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Which of these upgrades would you choose?
Currently I have an intel build socket 775. Im considering upgrading the ram and CPU, however Im also consider upgrading to an AMD.
both of these upgrades give me what I need, I just dont know which is the best route.
Upgrade to current config:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) x2 (8gb total)
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Fluid Dynamic CPU Cooler (only because the stock intels are aweful)
Total: $552.95
Update to AMD:
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor Model
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) x2 (8gb total)
Total: $554.96
I guess what Im saying here is I dont know how different the two CPU's are. Which one outperforms the other? Ive been out of the loop on AMD's for quite some time now.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
Comments
I will say go AMD!!!!
But that is because I am a AMD fanboi and a Intel hater.
I try to go AMD... but they just have not been able to compete recently. The Intel CPU is better.
add more ram to yours (and w7 64 bit)if its not done.put a dx11 gcard if its lower then dx10 if it isnt then i suggest you dont move an inch aside from what you got !why?
soon intel WILL release their 32nm version of i7 and when that happen the graphic from intel will be almost ready (i mean their gaming edition!
they ve been working a while on that toy and no news from intel is rarelly a good news for amd.
but in my view everything you got is decent for a long while most system out there will only need a graphic card but only because of dx11 if you dont plan on playing dx11 title for a while dont buy a new card just add memory if you re not at 6 gig
add w7 64 bit if you arent there and your good for the next 4 or 5 years make sure your system never overheat
you did change your fan not long ago right?
aside from that theres not much to add i ll give you an exemple my old system was fine it was 3 or 4 years old
the only reason i upped it was because hp are douche they lock bios so you cant tweak it
but honestly if your system isnt a 90 nm processor system you dont need to upgrade ,in 4 years maybe but not now .
unless blizzard pull out a surprise from their hat and bring say 64 bit ,donnybrook,if they bring those out then you might need to upgrade .but since blizzard wont do that your good for 4 more years with your system.
op instead try to find out if your processor support direct cache access!this would give you more speed then amd .you might have to dig a lot tho since intel included that in a lot of their processor but forgot to make a list so even themselves dont know wich has it lol.so try to find someone on the net that got same proc as you ,maybe yours is one with direct cache access
my amd is brand new and as far as i know its isnt supported ,dont think they got their version either!
I'm an AMD fanboi so I got no choice but to say avoid Intel.
Both are good tho, do the same thing. Do more research and findout facts rather then hype or brand name.
Is it me or is your current intel proc way better than that AMD chip? (Well if it was a fast dual core)
That intel chip listed above beats the AMD one.
Yea dude.. was gonna say. It's hard as hell to beat that Q9650 and it won't be with AMD if you do. It's basically equal to a Phenom II X4 965 which is AMD's fastest CPU. Definitely don't need to upgrade the CPU.
Or the RAM.. 8GB of ram is plenty and the performance difference on ram speeds is such a small difference as to not be worth spending money just to switch to DDR3. In your case it's not worth a switch to DDR3 unless you needed it for an i5 750 or i7, but i5 or i7 would be a huge overhaul.
I guess what I don't get is where you feel your PC is lacking
Yea dude.. was gonna say. It's hard as hell to beat that Q9650 and it won't be with AMD if you do. It's basically equal to a Phenom II X4 965 which is AMD's fastest CPU. Definitely don't need to upgrade the CPU.
Or the RAM.. 8GB of ram is plenty and the performance difference on ram speeds is such a small difference as to not be worth spending money just to switch to DDR3. In your case it's not worth a switch to DDR3 unless you needed it for an i5 750 or i7, but i5 or i7 would be a huge overhaul.
I guess what I don't get is where you feel your PC is lacking
cool, that was my question. No these arent my current specs
I currently have an e8400, 3gig ddr2 800 and windows 7 64bit. The intel quadcore is what I planned on purchasing along with the ram and fan Out of curiousity I put together an AMD build that I thought woulld be similiar at the same price and thats the AMD build I posted.
right now the motherboard I own is capable of upgrading to the Q9650 so I think that is what I'll do. *edit* I think im actually going to upgrade my PSU for future upgrades, and well my psu is almost 4 years old now of constant running. So heres my upgrade, should last me a few years minus video board upgrades:
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Description Savings Total Price $642
1 CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V $89.99
1 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core $329.99
1 ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Fluid Dynamic CPU Cooler $36.98
2x G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (8gig total) $185
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
The choice in processor depends on what you use it for. In General the Q9650 performs better then the Phenom II 955. Outside the realm of productivity the performance difference is negligble. In productivity its back and forth. Generally anything that needs memory bandwidth or floating point calculations will favor the Phenom II 955, anything else will prefer the Q9650. If you do Media Encoding or 3D Rendering, the Phenom II is the better processor. If you compress into zips alot, the Q9650 is the better processor.
Another thing to consider with the AMD is you are getting a more robust motherboard. Less watts used, more expansion slots, and options for different forms of crossfire.
Also you should wait until April before making your decision. The prices will drop and you will have better technology options.
If you went with the AMD you would have to get a fan for it as well so you need to consider that in your price computations.
