Possible upgrade to AMD

F

FatManSam

New Member
Hey folks, thinking of upgrading my mobo/cpu etc to an AMD based rig. My Q8200 is terrible at over clocking and has given me nothing but problems. Plus theres lots of new games coming out and i could do with some extra CPU performance to couple with my beastly ATI 5850. I've always used Intel CPUs and i know their products very well. I've been reading up a bit on AMDs and from what i can see they're much better value than i remember they used to be and appear to be somewhat more powerful to their Intel equivalents.

Would something like these two go together nicely?

CPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...-e-20(x16)-ddr3-1333-1600-1800-sata-3gb-s-atx

Motherboard: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-...e-s-am3-31ghz-2mb-cache-ht-4000mhz-95w-retail

Either way, would love to hear your opinion on this.

Cheers guys!
 
Not much of an upgrade, 790's are soon to be obsolete chipsets. Athlon's are okay, but don't have nearly as much power as phenom ii's do. With 5850's, you could be looking at some real bottleneck issues. I'd get a 890fx or gx board, and a phenom ii 955.
 
FatManSam said:
Nice i'll have a look at that. You can tell i know next to nothing about this lol ;P
Click to expand...

I'd go with either a intel sandy bridge setup or wait as amd are soon to release their new cpus, I believe in june, so if you upgrade now you would be putting money into, what is almost, amds last generation of cpus.
 
Hmmm. So say i were to buy that i5 2500K, what motherboard and RAM would you reccommend to go with it so i could get a really nice overclock?
 
Few things to consider,

Due to the architecture of the new i5s and i7s if you are looking to overclock you will need to ensure your using a k series cpu, for example i7 2600k or i5 2500k, they overclock extremely well btw.

Next thing to look at is your budget, with the lga 1155 platform you need to ensure all boards of of a b3 revision, all new ones are.
What features are you looking for in a mother board, do you want dual gpu support?

This asus board has dual gpu features and is the b3 revison, but it is £143.00, tbh with intel to get a good basic board you will be looking at more than the AMD option.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/260185

or this Gigabyte is similar, with a similar price.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/258683

Ram on the other hand is getting really cheap now, you can get 1600mhz which is fine but since you sound like you may want to oc a lot, you could even go higher to 1866mhz or further, this will cost more obviously and I believe that real world performance isnt that much improved.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/180490

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/248767

There are plenty more to choose from at a simalar price btw, both of the above are around £45.00, are 1600Mhz and are 4GB kits.

and since you want to OC you may also want to look at an aftermarket cooler as well, or check you current one is compatible with the newer intel ones.
 
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Hi Innercx, i did indeed go for the i5 2500K along with an Asus board, though it wasnt the one you mentioned. The £140 is a 'Pro' edition which comes with things like blue-tooth. Which i think i can live without! I had to upgrade my heatsink so i bought the Thermaltake Frio dual fan which i believe is the best air cooler according to a study undertaken by Bit-Tech. As for RAM i went with the corsair :)
 
My Athlon II x3 out performs the c2q, plus with am3 you can also move over to phenom II x6, still great budget systems, also you get ddr3 tech only reason I said no point was because of bulldozers immanent arrival, otherwise as a budget system if would have been an excellent way to go.

Regardless the intel setup atm was the best way to go.
 
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