Hi everyone, Due to my limited (slight understatement) knowledge of hardware I was hoping all you clever people out there could give me some help. I've had my current rig for about 2 years now and would like to make a few changes/improvements. My current setup: Core 2 Duo E6850 Asus Silent Knight II Pure Copper Ultra Cooler 2GB CORSAIR DOMINATOR DDR2 1066MHz ASUS P5N32-E SLI plus 250GB Serial ATA II Hard Drive 8MB Cache (7200rpm) 2 x 640MB Geforce 8800GTS sli X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 800W Quiet Quad Rail PSU Trigon Case (Approx H x W x D) 425mm x 210mm x 490mm My first thought was to upgrade the GPU (nvidia 260 or 275, not sure if they are compatible with motherboard?), the RAM (up to 4GB) and change to Windows 7 64 bit. If I made these changes do you think there would be a noticeable improvement in terms of performance? I mainly use the comp for gaming and currently have a 19" LG monitor (i'm hoping to get a 22" monitor eventually once I have a bit more cash). If not, would I be better to save a bit more cash and go for the affordable all rounder here. At the moment I have about £250 to spend. Any help would be appreciated.
I would guess going from a pair of 8800gts to a single 260 or even a 275 would be a bit of a "sidegrade"
What games do you normally play? Do you find that when the games you play slow down your HDD light flashes a lot? I would hold off a GPU upgrade for a few months. AMD have just released their DX11 compatible graphics cards and given there is no real competion they are seriously overcharging for them. This isn't helped by TSMC still trying to come to terms with manufacturing 40nm chips. So not only are DX11 grpahics cards overpriced, you cannot find many.
I would suggest your choices are: 1) If you can be bothered to reinstall get win 7 x64, which will reduce your RAM overheads from vista (assuming that's what you're using) and be a bit quicker. You can get it from MS for £30 if you're a student. 2) If you're reinstalling windows anyway and want the biggest possible upgrade in terms of OS speed then get an SSD to put your boot drive on. (would pretty much nail your budget though) 3) Moar RAM is always good but if you're still using a 32bit OS you won't see all the benefit. If you stick with vista you will probably see a small performance improvement. It's not a great time to buy a Gfx card ATM as stock is limited and Dx 11 parts will be available in a couple of months. Your SLI setup is probably not the limiting step for anything but Crysis. I suggest 1 then 2 then 3 if you can be bothered to reinstall. Just 3 if you can't. Just my 2p
