Forced upgrade, what to do ?

Nerfherder

Nerfherder

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Recently I have been spending my spare cash on some pretty neat upgrades, namely a 6870 and Vertex 4.
I was happy with my CPU and MB but the ram is slow and the board wont support more than 4 gigs.
I have a Q6600 quad core and a DDR2 MB, so upgrading these things individually is pretty pointless, because they are so old (almost 5 years) its just better to do it all at once.
BUT I was happy with performance so decided to just save up.

.... THEN on friday I boot up and I get 3 beeps... and nothing.
Pull the entire rig apart testing ram, drives, PS, GPU... stays the same. Dead, 3 beeps mean memory but I have a feeling is the memory controller not the RAM. I had an error earlier that amount of memory had changed, but then when I logged on to windows the amount of RAM was the same. Now it wont boot.

FLip... so pretty much now I am forced to upgrade. The thing is I don't want to spread my self too thin but I also don't want to get something that can't be improved later. I know it sounds impossible but I want to spend about 2k and still have something I can play games on.
I suppose I could go and pick up one stick of DDR2 just to test, but what are the chances that all my RAM failed at the same time ?
I could get a replacement MB for my CPU, but they are scarce and what if the CPU is actually the problem ?
Its still a decent CPU but its very old


I suppose that the logical thing is to get it tested by some one with the correct gear and then have them tell me what to do... but i'm tempted to just get a decent board with a dual core i3 that I can upgrade later.

Would that even be worth it ? Can you play games on an i3 ?
 
Yup you can play games on an i3 but i would go quadcore if you can. there are a few games that love the quadcore and struggle without one. So for future proofing a quadcore would be ideal but that is dependent on budget of course.
 
You can get a board and a Phenom II 965 for like R2200.
 
For 2k bucks you can get an Entry 1155 board,i3 2120 and 8gig of Corsair DDR3
 
I got an old socket 1156 i3-530, 4 gigs of ram and a 7770. I play BF3, MP3 and a lot of games without many problems, just don't run them on absolutely max settings.
 
What make & model MB do you have?
How many dimms do you have?
 
ponder said:
What make & model MB do you have?
How many dimms do you have?
Click to expand...

Its a 4 dimm MB, I don't have the model no with me now... its an Intel P45 Express Chipset, the max speed for the RAM is 800mhz and it can either take 4 gigs at DDR2 800 or 8 gigs at DDR 600/500... pretty sucky

EDIT : intel DQ965GF
 
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+1 on the quad core. I had an i3 with a GTX560ti and the cpu throttled my gaming. Add an i5 later and presto quite a good boost in speed for some games
 
Qwikslver said:
This forum is full of Intel fanboys though.
Click to expand...

I find this statement very unfair, if some one gives valid reasons why a certain product is better than another they should not be called fanboys, yes i do own a Intel, Why? Because I know it is better than AMD. Why do you think a product is more expensive than its competitor, because there is a reason its more expensive.

EDIT: If AMD and Intel were IDENTICALLY priced I would go for the Intel for various reasons.
 
Nerfherder said:
Worth switching to AMD ?
Click to expand...

Depends on your budget and needs. The FX-4100 is in the same price range as the i3 and both will perform similarly. The FX is a quad-core CPU but its not in the same performance bracket as an i5, for example. So your options are:

Low-end:
Intel core i3-2120 @ R1204
GIGABYTE B75M-D3H @ R838
TEAM Xtreem Dark DDR3-1600 4GB @ R251
or
AMD FX-4100 @ R1305
MSI 970A-G46 @ R935
TEAM Xtreem Dark DDR3-1600 4GB @ R251

The FX-4100 setup is a little more expensive depending on where you purchase your parts from, but can be overclocked. The Intel one, on the other hand, uses less power and has better long-term prospects thanks to a huge upgrade path and the possibility of upgrading to Ivy Bridge, as well as front-panel USB3.0 support and Intel's RST tech for SSDs.
 
Qwikslver said:
You can get a board and a Phenom II 965 for like R2200.
Click to expand...
My previous rig was just that, Phenom II 965 with 16GB RAM, it was pretty cheap and even with the onboard Radeon 4250 games were still playable. If you have sweet GFX like the 6870 then you will get a lot of performance from it.
 
Nerfherder said:
Its a 4 dimm MB, I don't have the model no with me now... its an Intel P45 Express Chipset, the max speed for the RAM is 800mhz and it can either take 4 gigs at DDR2 800 or 8 gigs at DDR 600/500... pretty sucky

EDIT : intel DQ965GF
Click to expand...

Ok before you go buy anything try this:
Remove GPU, disconnect all hard drives & optical drives, remove all pci cards, remove all ram. replace cmos battery with new one (they are dirt cheap), reset cmos via onboard jumper.
Clean dimm sockets with a paint brush, clean DIMM contacts with an eraser.
Now insert only 1 dimm and power up the pc, if no luck remove the dimm and try another one.
If this still does not help then it's a MB issue. The three beeps from you bios indicates ram error but it could also be a memory controller like you said.

Have you considered getting an el cheapo second hand g31 board maybe which can tie you over until you have save some more money for a decent system? Try carbonite or even the classified section here.
 
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