Upgrade options

Penquin

Expert Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2007
Messages
1,044
Reaction score
1
Location
Houston - Ex Cape Town
It appears my Q6600 is bottlenecking my new 5850. So I managed to gather a budget of R5k for an upgrade. I need new cpu/mobo/ram. So far I'm leaning towards the new Phenom x6 1055t with 890GX motherboard to make the whole system AMD/ATI again.

But I got another idea in my head yesterday. Maybe I should get a better overclocking 775 motherboard that support crossfire, good cpu cooler, overclock the Q6600 to 3GHZ and pop in another 5850.

Any recommendations between those two options would be appreciated. I think for future proofing, the 1055t would be a better option, but I cant ignore the performance of the 5850's in crossfire, but then will the overclocked Q6600 still be bottlenecking those cards?
 
Q6600 is old, get new tech that will keep you going for a couple of years. AMD is a good choice.
 
If you want fast gaming, the best is still an Intel Core i3 dual core overclocked at 4ghz or more. Or else a Core i5 or Core i7.

The reason why I say Core i3 is it has the fastest single-threaded speed. Which is what you want for gaming. 6-cores are good for video encoding, 3D rendering and other multi-threaded apps.

The Core i7 is just as fast as a Core i3, but costs more, but has more threads.
 
Well if you do go the route of overclocking let me know.
I have a DFI X48 motherboard that i will be selling soon, along with all my other parts.
But i would say rather just get a new PC.
My Q6600 is also showing its age and thats running it at 3.6 :-/.
 
It's up to you but choosing fast single core performance over heavy multithreading is not the way to future proof your cpu for games imo.
 
It appears my Q6600 is bottlenecking my new 5850. So I managed to gather a budget of R5k for an upgrade. I need new cpu/mobo/ram. So far I'm leaning towards the new Phenom x6 1055t with 890GX motherboard to make the whole system AMD/ATI again.

But I got another idea in my head yesterday. Maybe I should get a better overclocking 775 motherboard that support crossfire, good cpu cooler, overclock the Q6600 to 3GHZ and pop in another 5850.

Any recommendations between those two options would be appreciated. I think for future proofing, the 1055t would be a better option, but I cant ignore the performance of the 5850's in crossfire, but then will the overclocked Q6600 still be bottlenecking those cards?

With 5k you can afford the 1090T. and an 890FX board in case you wanna x-fire.

There aren't really games that use 6cores though. The Phenom II 965 would be best for gaming as plenty games use 4cores now.

If you push your budget to 6k I'd say get a Phenom II 965 and a 790GX board and another 5850.
 
With 5k you can afford the 1090T. and an 890FX board in case you wanna x-fire.

There aren't really games that use 6cores though. The Phenom II 965 would be best for gaming as plenty games use 4cores now.

If you push your budget to 6k I'd say get a Phenom II 965 and a 790GX board and another 5850.

890FX & 1090T will set me back R6k and then I still need to buy ram. It would be nice but a bit out of my budget.

Bad Company 2, which is the majority of my gaming, can use 6+ cores if available. My pc is sometimes used to stream from to my HTPC as well while I'm gaming, where the 6 cores will come in handy. I can always overclock the 1055t to the 1095t's 3.2 GHZ.
 
With 5k you can afford the 1090T. and an 890FX board in case you wanna x-fire.

There aren't really games that use 6cores though. The Phenom II 965 would be best for gaming as plenty games use 4cores now.

If you push your budget to 6k I'd say get a Phenom II 965 and a 790GX board and another 5850.
+1
Although i thing he should rather get the 790FX ? not GX...

I still dont see the need for hex core in gaming.. 4 cores are barely even used in most games effectively.
If you go 790FX you can still upgrade to hex core later on. Plus you dont have to buy new ram
 
I still got my MSI K9A2 platinum which has the 790fx chipset, awesome board and uses ddr2 (max 1066). Just not sure of the pricing now.. If the 890 is in a similar price range then ya get the 890..
 
i would go for the 1055t because:

1)it is much cheaper than some i7's, giving you money to buy more ram or spend t on a good motherboard.

2) there are no programs that use 6-cores effectively yet, so i think that the 1055t is a good quad-core and tri-core cpu because it disables 2-3 cores and boosts the rest, so you can be rest assured that your system wont bottleneck with the specific card.

3) The hard drive is the primary bottleneck in the PC as well, so i suggest you buy a corsair nova series drive(R1125.18 supplier price at frontosa), an Asus M4A88TD-m evo(R1138.86) and a 1055t(2072.52). you can spend the rest on ram.
 
i would go for the 1055t because:

1)it is much cheaper than some i7's, giving you money to buy more ram or spend t on a good motherboard.

2) there are no programs that use 6-cores effectively yet, so i think that the 1055t is a good quad-core and tri-core cpu because it disables 2-3 cores and boosts the rest, so you can be rest assured that your system wont bottleneck with the specific card.

3) The hard drive is the primary bottleneck in the PC as well, so i suggest you buy a corsair nova series drive(R1125.18 supplier price at frontosa), an Asus M4A88TD-m evo(R1138.86) and a 1055t(2072.52). you can spend the rest on ram.

Nice prices, I take it they are all dealer prices, which I cant make use of. I like the idea of the ssd drive as well. What size is that drive?
 
yeah i don't know the reseller prices, i will never buy from a shop again, but don't we all have a friend at a supplier? its 32gig read: 195mb/sec 70mb/sec write, two if these bad boys in raid0 and you set for quite some time.
 
Well, go to Tomshardware.com and check the CPU performance charts.

The six-cores doesn't feature too well yet (except Gulftown) - but this is also due to the way apps currently utilize multi-core CPU's.

I would say your best bet would be:
i5 750 - These overclock like beasts.
R1000 -odd P55 mobo
4GB RAM
And you'll have some cash left.

I feel the above may be the best value-for money (although some would argue to get AMD)
 
Yeah if you want something significantly faster than a Q6600, you need overclocked Intel Core i5 750. I don't think AMD has anything as fast as Nehalem when overclocked.
 
Yeah if you want something significantly faster than a Q6600, you need overclocked Intel Core i5 750. I don't think AMD has anything as fast as Nehalem when overclocked.
Yip just look at mine :D
Thats basically the reason why i never got the 965.. i5 OC better :)
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X