I feel I either need to upgrade my current pc of take the plunge and build my first PC So my current rig is a Intel core duo E8500 @3:16, 4GB of Ram 500GB HDD and 2X Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS 512 What am not sure about is is it worth the money to keep this rig going with upgrades or should I start looking at building a new one? One of my Pcs main uses is games. If i was to look at a new build my budget max would be around 800 pounds but I would have to buy the parts bit by bit over a few months, or would it be better to save the money then buy all the bits at the same time to help future proof to an extent? thanks for the input
With your budget, my vote would be to upgrade. The biggest advantage you'll see in games is by upgrading the GPU. A single 5970 should outperform your 8800s and you'd have cash leftover.
For gaming a 5870 (or a 5970 if you want to stretch that far) will be the best upgrade path IMO. You may need to upgrade your power supply also, what are you currently using PSU wise?
What about case and psu? I'm at a similar point myself after killing my cpu. I fancy a i5- 750 rig. From what i can see it'll oc to 4Ghz on a maximus 3 formula with 4Gb 1600ram and a corsair H50 cpu cooler. That'll come in at around £550, plop in a 5850 and you're away! But for £800. you could get a tasty i7 rig if you keep the two 8800gts and upgrade them later on. Either way, both'll be pretty sweet for gaming.
get a 5870, a ocz vertex ssd, and a new case, and a sound card and overclock your pc first option or 750, 4gb, gigabyte ud3, 5850, titan fenrir second option
I'd do what Instagib suggests, actually - i7 930, P6T Deluxe, 3x2GB 1600Mhz CL9 DDR3 and a Spinpoint F3 1TB comes to £650 on Scan. There is nothing wrong with your current PSU, your current case is a bit sucky but nothing disastrous. The remaining £150 would just about get you a 60GB Vertex SSD boot drive and a Gelid Tranquillo, and you can keep the dual 8800GTS' until something more convincing comes along to replace them. Alternatively, an i5 750, P55M-UD2, 2x2GB 1600Mhz CL9 DDR3, F3 1TB and Tranquillo comes to £445 on Scan. That leaves £355; personally, I'd turn that into a boot SSD and a new case, alternatively, a 5870, or even a 5850 and a new case.
You say you have a budget of £800, but have you considered the fact that you can sell your old components? Your old parts would be sold quickly on the Bit-Tech marketplace, I think you could get £50-£60 for the graphics cards (each) alone, plus even more for the motherboard, cpu and RAM. That would add significantly more to your budget. Regardless of that, heres what I think you should do: Have a look at the Scan overclocked bundles: http://www.scan.co.uk/shops/3XS/bundles?_s_icmp=yH5WRg6u Definitely think about an SSD as that will make your PC feel a lot quicker, good ones are the Intel X-25M series and OCZ ones. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/80GB...Flash-25-SATA-3Gb-s-Read-250MB-s-Write-70MB-s A graphics card will have the biggest impact on frame rates. A 5850 or 5870 would be the way to go there. Your PSU is absolutely fine, no its not modular but ultimately it does the job and has plenty of wattage so you don't need to worry about that. Hang on to your 500GB drive and use it as storage with the SSD boot drive. The case isn't great, but if you were to sell your old bits, you would have the money for all the things I've listed plus a fancy new case such as a Antec 902, HAF 922, etc.
Unless your rig is chugging I would keep it how it is. If you need a slight upgrade then you could OC. Your CPU should get upto a decent speed and if your 8800s are stock you should be able to get them to about 730 without breaking sweat on the core and another 100mhz on the ram. I would save my money.
If I had your budget, I would be building an I7 rig right now on scan... Oh, first dibs on one of your gfx cards pls!
Thanks everyone, got plenty to think about am surprised I could sell any of my current rig, would of thought they would be at the 'cheap as chip's' stage brand new from a vendor. But if people would be interested in buying them then that is also a good point to consider
If your open to selling, post a thread in the marketplace. Set the tag to "Interest Check" so people can post if they are interested and give an idea of the kind of prices you might get. For example, I see your E8500 selling on ebay for £75-90, I think your graphics cards you will get £50/£60 each, I sold 4GB DDR2 RAM for £74, then you got the motherboard too so its not unrealistic to expect £200+ from your bits.
They aren't 8800GT, they are 8800GTS which are nearly as powerful as the 250 GTS. I think people would pay an extra £10 for that.
