Upgrade suggestions/questions

Troncoso

Troncoso

VIP Member
Alright, My girlfriend just got $1500 back from her college from financial aid and what not. So, she's letting me use some of it to finance some upgrades to my computer:

from a e5300 dual core cpu to a quad core q8400
4gigs 800mhz ddr2 ram to 4gigs 1200mhz ram (total 8 gig)
a second radeon hd 5750 vid card

so 2 questions from this:

Is getting the 1200mhz ram worth the extra money? i know right now, with the other ram it can only run at 800 but i'll eventually replace those.

and i'm going to crosfire the 2 video cards. Will i see a good boost in performance or should i just go for a new one all together? OR can you crosfire 2 different graphics cards? Input would be great. Ordering tomorrow.
 
Her nothing. This stuff is for me. Haha. anyway.
I have a 500watt earthwatt psu. I know I should consider an upgrade.

as for the harddrive. i dont know. are you suggesting that to allow windows to access files and whatnot faster or what? I was looking at a video upgrade. Then again my video is actually running just about every game flawlessy on max settings as it is.

what about the ram speed how important is that?
 
The solid state drive I said to look at will definitely speed up your start up times and load times for programs. What are the specifications of the RAM you are looking at? What are the specifications of your present power supply? The Antec power supply you have may be adequate.
 
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Does she have a second hard drive in her system to backup valuable data? If not I suggest you get a second quality hard disk drive for data backups. I use two hard drives on my system to back up my data and I also have an external hard drive.

Sunbeam does not make good quality power supplies. A power supply like the Sunbeam you are looking at can cause performance issues or burn out and damage the system. You are better off staying with the Antec Eartwatts power supply your girlfriend already has.

I apologize, I also should have asked for your motherboard specifications in the previous post.
 
haha. Like I said before this is for me not my girlfriend. Just to save you a couple words of typing. I chose that psu because of the decent ratings. Even the lower end companies can throw out something decent every once in a while.

oh, and right now only 1 500gig barracuda with 2 different partitions. one for OS other for data. also got a 320 external

i got a p5q deluxe, 775 socket, max 16 gig ddr2 1200, 2 i think pcie 2.0 slots, and...yeah, anything else?
 
Good to hear you back up the data you care about. It is a wise decision.

Read through the reviews on that Sunbeam power supply. One person has owned the power supply longer than a year and the rest wrote their reviews after owning it several months or less. Ask any of the experienced people on this forum and they will tell you to pick another power supply other than the one you are looking at.

The RAM looks decent and will likely work at the PC 9600 speeds you are hoping for. You should see a performance increase but you will likely have to increase the voltage on your RAM to 2.1 volts in your BIOS.
 
well, until i replace my 4 gigs of pc6400 ram, i don't suppose there is a need to do that.

I'll see how my pc does with the psu i have, if necessary i'll get another. The one I have has been great.

and of the video card. Keep it? or upgrade?

edit: just looked haha, thought i had 2x2gig sticks but I have 4x1....dang, i'll only have 6gig of ram

re edit: just used one of those psu calculators, recommends i only need about 300watt
 
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Haha. I get it. Sun beam sucks. QUESTION!

I've just checked on my ram, and its ddr2 6400 which can run at 800mhz. BUT, i just checked and it's only running at 400. if the bios allows me too, should I max it out?
 
The memory is running at normal speed. You are using Double Data Rate 2 RAM in this system. Data is transferred twice per beat of the system clock so in reality the RAM is tranfering data at about 6400 megabytes per second or running at 800 megahertz. The RAM is running at the correct speed.
 
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