[help] Upgrading my gaming rig

greengamer

New Member
Hi, I've been saving for a while now, and finally have a decent £500.00 to upgrade my rig with. I've currently got a gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R mobo, core 2 due e8200, xfx 8800 gs 350mb, 4gb ocz (1066), 500 gb hd, 1 tb external hd, and a cheap but cheerful case.

I initially bought this setup with the intention to overclock everything, but after going through the oc instructions for my set up in pc gamer magazine, I just kept getting bsod, then it would crash on boot so I had to reset the mobo batteries and every time I've attempted to oc the cpu or gpu I just get the same results :S So I've just left it at stock speeds, but with the emergence of crysis warhead its really showing its age, even gettin ctd on nearly all my games with anything over medium. (tested with empire total war, crysis warhead, cod wow & fallout 3.)

I also returned a tablet of mine so I have £130.00 on top of that for any other components, but I would have to get em at pc world.

The main goal here is to be able to play game like crysis warhead on enthusast with aa and get decent fps, 20-30.

Any advice would be totally welcome as I'm really unshure about alotta things - if certain graphic cards will fit in my case, will my psu have enough 6 pin connectors, will the processors fit onto my mobo, should I buy proper conductor paste for the processor, will I have to also upgrade my ddr2 4gb ocz ram?
 
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kookooshortman55

New Member
Your best bet would probably be a GTX 260. A GTS 250 would be able to run Crysis well but I'm not sure if it would be able to run it that well. You might as well go for something a little bit better and possibly be able to run it better than that.
 

greengamer

New Member
The above components are what make up my current rig, there the old, the e8200 and xfx 8800gs an all that are on there way out.

As for the GTX 260, I've been hearing mixed opinions, I'm auctually lookin to buy the hd 4890 1gb, but if the gtx 260 is honestly better I'll roll with that.

Besides that I'm also very tempted to get intels core 2 q9550 processor and antec 900 case as i hear the new gpu's are pretty big. And a major point I left out, I hear the new gpu's use 2 6pin connectors, and i've just cheaked my psu, it only has one :S
 

kookooshortman55

New Member
What power supply do you have? Chances are if it only has one 6-pin connector, it might not be powerful enough to power one of these cards that you're looking at. The Q9550 would be a good processor, and definitely wouldn't bottleneck anything you're looking at.

As for the GTX 260, I was just recommending a card that would run Crysis at those settings. The 4890 is definitely better than it, it's comparable to a GTX 275, the only problem is you won't be able to Crossfire cards, so a GTX 275 might be the better card to go with at this point.

And the Antec 900 is a good case. Depending on how many hard drives you have, most cards should fit in it. The hard drive cages face towards the back, so if you have the cages filled you might have some trouble fitting the card in.
 

greengamer

New Member
My psu is a casecom atx 500w, Im currently looking to upgrade that to the EZcool 650w SLi silent psu @ £35.00. After looking through the gtx 200 series I've decided to also go with the evega gtx 285 superclocked. Yummy.


Gonna stick with that antec 900 case, and after some sound advice, I'm gonna keep my old mobo and cpu (hope they will be compatible with the new psu and gpu..), and once again try to oc em.


Saw this vid on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKddqXuRzp0 and Im wondering if that setfsb app there using is any good, Ive seen that other app aswell, the one to the right of the screen - cant remember the name, but I remember fooling around with it a after I assembled my rig, it seemed legit, but I really dont know what Im talking about in regards to oc'ing.


So yeah anything else I should be aware of/oc'ing advice, cheers.
 

just a noob

Well-Known Member
get a namebrand psu, like pc power and cooling, corsair, antec, or ocz, a power supply like that sounds like its going to blow up a nice expensive graphics card
edit: also, setfsb and clockgen are real, but they aren't all that stable
 
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