Hi everyone... So for ages I've been using an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ with DDR 400 Ram and an Asus A8NSLI... I haven't looked into hardware all that much since then and basically, I have no Idea about the current market situation, other than AMD is cheaper than Intel... I looked into the Bit-Tech recommendations and I was wondering if an AMD System would do the for me... For work I use a Lenovo w520 Notebook, so the only thing I do at home is surf and play the occasional game of Mass Effect 1/2, Portal or Dead Space... I was looking to replace the CPU, Mobo and Ram with these things: AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3200 MHz) Asus M4A87TD EVO (AMD 870) Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 8 GB DDR3-1333 Kit the graphics would be done by an XFX 5770 Card and the HDDs are both SATA 7200upm so I won't be replacing those. Would this setup be comparable to the allrounder system the guys here recommend? Cheers, Fred EDIT: It's not 7 years old... but old enough to be sorted out ;-)
Instead of the 955, you could swap it out for a 965 which is only a few £ more (like £5 more on scan) which is an extra 0.2 Ghz better and overclocks a lot better then the 955... Apart then that you should be fine? An updated GPU would obviously help a little but, I don't think it's required for what you need...
The AMD Phenom II X4 955 outperforms the Pentium G6950 in the all-rounder. You could save some money and just get 4Gb of RAM as that is more than adequate for gaming and surfing. The 5770 isn't as good as the 460 but it probably won't be worth an upgrade to the 460 since you already have the 5770 (the bit-tech review of the 460 gives a good comparison of these cards http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/07/12/nvidia-geforce-gtx-460-graphics-card-review/1). Good luck with your upgrade.
Agreed, get 4GB of 1600MHz RAM for the same price as 1333MHz, you won't need 8GB for gaming so you can put the extra towards a decent graphics card. For gaming, that is where your money should be spent. The 955 will be fine for games. As a comparison between Intel and AMD setups, I did the following quick check on Scan's website (normal prices, not specials): Asus M4A87TD EVO - £79.04 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black - £99.06 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) - £39.74 £217.84 Asus P8P67-M PRO - £112.40 Intel Core i5 2500K - £159.78 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) - £39.74 £311.92 Of course you could get a cheaper Intel m/b and drop that price by £10-£20 but it is still significantly more than an AMD rig. Definitely get a GTX 460 or HD 6850 (or better) over an HD 5770. You can even get 5870's now for the same price as a GTX 460 which is a great deal. Have a look at Scan's Today Only page to see what I mean. Edit: I know you are not in the UK but I just wanted to make a quick point and comparison.
Thanks for the answers guys Won't be replacing the GPU since it's fine for what I do and my budgets limited. 4 Gigs instead of 8 sounds allright, so I'll cutting there... more whiskey on the weekend for me then ;-) Cheers, Fred
