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ThunderPeel2001

Tweak my pooter

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Hello all. Some of you seem rather excellent at recommending system upgrades, so I was wondering what you'd suggest for the following:

PROC:

Intel E6600 Core2Duo 2.40GHz

RAM:

4GB (4x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, EPP

MOBO:

Gigabyte 965P-DS3P

HD:

2x 400 Gb Seagate ST3400620AS Barracuda 7200.10 (RAID 1)

PSU:

Antec True Power Trio 550W. I run three hard drives, two optical drives, and a old Audigy sound card. Plus misc USB devices.

I'm pretty happy with my GFX card:

Radeon HD 6870

And my case.

I'd love a Core i7 :)

Thanks for any help.

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I just did this, so I'm actually not completely ignorant, for once!

If you want an i7, it looks like you're gonna need a new motherboard. Yours doesn't have the socket type you need. Basically: pick your motherboard last, fit to your needs. Make sure it all fits. You're probably safe no matter what, video card wise, as PCI tends to be much more backwards compatible than almost every other port type, but RAM and CPU caused trouble for me. In terms of hard drives and whatnot, as long as you don't have any IDE devices, you're good. Otherwise, prepare to lose them. Newer motherboards tend not to have any slots!

I have no idea if that helped! U:

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Preferably a K model, but yeah. Sandy and Ivy Bridge perform just fine as i5s.

If you're going to get a new motherboard, I strongly recommend looking for PCI-E 3.0 and native USB 3.0 compatibility. Both of those things I stinted on and they gave me a headache later. You'll also need DDR3 RAM, but that's hardly a huge expenditure.

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Why are you upgrading? There's no one correct thing to buy when tweaking a pooter. The tweak must always flow from the objective. What programs are running slowly that you wish would run more quickly? And do you have a budget?

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I'm /considering/ upgrading because my new GPU isn't being used to the fullest capacity at the moment. Running GTAIV results in poor performance, for example, and really it shouldn't. I'd also like the machine to be faster and more responsive in general. Photoshop and media encoding through Handbrake are major things I'd like to see improved.

As for budget... I'm not sure. Hopefully quite cheap. Since I'm only considering at the moment, it's more of a scout of seeing what I could get, and then thinking if it's worth it.

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Just remember to get the motherboard with most shiny feature badges on it. In particular, look for «HypRklok 4.0» and «EZconn3ct+ Pro» and «GAMER SilentConnect MAX v5.5» and «NetPower BIOS FLASH GPU++» and «SLI ProGamer Flexible TurboMode II» and «GreenMax Sylent WiFi QBoost PlusGamerPro»

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A friend of mine was in a similar situation some time ago, that is the processor was bottle-necking the graphics card performance. Ivy Bridge i5 (whatever the current model number is) and a new motherboard did wonders for the performance. And yeah, from what I have understood, for most users i7 is not worth the price difference over the corresponding i5 model.

Also, make sure that you buy one of those motherboards where the heatsinks looks like ammo clips. Those are rad.

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Almost certainly the CPU that's bottlenecking you, I have a Q6600 and it too struggles with some things (although weirdly some games like Battlefield 3 aren't bottlenecked by it at all). You're like me though in that you're essentially on a 2006-era platform, so to really move forward you need to change your motherboard — and that means new RAM, because DDR2 doesn't fit in DDR3 slots.

Another important contributor to a responsive feel is using an SSD. They do actually make a big difference to almost anything that has to do anything with your hard drive, which as you can imagine is quite a lot. People always bang on about how fast Windows loads, but in all honesty that means shag all to me. Much snappier applications and OS across the board, though? Yes please. You'd probably have to use your SATA drives as archive/storage drives though, and try to just use your SSD for software and smaller files, or move big video projects off it once you're done with them for example. Unless you have a lot of dosh to burn, anyway.

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My motherboard supports Smart Response Technology, which means that I can use my SSD as a cache and not worry about how to distribute files over different drives. I have used it from the start so I can't really compare performances between SRT enabled and disabled or between pure SSD and SSD-SRT. It is fast, and that is enough for me.

Worth considering I guess.

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CPU: 3570K is pretty great value.

Motherboard: Z77 Asus, any is fine, the more you spend the more features you get.

Ram: Corsair, Geil, G-Skill are all good bets.

GET AN SSD (Samsung, Intel or Crucial only).

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I'll agree with SSD being essential.

WINDOWS IS SO FUCKING FAST NOW.

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Thanks for the feedback, guys.

CPU: 3570K is pretty great value.

Motherboard: Z77 Asus, any is fine, the more you spend the more features you get.

Ram: Corsair, Geil, G-Skill are all good bets.

GET AN SSD (Samsung, Intel or Crucial only).

There's so many Asus Z77 mobos! I wish there was an easy way of seeing their differences. I'm mainly concerned about having a decent amount of SATA and USB 3 ports. Also some PCI-E 3 goodness. I couldn't care less about overclocking, I value stability over just about everything. I also don't really need many on board components. Certainly don't need on board GFX, for example.

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There's so many Asus Z77 mobos! I wish there was an easy way of seeing their differences. I'm mainly concerned about having a decent amount of SATA and USB 3 ports. Also some PCI-E 3 goodness. I couldn't care less about overclocking, I value stability over just about everything. I also don't really need many on board components. Certainly don't need on board GFX, for example.

I understand that the ASUS P8Z77-V LK is probably a good bet. It seems pretty full-featured and has good fan controls. The only caveat is if you're planning to use Crossfire or SLI, the PCI-E bandwidth is only 8x for each card, but it's 16x for a single card, which it looks like you have.

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Thanks for the feedback, guys.

There's so many Asus Z77 mobos! I wish there was an easy way of seeing their differences. I'm mainly concerned about having a decent amount of SATA and USB 3 ports. Also some PCI-E 3 goodness. I couldn't care less about overclocking, I value stability over just about everything. I also don't really need many on board components. Certainly don't need on board GFX, for example.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V/ Probably the best bet, The LE has more USB 3 ports but I don't like the positioning of the sata ports. PCI-E 3 is crap and doesn't make a difference, so ignore that. Getting on-board is a good idea for testing in case something fails.

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I'm convinced nothing has ever run GTAIV properly. If I saw it, I don't think I would believe it.

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That's true, GTA4 is known for being a terrible port performance-wise. Still, that hardware is going to struggle with most modern games.

I'd suggest that a well-optimised game for testing would be Battlefield 3. As the PC was the lead platform and it is an incredible tax on hardware, getting that to run smoothly means you should be in pretty good shape. Until Crysis 3 that can probably safely be considered the current PC benchmark.

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The title of this post makes it look like it's about your butt.

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