The correct nVc tag for lame posts is [nVc] :(

I tried nVc but it automatically capitalizes everything in a headline apparently. I did mistake the brackets for parenthesis though.

RLY M8?

no not really, just made it up to keep you on your toes

thx4infoz

do you have any trouble running games?

if you have too, I would prob. buy i5-2500k new mobo + ram. So the next update would be a simpler gfx buy.

no trouble running games, the only reason I was trying to decide was so that I wouldn't get some ddr2 if I'm going to ddr3 soon, but I've checked and it's really cheap these days. Under 100bucks for 4gigs, so I'll just go that route for now.

A difficult decision man, so many factors :(

A few questions:

What budget do you have roughly?

Is there a particular game/game type you want to improve performance on?

And lastly, what resolution(s) do you game on/want more frames on?


Regarding a cpu upgrade; your nice clock rate on your e8600 means that your probably not going to find any more frames by getting yourself a new c2d or quad c2. As you've said, there is a severe lack of evidence for anything more than two cores really helping out gaming performance. Therefore, any cpu upgrade path would be an expensive one as a hop up to the new i7 ranges would be the only viable choice.

If you've got the money, moving onto the new "Sandy Bridge" architecture (and new mobo/ram etc) would be the next logical step for an overclocker like yourself. The Core i5-2500K (quad core +no hyperthreading; approx £180) and the Core i7-2600K (quad core + hyperthreading; approx £254) offer a huge increase in performance over the first set of core i7's (let alone a c2d) during cpu intensive tasks. And the awesome thing about these two processors is that they are FULLY MULTIPLIER UNLOCKED!! :)

^^ They didnt bring much more performance to the table in FPS games (a few frames in Crysis over any first gen i7 or i5), but there was a significant difference in a cpu intensive game like X3:

X3 frame rates 1,680x1,050 4xAA:

i7-2600K Min 61fps, Max 125fps

i7-980X EE (best 1st gen i7 money could buy) Min 50fps, Max 107fps

i7-950 Min 48fps, Max 101fps


So anything CPU intensive or bottlenecked, the new range of "Sandy Bridge" makes a marked difference, as well as being very, very overclockable.


The cheaper option ofc would be to upgrade your gfx card; what to upgrade to requires how much your willing to spend; your kit is already pretty powerful so quite an expensive gfx card would be required to see some worthwhile benefits. The GTX 570 does seem to be top of the pile atm, as ATI have been a bit conservative with their newest architecture refresh, although the 570 is hot running and consumes a lot of power (albiet surprisingly quiet due to it using a new vapour chamber cooller design seen on previous gen, 3rd party cards).

Lots of factors as always!

In short:

A CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade to the new "Sandy Bridge" platform would give cpu intensive/bottlenecked tasks a HUGE improvement over your oc'ed e8600 c2d as well as being very overclockable (the i5-2500K can be oc'ed to 4.9GHz on air!) The i7-2600K got 4.8GHz on air (the wonders of an unlocked multiplier!). The board used to do these overclocks was the £121 Asus P8P67. The cons being it would be around double the price of upgrading to the best gfx cards around atm. It would "future proof" your PC as far as you can atm also. It's what I would do :)

A gpu upgrade would give you quite a few more frames and is ofc the cheaper option. As for the RAM, its not really needed as there arent many "day to day" tasks which benefit from having more than 3 to 4 GB of RAM, including games. It would only be beneficial if you had a fuck ton of stuff open in the background when playing Crysis or something as memory hungry (photo editing etc). I have 8GB DDR2 in my pc, and have not noticed ANY difference from having 4GB beforehand. Once you have 4GB of ram in pairs, your not going to notice the change imo.

Hope this is of some help :)

thank you for the thorough response! Yeah, to be honest, I'm thinking for now I'll just get some more ram and an SSD OS drive and 1TB main storage replacement (my other main storage drive is nearly full).

ssd and gpu.

No need for quad core.

Yes a ssd for the OS/ programs/games etc.

And gpu.

Having a quad core is nice, but you aren't going to see as significant a boost in performance in games that you would see from upgrading from that GTX280. That being said, I'd snag a newer video card, toss more RAM in that damn thing, and consider an SSD as your boot/OS drive. The games out there today just aren't taking advantage of more than 2 or 3 cores.

If you want specific examples, go read some articles from Anandtech or Tom's Hardware. I'm not going to go comb through them when you'd be better off looking at the source material yourself.

I've been scrounging all day actually. Toms, guru3d, hardocp, etc. Still can't find much more than Supreme Commander that has significant benefit for more than 2 cores.

There's GTA4, AC2&3 and a few other turds that do benefit from quad cores. But a dual core @4ghz+ won't perform bad at all in those either tbh.

So unless you're willing to replace the mobo/cpu/ram all at once, just get a better GPU (not that the GTX280 is weak though) and maybe a SSD for the OS (makes the rig feel much better but won't improve in game performance) and maybe a bit more ram.

Yeah, exactly. Game devs just aren't taking advantage of them quite yet. I'm sure they will start to once 6 core CPUs start gaining more foothold in the market. As of now your best bang for the buck upgrade would be to add more RAM and snag a better video card. An SSD would be nice, but they're still really damn expensive. After that upgrade you would be wise to start saving for a new system down to road instead of upgrading that one again.

to both you and kalston
Agreed, 2x 2gb sticks of ram and 2 new hard drives, one SSD for OS and game and one 500gb HDD for main storage is what I'm going to go with. Thanks!

Not a problem. Enjoy your upgrades. Wish I could snag an SSD or 2.

What games would you even need to upgrade for?

tbh, there's not much, but I've seen Crysis go over 1800mb of ram usage, and with 3gigs total I'm running out of OS room in there... so really for now I'm upgrading neither the CPU nor GPU, the only reason I even considered it was while deciding if I should go to DDR3 or just get some more ddr2 (1200mhz)

Aside from being pretty, Crysis is pretty bland. It's kinda silly to upgrade for one game, though. By the time some worthwhile games start coming out (that also need better hardware), the prices will be even better. Most of the good games coming out this year will run perfectly fine on your current setup.

I don't think you need to upgrade your rig.
And as I don't really like (for various reasons, cba to discuss it :D) the sandy bridge platform, i'd advise you to wait until the next generation. And get a top notch computer when this one is actually obsolete.

http://en.expreview.com/2011/04/02/graphics-c...868.html/5

2 core is way enough, except if you play RTS Force Commander.

Enjoy your upgrad anyway :) !

Miley Cyrus blowup doll

your cpu is terrible, just like your gaming ability

love