$1200 for upgrades

long time lurker, first time poster, etc..

Long story short, my roomate is paying me two months worth of back rent next week that I've been covering for him... and since I've already paid his share the past two months, I'm looking at the situation as if I had saved up $1200 for something nice for myself, and I'd like to use it on PC upgrades...

These upgrades should be geared towards gaming..

first.. my current setup:
Monitor:
24" sceptre monitor @ 19x12

Motherboard:
EVGA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz OC'd to 3.2ghz

Ram:
4gb Gskill (2x2gb)

Video:
EVGA 8800GT 512M

Power:
700watt OCZ
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Now I'd like to get the most bang for my buck here...

I'm thinking video is probably my biggest bottle neck (comments?)

for $900 I could get 2xgtx 280's in SLI

or for $580 I could get a 4870x2... but I have an nvida based board, would I need an ATI based board to squeeze out the best performance from it? something x48 based?

ddr2 is so cheap that no matter what, I'm going to throw an extra 4gb in there...

thoughts? or other suggestions?

Asus X48 Rampage + 1 4870x2 in Crossfire = $828 or
Asus X48 ASUS P5E Deluxe + 1 4870x2 in Crossfire = $759

Both are less than (2) 280 in SLI but 2(280) would perform better.

(2) 4870x2 in quadfire is another story($1298).

+1 for the new mobo and a 4870x2... i used to have a EVGA 680i... which is now sitting on a shelf broken coz it just felt like failing coz it was bored... but yeh, x48 and a 4870x2 FTW!!

I say cover save another $600 this month and go i7 next month. The $1200 you have will cover the CPU/motherboard/memory and the $600 you save will cover the GPU set-up. What PSU are you running?

yes no reason to go NVIDIA chipset unless your going SLI and no point in SLI 2 x8800GTS since a single card will beat them down, so take the above advice.

and throw in a new CPU for the difference

Asus X48 ASUS P5E Deluxe + 1 4870x2 in Crossfire = $759

so get an e8500 or q6600 and you will have a new rig that will likely kick the crap our of your current one.

ou_phidelt said:

I say cover save another $600 this month and go i7 next month. The $1200 you have will cover the CPU/motherboard/memory and the $600 you save will cover the GPU set-up. What PSU are you running?

Click to expand...

hmm.. haven't heard of i7 yet... looks like I have some googling to do

I have an OCZ 700 watt

Mr.Guvernment said:

yes no reason to go NVIDIA chipset unless your going SLI and no point in SLI 2 x8800GTS since a single card will beat them down, so take the above advice.

and throw in a new CPU for the difference

Asus X48 ASUS P5E Deluxe + 1 4870x2 in Crossfire = $759

so get an e8500 or q6600 and you will have a new rig that will likely kick the crap our of your current one.

Click to expand...

already have a q6600

Other than the i7 someone suggested (which I'm looking into) is there an upgrade to the q6600 thats worth getting? (mine is OC'd to 3.2ghz)

I7 is okay, but if your gamer it isnt, you wont see any noticeble performance, yet, over current intel chipsets, also the cost of I7 motherboards will not be cheap and DDR3 is still expensive compared to DDR2., also, with new sockets come new problems!!!!


the q6600 @ 3.2 is good, a Q9550 is nice, but i wouldnt say you will see HUGE gains over a q6600. i would save the cash and maybe get some fast hard drives or something...

I was just thinking along the lines of he already has a decent 775 set-up that I don't think would it would be worth the money for another 775 CPU and motherboard at this point. I agree that i7 is not going to be a mimumental difference in gaming at this point but he will have a basis to build off of down the road instead of still being faced with spending the same money over again. Yes it will be more expensive but IMHO he would be better off to just move on. If you don't want to go all out at this point just upgrade the GPU and hold on to the rest of it until you are.

OR....

You could just get the 4870x2 / GTX280 and a REALLY nice Water setup and OC the hell out of the lot of it and have a monster rig. If your into that sorta thing...

Could probably get that q6600 to 4.0+ and OC the hell outta the GTX280. Boy would that rock. That would require a lot of tweaking, setting up the WC and all that. But hey, it will be worth it.