In the gaming world your not gonna see hardly any if any at all in performance upgrading with either of the processors. The E8400 is still to this day a great gaming cpu.
Overall I would go with the AMD because you will be able to upgrade much better with that board. Your pretty much capped with your upgrading with your current board.
thanks cleffy
ya its going to be some time before I upgrade, I just now started putting money back into my savings for it.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
If you do up to the AMD, Can I have your old MB Proc, and RAM? I'll pay for the shipping, And if you got a ddr3 128 bit PCI card , that works, I'll throw in a life accnt, to LOTROL, base game disc's and first expansion disc's.
HEHE. I wish I had that system.
Edit, oh I miss read that, sry, thought the intel specs were your old system. oopsie
Yea I didn't put enough points into Reading Comprehension.
WAIT, why are you buying 8GB more ram btw? How much do you have now? I don't think it's a good idea to invest more money into DDR2 at this point since it's useless after the 775 goes away.
4GB is plenty if that's what you have, and the speed difference between DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 isn't worth $180 of RAM.
I wouldn't upgrade, unless you have some reason in mind.
Buy a cpu cooler/hsf $20-40 and overclock your e8400 and you'll have equal or better preformence on almost every mmo out there.
ie get that e8400 to 3.8-4.0 GHz at a nice low /mod temp and you'll not see a difference because so few game and even less mmos use all 4 cores (often when they do, they cannot fully utilize them anyway).
The other two options are what i like to call a waste of money. Basically, an i920 would be a good upgrade (or anything above a 950, as 920s are 950s underclocked); otherwise your just wasting money on an new cpu that isn't going to make you play games faster. Look into video cards or something if you want higher frames because your cpu is not the bottle neck. This even more true after overclocking the e8400 which normally hits 3.8 Ghz without bumping voltage much, if at all.
Here this is one of the best hsf and for $25 w/ rebate $35 w/o. As a bonus it comes with one of the best thermal pastes out there so use it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835207004&cm_re=Sunbeamtech_Core-Contact-_-35-207-004-_-Product
PS. the Q9650 is a better buy for gaming and in general than the phen, but still a waste in your situation.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
You shoulda thought about buying an Intel i7 1330 something socket processor back during christmas week. I bought the CPU for 189.99 from a local computer shop. Now they raised the price back up to 270.00-299.00. It was the best buy ever.
To the OP,
First consider the choices you gave. The Intel route gives a little more life to an aged system. The AMD route has a more open upgrade path and moves you to DDR3 and both cost about the same. The choice is obvious.
As for AMD vs Intel for gaming the difference does not matter. In real life even the less expensive chips deliver great gaming. I have a system I am building for budget gaming and using a $100 Athlon II X4 I can play any game I like with great performance.
Benchmarks are a series of clinical tests performed in controlled conditions. They are pretty much meaningless to real life performance. Looking at your build there are a few things you can change to make the AMD even more cost effective.
Unless you plan to crossfire, not a great idea BTW, you can get a 770 based board with great features and excellent build for about $90 less than the FX you listed.
Do not get caught up in the hardware except to make sure you have an open path ahead of you. The Core2 line is done, the AM3 is still growing with 6 core coming later this year.
=============================
I have a soap box and I am not afraid to use it.
Just upgraded myself from newegg and got this:
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Mobo
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Processor
CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model TW3X4G1333C9A
FREE GIFT
Rosewill RCX-Z4 120mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
and
BELKIN F5D7010 Wireless G Notebook Card
All for $250 including shipping!
I didn't got with the quad core to save on $$$. I still need to settle on a video card however and more then likely I will just get an eVGA Nvidia GTS 250. I'm hoping they come down in price soon before I buy to save some more $$$.
S.C.I.F.I
<Sights, Clouded, In, False, Illusions>
Good choice on the motherboard, is solid and nicely featured at an excellent pirce, All three of my PCs use that board.
Unless you PLAN to overclock do not get caught in the Black Editions. Also I would never go dual core. Triple cores are a decent buy but I really like the AMD Athlon II X4 630 Propus 2.8GHz. In pure gaming the 550 shows better in benchmarks but in real life game play the difference is not noticed, plus the 630 will rock the 550 in multitasking. The price is nearly identical. Also do not get caught in actual clock speed, more cores will be better than higher clock speeds as games evolve.
Unless you plan to overclock or have a really hot ambient temp the stock heatsink does a fair job.
As for video if you want DX11 support look at the 5770 or 5750, both of which outrun the GTS.
=============================
I have a soap box and I am not afraid to use it.
I just canceled my order on newegg after reading benchmarks of the GTS 250 and the HD5770. Both the HD5750 and HD5770 outperform the GTS250. Most people picked the HD5770 even over the GTX260 cards! Luckily Newegg customer support had no problem stopping my order and refunding my money before it went out the door. I still have to wait the 4-6 days for the charge to return, but in the meantime I can still replace my order. Thx for the info on the HD5770
I ended up going with the HD5750. It's 15% cheaper and I have read that you can update the BIOS and have it clocked just the same as the HD5770.
