acceleration.

Photoshop and the like do, but even a better graphics card should have better 2D speed, and larger memory which should provide some form of boost. The integrated card on the machine we've got hooked up to our telly is about GeForce 4 standard, and even for basic stuff like web surfing the upgrade to the 6200 is a big improvement (unfortunately PC only has a PCI slot, thank you muchly Dell)