Upgrade ideas....

[Greg King]

Fellow forum members.

I am considering the following upgrade and I am looking for opinions from the rest of yous.

I am thinking about getting one of the following:

E8400
A second 8800 GT (would require an SLI motherboard which I can get in a month or so)
Save up a bit more for a 45nm quad core
Get a Q6600 right now for a bit more than the E8400

I suppose I could just bank the money thats clearly burning a hole in my pocket but whats the fun in that? Seriously, I am perfectly happy with my machine so I more than likely will get none of what I just mentioned but I would like some recommendations as to what you would do and why.

 

[slugbug]

Q6600's can be had for under $200 right now.

 

[BlackAndy]

Greg,
You know what I always say..."screw financial responsibility, buy it!"
Is this going to be for the PC that you don't take apart all of the time, or for a new testing rig?
The real question is how do you hide this from the wife?

Did you find out if the 8800 card you have is being discontinued?

 

[Blazedremedy]

I wouldn't get anything. Prices on all this garb is going to be drop soon this year. Theres too much shit comeing out that will drive the prices of this stuff in to the ground in the next few months.

 

[Rob Williams]

I have to agree with Blazed. The sad fact of the matter is... if you upgrade now, you'll want to upgrade again almost immediately. It's a tough situation. If you don't feel the need to upgrade right now, I'd highly recommend sitting back and forgetting about the upgrade. That $200 - $400 would do well just to sit in a bank or something.

The upgrade bite is a hard one to ignore, though. If you have plans to overclock the hell out of a new chip, then by all means pick one up. It's a pricey hobby though, that's for sure.

 

[Merlin]

Fellow forum members.

I am considering the following upgrade and I am looking for opinions from the rest of yous.

I am thinking about getting one of the following:

E8400
A second 8800 GT (would require an SLI motherboard which I can get in a month or so)
Save up a bit more for a 45nm quad core
Get a Q6600 right now for a bit more than the E8400

I suppose I could just bank the money thats clearly burning a hole in my pocket but whats the fun in that? Seriously, I am perfectly happy with my machine so I more than likely will get none of what I just mentioned but I would like some recommendations as to what you would do and why.

Yeah.....no fun in that
I love this E8400 ...Evga 780i mobo and 8800GT in SLI
Got to be the best little box I have built in a long time.
I'm just really pleased.
Since the E8400 review,here, I knew I had to get one.
Then it seemed afterwards, all the others places all over the net were talking about it, then, it was out of stock everywhere.
When I got this one, I believe it was the last one at tigerdirect.
Also, you can overclock the hell out of this beast
On AIR

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

 

[Kougar]

Exactly, if you don't feel the strong need, then don't do it. You will feel a strong need to update later this year...

Buying a new motherboard + second 8800GT also just sounds expensive, when Nvidia will be launching GT200 somewhere around Q3.

As you are likely aware, Nehalem will require completely new motherboards, completely new coolers, a new chip, DDR3 RAM, and by the time Nehalem arrives GT200 will be out. I think the rumors of 2x the 8800GT performance are rather likely, since Nvidia has had two years to perfect a new design. And maybe ATI's 4000 will be good too...

I guess the question is, if you upgrade now can you live with yourself after all the mindblowing stuff comes out before the end of this year?

 

[NicePants42]

I say go for a cheap 8800GT - you can find them for ~$160 these days, and a decent 680i or 650i board for less than that.

But considering the timing, I admit that it might be more financially responsible to wait.

 

[Greg King]

Thanks guys. I ended up getting another 250GB hard drive and 2 more 320GB drives. I am going to take the 250 drive and add it to the one that I have already and setup a RAID 0 array for my main PC and then take the 2 320s and use them along side the 3 320GB drives I already have and work on a long over due RAID article.

All drives were Seagate. Can't beat their 5 year warranties! My 8800 GT does everything I ask it to do and my E6600 is more than enough for right now. I will get a quad down the road but I think I would rather save up for a PS3 and get that first. My dual core system is more than enough for right now.

Thanks again for all the input!

 

[b1lk1]

I got rid of my QX9650 and downgraded to the E3110. Didn't even notice the loss of 2 cores. Quads are highly over-rated and completely under-utilized. Noone except a professional needs a Quad. Noone.

 

[Syran]

Thanks guys. I ended up getting another 250GB hard drive and 2 more 320GB drives. I am going to take the 250 drive and add it to the one that I have already and setup a RAID 0 array for my main PC and then take the 2 320s and use them along side the 3 320GB drives I already have and work on a long over due RAID article.

All drives were Seagate. Can't beat their 5 year warranties! My 8800 GT does everything I ask it to do and my E6600 is more than enough for right now. I will get a quad down the road but I think I would rather save up for a PS3 and get that first. My dual core system is more than enough for right now.

Thanks again for all the input!

Just out of question, are you trying to do that all off of on-board raid capabilities on a motherboard, or doing it with a dedicated hardware based raid card?

I think it might also be interesting to see the differences between pci and pci-e hardware raid cards. I'm currently using a 3Ware 9500S-8 8-port PCI-x card to run my 8 drive raid array (400GB mirrored, 6x 320GB in a Raid 5). Only thing to get true idea if it helps any would be using the same chipset with the 2 interfaces, and most people probably wouldn't be too interested in the comparison.

This caused me to think, and I'm actually looking at picking up a used HP e200 series raid controller and picking up 1 or 2 15k sas drives, and seeing how they do for me.

 

[Greg King]

We run 15K SAS here at work on our newer file servers. While I haven't benched them, they are fast. If you go that route, I don't see you being disappointed.

As for what I will use them for, I have a PCI-E RAID controller here that I might use in my primary PC but I will certainly test out the differences between on board and discreet controllers. I can't see to many people caring about the differences but it might make a decent article.

 

[Rob Williams]

I got rid of my QX9650 and downgraded to the E3110. Didn't even notice the loss of 2 cores. Quads are highly over-rated and completely under-utilized. Noone except a professional needs a Quad. Noone.

By that logic, no one needs a Dual-Core either. I use applications all the time that take advantage of all four Cores, and I'm no professional.

 

[Syran]

By that logic, no one needs a Dual-Core either. I use applications all the time that take advantage of all four Cores, and I'm no professional.

Just means Intel was right, and all we needed was Hyper-Threading

 

[Kougar]

I got rid of my QX9650 and downgraded to the E3110. Didn't even notice the loss of 2 cores. Quads are highly over-rated and completely under-utilized. Noone except a professional needs a Quad. Noone.

What Rob said... there is a difference between "need" and "use". I use all four cores, and I make use of plenty of programs that use several cores at once. I always have 4 instances of Folding@home running in the background, even during games.

Just means Intel was right, and all we needed was Hyper-Threading

Hm, was there sarcasm there? I can't wait to see the comparisons with/without HT on Nehalem... this was a hot topic back in the days I bought my Northwood P4 with HT.

I need to figure out how to run that F@H benchmark... I plan to run 4 instances, then run 8 on Nehalem and see what it happens...