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Opinions on cheap upgrade

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Twiggz

Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Location
Arkansas
I'm planning on doing a very cheap upgrade which i'm thinking will give me good results now and room for something in the future.

Using whats in signature I plan on moving to..
i3-2120 3.3GHz (I believe just looking at specs should outperform my E7200)
Intel DZ68BC Board (Will let me have DDR3 and SLI if i want it later)
G. Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2x4) DDR3 1600 (should be big upgrade from DDR2)
Going to get a 6Gb/s HD instead of 3
Going to Windows 7

Good plan? Thinking is that its super cheap and seems to have plenty of upgrade options for me later (bigger processor, more memory, sli etc.).
Also will I see decent improvement in this new rig from the one in signature?
 
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Don't like Intel mobo's due to the bios setup in general. IF you are not overclockng to amount to anything then the Intel board should be fine for you.
 
6GB SATA 3 HD is useless. It is pure marketing. There is no hardrive that have transfer rate above 300MB/s.

The only drives that take advantage of Sata3 are last generation SSD's.

Agreed with ED. Better go with an Asus or an Asrock (Extreme3 Gene3 Z68).
 
6GB SATA 3 HD is useless. It is pure marketing. There is no hardrive that have transfer rate above 300MB/s.

AbSOfreekenlutely accUrate. Now if the Sata6 hdd was the very same price as the Sata3, then okay, but to spend extra monies...well what he said.
 
Thanks guys, I'll go with the suggestions on the HD. I didnt realize they were actually that bad.

Also, the reason I picked that Intel board was based a lot on the reviews for it. They said it was really stable so I was willing to pay extra for it. That extreme3 gen3 Z68 is actually 70-90 dollars cheaper, so that would fit into my budget better.
 
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If you are on a budget, I wouldn't do that upgrade.

You are replacing pretty much everything for very little gain.

How about overclocking that E7200? You can probably get it within 20% of the performance of the i3.

RAM speed doesn't matter. You won't notice any difference.

I would at least get an i5 (quad core). There is little point spending that much money into another dual core.
 
FYI I have this motherboard and I like it a lot. I have i7 2600 (Not K) clocked at 4.3 GHz. I probably won't keep it there as this was more of a can I do this project than a need for speed thing but I think you'll be happy with the MB. I agree with the others, don't worry about a SataIII interface if you are using a mechanical HD.
 
If you are on a budget, I wouldn't do that upgrade.

You are replacing pretty much everything for very little gain.

How about overclocking that E7200? You can probably get it within 20% of the performance of the i3.

RAM speed doesn't matter. You won't notice any difference.

I would at least get an i5 (quad core). There is little point spending that much money into another dual core.

Im confused that i3 stock is 800mhz faster and im moving from 775 to 1155. These differences in technology i've read, are supposed to be an instant improvement (15%?) at same speeds. I've also read that unless you do alot of video/audio compressing and extreme benchmarking, that a dual-core cpu would be more than adequate for gaming etc.

Also this may seem dumb I dunno, i've been out of the loop for a long time. Isnt the only different between i3-2120 and i5-2500k that the i5 has 2 more cores and turboboost 2.0 and 6mb cache, while the i3 only has 2 cores and 3mb cache, but has hyper-threading?

RAM speed doesn't matter. You won't notice any difference.

This is the first time i've ever heard anyone say this. What was the point of creating DDR3? I was under the impression just upgrading into the new architecture (1155) would end up giving you up to 30% improvement (given I believe comparing both old and new at stock).

I could be wrong I'm not sure. Also important note: I couldnt get this system oc'd any higher than 3.3Ghz when it was pumped. I had cooling issues and just never redid my oc.

FYI I have this motherboard and I like it a lot. I have i7 2600 (Not K) clocked at 4.3 GHz. I probably won't keep it there as this was more of a can I do this project than a need for speed thing but I think you'll be happy with the MB. I agree with the others, don't worry about a SataIII interface if you are using a mechanical HD.

Thanks I thought that was a decent board, i'll end up deciding based upon price in the end though. It is kinda expensive.
 
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Im confused that i3 stock is 800mhz faster and im moving from 775 to 1155. These differences in technology i've read, are supposed to be an instant improvement (15%?) at same speeds. I've also read that unless you do alot of video/audio compressing and extreme benchmarking, that a dual-core cpu would be more than adequate for gaming etc.
That's about right, but you will be spending a lot of money to get that 30% improvement, and that doesn't really make sense if you are on a budget.