I do plan to OC at least 10% and with the aftermarket CPU fan I ended up with (which is HUGE compared to the fan/heatsink that came with it) cooling should not be a problem.
I know the dual core would be the lesser choice, but paying $90 for a processor sounds better to me. I didn't go with a triple core processor, because (I know this sounds crazy) I cannot stand odd numbers and since the quad core was out of my budget price for a processor I settled for what was reviewed as a great cpu at a nice price. Trust me if I had it my way I would have went for the more expensive quads.
I'm pretty sure no matter what I will be happy with my build just as long as everything works the way it's supposed to. Just glad to get out of this 939 socket and old 400mhz RAM.
Good luck on the OP and his build!
S.C.I.F.I
<Sights, Clouded, In, False, Illusions>
It's good to see some of the responses here pointing out pros and cons of the processors. Fandom makes no sense. It's your computer and you should choose the parts that are going to work best for you, company be buggered. I think that's been answered fairly well.
My recent experience may be of some help. It wasn't very long ago that I upgraded to 8 GBs of DDR2 RAM, and I have seen no meaningful performance increase over the 4 GBs that I ran previously. It's nice to know that I have the 8 GBs to use, but 4 GBs worked just fine.
Note that I've played Crysis, Street Fighter IV, DiRT 2, and some others on both the 4 GBs and 8 GB configuration. I'm sure that Crysis, out of all of them, used it, but I saw no reasonable difference between the two configurations.
By the by, I have read some articles comparing DDR2 with DDR3, and every one of them have said that there is no significant improvement with DDR3. As far as I can tell there is no reason at all to spend the extra money on DDR3.
The biggest performance boost came from the 3D card. I used to run a 512 MB 4850 which I have upgraded to a 1 GB 5850. This 5850 is a beautiful piece of hardware.
My DxDiag link is in my sig, and I game at 1920x1080 (1080p resolution works fine for me). My previous system ran with a resolution of 1680x1050.
edit: Oh~ looks like I haven't updated the DxDiag.txt file that's in the link. I'll do that now.
That is the point i am trying to make because you are open to amd or intel i am guessing the OP just wants a better computer.
In this case what almost every poster seems to miss is that both of those CPUs will get you almost no performence boost.
A video card can depending on what card you currently have. (once again i don't like ati in general, but the 5770 is an unbeatable deal, so its a WONDERFUL option for an upgrade).
Overclock your e8400 to 3.7-3.8 Ghz and you'll see no bottleneck from the cpu. if you need help OC'ing ill help you.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
Put one together yourself and save $$$
AMD Phenom II CPU 3.0GHz to 3.4GHz
ASUS or MSI motherboard
4GB of RAM thats two 2GB sticks and you can easily expand to 8GB later on
500GB HDD S-ATA II
ATi HD 4890 or nVidia GTX 275 if you can find any or get the new ATi HD 5850
And last but not least some fancy case to put it all in, I would choose one in white or silver with some chrome details.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
ya I stopped buying prebuilt PC's when I was 18, about 20 years ago.
anyway im currently on the fence as to what im going to upgrade. I managed to find an OEM of the 9650 for $250 which is a good price, but like others have pointed out the money for the upgrade may not justify what I can get out of it.
I'll just keep packing money away each pay period and see where it gets me this summer. I dont know much about how the i5 compares to the i7, but it looks like I may be going the route of the i5 and a complete rebuild by june
*edit* scratch that. looks like the i5 has some sort of igp "gimmick" that I wont be buying into. Guess im on hold indefinitely.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
ya I stopped buying prebuilt PC's when I was 18, about 20 years ago.
anyway im currently on the fence as to what im going to upgrade. I managed to find an OEM of the 9650 for $250 which is a good price, but like others have pointed out the money for the upgrade may not justify what I can get out of it.
I'll just keep packing money away each pay period and see where it gets me this summer. I dont know much about how the i5 compares to the i7, but it looks like I may be going the route of the i5 and a complete rebuild by june
*edit* scratch that. looks like the i5 has some sort of igp "gimmick" that I wont be buying into. Guess im on hold indefinitely.
The i5-750 was the first and fastest i5 and doesn't have the igp gimmick so it doesn't have useless transistors you're wasting money on like the i5-661 etc. Probably is best to wait for summer though.
Be careful with ATI HD5xxx cards. Right now there seems to be a "white screen" problem with the series. I just put my new system together that uses a Sapphire 5750 and I keep getting a dead black screen which seems to be caused by either ATI drivers, Windows updates, or bad sensors which is also related to the graphics drivers. I have spent the last 5 days now and have installed windows 3 times. Right now I am doing fine but I had to turn off ALL windows updates and use a hotfix graphics driver 9.11 instead of the driver from the cd and the newest drivers from the website.
Mainly I get the problem with 2d apps. My system eats through Bioshock 1 on max DX10 settings like nothing though, so I know the card is not bad.
Once I get this system stable with the graphics card, I will then overclock my AMD Phenom II dual care (3.1 gigs).
Once again, good luck.
S.C.I.F.I
<Sights, Clouded, In, False, Illusions>