I am asking on behalf of another. Current specs are as follows. MOBO: GIGABYTE MA-M68MT-S2 CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 840 GPU: HD 6670 PSU: Collermaster 500W RAM: 2 x 2GB Kingston 1600mhz OS: Windows 8 at the moment I do not know if that is 32 or 64Bit. He has £500 to spend so upgrade or new mobo/CPU/GPU? Oh looking to play Crisis 1 and 3 a decent framerates.
If it's 64-bit replace the ram with 2x 4Gb sticks An SSD for the boot drive Spend the rest on a 660ti
IMO change that board its a cack nvidia 7025 board and isnt that good tbh http://www.scan.co.uk/products/giga...r3-sata-iii-6gb-s-sata-raid-pcie-20-(x16)-atx far better bet - can use PD if wanted , has gigabit lan , 6 x sata 3 native and usb3 also that 7025 is `technically` AM2 , they made AM3 to work but lost a number of the AM3 features.
I'd recommend a 670 F.T.W. or 7970 GHz for £300 - £320, and a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB for £180. Money could be saved on the SSD if a RAM upgrade is required, but if it's purely a gaming machine 4GB will still be enough for a while longer. I'd say the rest of that platform is pretty pointless upgrading (and cack), so at least the new GPU and SSD could be carried forward into a new rig. The current crop of cards are going to be a popular seeing as how there won't be anything much in the pipeline to challenge them until 2014.
256gb crucial M4 for £133 7870 LE for £180 that giga board - £52 1100 X6 £100 on ebay or get the i5 board and chip off the market for him for the same £160
Seriously, don't waste money on more RAM if you don't need it (ie you will just be gaming, web browsing, and using office etc)
In a few cases yes, but not as much as you might think. They would all still give massive performance boosts over a 6670 even in a much older dual core rig.
is he against 2nd hand stuff there is some cheap i5 stuff in classifieds at the mo 2500K, cheap z68 mobo and a 7870/7950 would be my choice tbh
That was my first thought, a complete overhaul, but if the rig is only used for gaming then a 2500k is still massive overkill in all but about three games isn't it?
He'll be able to play it, he'd just need to dial down whichever options are most CPU intensive to allow for the pants processor.
Be interesting to see if SB/IB heavily overclocked would bring the results closer to the top of the pile.