This is the first time i've ever heard anyone say this. What was the point of creating DDR3? I was under the impression just upgrading into the new architecture (1155) would end up giving you up to 30% improvement (given I believe comparing both old and new at stock).
The biggest push for DDR3 was power consumption. Power is proportional to voltage squared, so moving from 1.8V (DDR2) to 1.5/1.65V (DDR3) is a huge improvement. That's why, I believe, DDR3 was adopted by laptops first (could have remembered wrong, though).

RAM speed, in general, for most applications, don't matter much. I don't have a link but someone benchmarked a bunch of things at DDR3-1333, 1600, and 2000, and the conclusion was RAM speed just doesn't matter almost at all. Something like 3% improvement from 1333 to 1600, and 1% from 1600 to 2000.

It's really up to you whether spending about $300 for a 30% improvement is worth it or not, but I personally would want at least 50-60% improvement from $300.

For day to day use, the biggest upgrade you can do with $300 is getting a nice SSD. Harddrive is the bottleneck for a lot of things in modern applications, and a SSD will speed that up by 300-400%. Computer will definitely feel much faster.

Or a good video card if you play games. Something like a GTX 460 or 560 Ti (I am an NVIDIA employee so I'm not going to suggest ATI/AMD cards :)).

I wouldn't worry about CPU/RAM, especially since the ones you have are fast enough for almost everything you can do now anyways.
 
Thanks cyberfish for the reply:

Those memory comparisons are for DDR3? I was wondering about the improvements from DDR2 >> DDR3. I suppose I could probably find these comparisons on my own somewhere. The big reason I started into this whole process was because my current system is bottle-necked big time. I cant upgrade anymore RAM and there is no point in upgrading the processor of course. While the new system would only give me those minimal gains, my ultimate thinking behind it was that it does have huge upgradibility later on ( like dropping in an i7 and doubling the RAM a year later or something).

You guys are toying with me too much :). I was convinced I had this figured out, now you guys are telling me not to bother with it at all. Lol
 
Those were for DDR3. It's hard to do a DDR2 >> DDR3 comparison, because very few setups support both. I know there are some very late 775 boards that come in both DDR2 and DDR3 flavours, but I don't think anyone bothered to compare them.

For RAM, bandwidth and latency are all that matters, though, and DDR3 has much higher latency. I believe I read somewhere that DDR3-1333 is about equivalent to DDR2-1066, because DDR2 has much lower latency.

I wouldn't worry about upgradeability. If you won't take advantage of your new motherboard until a year later, why not just buy it a year later and save $50? Computer parts prices drop all the time. I would only pay for immediate benefits. They are always massively depreciating assets.
 
I wouldn't worry about upgradeability. If you won't take advantage of your new motherboard until a year later, why not just buy it a year later and save $50? Computer parts prices drop all the time. I would only pay for immediate benefits. They are always massively depreciating assets.

Excellent point and it's because I had several misconceptions apparently.
1. I thought SATAIII was a big deal (turns out it isnt, lol).
2. I thought just getting out of the FSB and into the QPI w/ DDR3 was a big deal (apparently not)
 
DDR3 does make a difference over DDR2 but you don't need to buy the very fastest stuff. It won't matter. You can just buy cheap but solid RAM for your new system.

As far as toying goes I don't think anyone is they are just giving you advice based up "Cheap Build" or maximum bang for your buck.
 
As far as toying goes I don't think anyone is they are just giving you advice based up "Cheap Build" or maximum bang for your buck.

Oh I know, I was just messing around saying that its giving me a hard choice. I think though, that i've decided to stick with this setup for now. After taking it all in, I think i'm liking what cyberfish said about upgrading the video or the HDD and waiting it out a little longer.
 
BTW, I also had the DZ68ZV which runs about 20.00 cheaper and a little faster. The caveat is that if you have a NVIDIA GPU you will have to flash the BIOS, at least until the current run is pushed through the sales channel.
 
2500k would clock a lot better then i3 [AFAIK]. From what I've seen you can easily clock 2500k to 4.5 with a $20 cooling, and I'd say that's more future proof.

However, as people said before E7200 is not really that bad. Get a better video card if you are gaming or SSD otherwise.
 
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