Yay, nearly time to upgrade, but what to buy? My future planned upgrades are SSD, graphics card, NAS box, CPU, CPU cooler and monitors. I won't be gaming for a while but I do fold on the GPU so it has to be Nvidia. My system is starting to get a little on the sluggish side, but only a tad. I currently have a dual monitor set up, both 19in, 1440x900 displays but I want to go 1080p. I prefer to have 2 screens the same size but I can settle for one a bit smaller. I don't know what to go for so I'm looking for advice. Obviously I'm looking to get the most for my money. What do you think?
Yes to 3.68GHz but I'm using the stock cooler in a small case which can't fit big coolers so I can't go much higher than that.
personally I would recommend a gpu upgrade, as I assume you mean the sluggishness is from when your gaming? so within your budget your looking at 1gb gtx 460 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-...der-clock-1560mhz-336-cores-2x-dl-dvi-i-mhdmi or a gtx 550 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-...dr5-gpu-950mhz-shader-1900mhz-192-cores-mhdmi, either of those two would be very good. But if you can stretch your budget slightly I would thoroughly recommend a gtx 560 scan usually have them on today only deals for around £185,
I could stretch my budget but we shall see. I'd pick a 460 over a 550 and I probably don't need the extra grunt of the 560, although it is very tempting. It's at least a week off so I have plenty of time to think/ find good "Today Only" deals
I would deffo go for a 560 over a 460, just for the reduced heat and noise. AND - if you decide to upgrade your CPU later on, and you got a 460 which now bottlenecks you, you will be hitting yourself on the head for not getting the 560.
The most performance increase you are likely to see is with a new graphics card, your current one will be what is holding your system back the most whether GPU folding or gaming.
When I meant sluggish, I don't mean in games, I mean in general. My PC is a very multi-purpose PC; media storage, day to day use, media encoding, photo editing, rendering etc. I get's used almost 24/7 Also, I'm not someone who is going to notice when my CPU bottle necks or when the GPU is holding frames back. I'd be willing to stretch to £200 if I find some really good deals, but they'd have to be very, very good!
Well It's not likely that your CPU will be bottlenecking much, A good SSD will eliminate the disk bottleneck associated with random reads and writes on spinning disks and make your system feel much less sluggish, but you will have to do a fresh install.
Yeah I'm not worried about a fresh install, I'll probably end up doing that relatively soonish anyway. A friend of mine has an SSD and he can't stop talking about how awesome it is.
From what you're describing it sounds like an SSD is the order of the day! OCZ Vertex 3 is just around the corner but it would be wasted on your system. On the up side the current generation of SSD's are tumbling in price with a C300 64GB hitting £85 quite regularly. Although to be honest for improved write speeds a C300 128GB would be the better buy for around £170. Either is more than enough for a Windows 7 installation with programs and a few games. Make that computer snappier at the very least!
SSD is definitely nearer the top of the list. I was thinking that and a NAS box, then a new GPU later
Well, if you are a hater of sluggishness, why go for a NAS box? That means increased loading times due to transfer rates :-/
Yes sure, but unless he has got multiple machines it makes no sense with a NAS box. He can simply keep the drives in his computer and benefit from the SATA connections. If it is for data backup, I can understand it.
half of the things you list as your typical usage can be gpu assisted or entirely done on gpu - folding, rendering, encoding, and to a lesser extent photo editing. so a better gpu would be beneficial. however an ssd could be equally as beneficial as it is more noticable in day to day use, and may improve performance of other components as its not having to wait for slow media for reads and writes. kind of a toss up really.
