SO I haven't been here for a while, I see a heated discussion brewing
In a fairly near future, im most probably going off to Uni. For that, I will need to take out a loan - but not too much since ill live at home. The overheat that I will have left over looks.... pretty big. So assuming that this comes into fruition, I MIGHT just be able to pull off a new system rather than upgrade.
But bear in mind like its been said, that this will push me to get everything new and from scratch. I will need a new case, mobo, cpu, ram, gpu because I won't use a 5770 on a brand new setup, fans, drives, windows (oh joy) - the lot. Its a bit of a stretch.
Then again, looking at upgrading 775 as it is now, after some consideration, prices of 9550 are quite high and the ram that I need to pull it off anyway is both rare and expensive. DDR3 definitely has the edge, however I just don't know if it makes sense doing an upgrade and then going for an i5.
If I was doing that, I would prefer the i7, highly glorified and maybe overpriced and overrated but hyper threading does make a difference - having 8 useable threads instead of 4 as well as other little advantages.
The rig would be for gaming and mostly gaming. As it always was. I never played very demanding games but now all games are demanding.... bit of a bummer, my good old trusty PC can't cope. But I do also enjoy an occasional spot of 3D CAD, also with my upcoming uni course being about yacht and powercraft design I assume I will need something decent for rendering and 3D works.
Hmm, when you put it like that, the costly upgrade of 2 components doesnt sound so good anymore.
With regards to graphic cards, I would probably settle for a 7 series radeon, 7770 in crossfire or something similar as I am mostly looking for efficient performance and little consumption - total TDP would be around 160W when compared with many higher end cards using nearly double that but not always returning as much as 2 of these could. Thats only my opinion, I love the 5 series radeons since they are really up to a good standard, really solid cards making very good use of the energy fed to them unlike older but price-equivalent nVidias. Which are still more poweful but a lot more expensive and use too much energy imho.