Should i upgrade?

Sometime in the near future i'm going to be looking at upgrading my pc as its not been done for a while..but at the moment its not too bad but in some games i'd like it to be a bit smoother than it currently is...I'm into all the latest games like godfather 2 and lotr conquest and basicly any FPS's

I'd also like to improve the general speed of the pc so maybe a new hd change is in order too.

My specs at the moment are:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - overclocked to 3.6ghz
GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MB GDDR3
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 DHX PC2-6400C4DHX TwinX (2x1GB)
150GB Western Digital 10000RPM 16MB Cache Raptor X
Asus Maximus Formula Intel X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2
and some 200gig maxtor drive for all my backups..

In the current state of things what would be worth upgrading, if anything? and i've been looking at getting the newer raptor hard drive to replace my current raptor x and then to use the raptor x as a backup drive..would it be worth it though?

Also if i was to upgrade my gfx card whats now the best to go for ATI or Nvidia? price is important here and i only use 1650*1050 widescreen resolution so i dont need the most expensive thing ever i thought maybe a gtx 285 would be plenty but also at the same time i'd hate to have microstuttering which i do have with my 9800gx2.. It makes games feel so unsmooth and it bugs me that the card cost £430 at the time! LOTR conquest is so laggy it really annoys me even though fps is around 60!

Hope anybody can help

Thanks

 

the drive i would be replacing my current raptor with is this, if its worth it of course..then i'd have a raptor and a veloci as the current 200gig maxtor isnt anything special

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-236-WD&tool=3

 

I don't think a new drive is going to make any significant difference over the 10K 16Mb WD. You already have an nice graphics card.

If me, I would add more RAM and take it up to 4 Gb. This will give the OS and CPU more RAM to play in, which will reduce the bottleneck of banging on the Page File.

 

Agreed you might want to consider upgrading to a 64bit OS aswell.

 

im on xp but yeah im thinking of upgrading my ram anyways to 4gig and maybe a lil faster ram so i can bump my E8400 up to 4ghz maybe?

The 9800gx2 is indeed a good card but like ive said ive noticed microstuttering in quite a few games lately where its just not smooth at all for example lotr conquest seems like its at about 20fps when fraps says its at 60~..it just doesnt feel good.

 

I probably would not agree with that - not unless you have verified the programs you wish to use come in 64-bit versions, and there are 64-bit drivers for ALL your hardware. Yes, Windows can take advantage of 64-bit, but that does not automatically ensure better performance for your programs running under Windows.

No comment.

 

Quote:
so i can bump my E8400 up to 4ghz maybe?
No comment.

Why no comment?

I've tried to get it to around 4ghz on air but my memory wont allow and i have very good case air circulation with a fan control on about 6 fans in an antec 900 gaming case.

The extra 400mhz may make a difference

I can get it to 3.78ghz but mem was running at 420mhz/840 dual so didnt wanna risk keeping it at that..

 

No but if you upgrading to 4GB of ram, a 32bit system is only gonna see about 3.25GB of that, so you have unused ram that is just going to waste, a 64bit OS ensures all the ram will be available.

 

sorry should of put this in my reply.

But as far as Overclocking goes, with my core i7 ive seen no difference between what im at now(3.2) and what i was at (3.6) my o6 benchmark score was only about 500 points difference between the two overclocks, so i went with the smaller overclock.

 

ahhh i see.

Well from 3ghz to 3.6ghz i went from 13,500 in 3dmark06 to 17,200..which i thought was a signifant improvement however when i went to 3.8ghz i only seen around 700 points increase so nothing really enough to throw a party over so i went back to 3.6.

I just thought as if im buying better ram then i masewell get a notch faster and see if i can get the cpu to 4 stable

 

If your really concerned about getting a fast CPU, could always upgrade to a quadcore. :\

 

think of the cost though lol

 

about 200 hundred dollars.

Just saying you can only push an older system so far until you need to upgrade to get the results your willing to see.

I mean i use to have a P4 3.4ghz HT with a geforce 7950GT and 3GB of ram Until i upgraded to my system now.

 

Because, from a technical standpoint, overclocking is either (1) abuse or (2) a marketing scam.

Understand that when engineers design a product, it is designed to meet specifications under specified operating conditions. Engineers do NOT design in overclocking head room. If they want a faster clock speed, they simply design it in. If a product is pushed beyond its designed limits that's abuse, clear and simple.

So - what is happening here is the marketing folks are getting their mitts into the "published" data - dummying down specifications so today's enthusiasts can bump them up again, just to feel good.

What I really dislike is motherboard makers touting their overclocking abilities. Everyone needs to understand completely that if a CPU is destroyed because it is fed "abnormal" voltages, it is NOT covered under the CPU warranty because that is considered abuse. And you know MSI is not going to replace the CPU either.

So, NO DOUBT ABOUT IT - overclocking is a marketing ploy.

Available to what? Yes the OS, but if the program the user uses does not support 64-bit, it all goes to waste. 64-bit is not good for everyone. The ~3Gb that 32-bit users see with 4Gb installed is not a good enough reason alone to go 64-bit. If worried about that extra that is wasted, stick with 3Gb.

Most software developers (including games) do not have the resources to develop 2 versions of all their software, 32-bit and 64-bit. Since 32-bit software will run in 32-bit mode on 64-bit hardware, and since the majority of the world is still in 32-bit mode, there is little, if any incentive for software developers to write 64-bit versions. Some day, 32-bit will be a thing of the past, but for now, until the software world catches up to the hardware world, 32-bit is, and will be for sometime, the mainstream product.

I agree that 64-bit is the way to go, but we are not there yet.

 

Thankyou for your post Just to say though that i havnt changed the voltage of the E8400 it goes to 3.6ghz no problems on its original volts but i do understand what you mean and where your coming from.

also

Hence the thread i kinda know this and have been thinking about it lately that maybe i do need to upgrade to a newer system if i wanna see the benefits of what i want but due to shortage in cash with having a house etc i'd realy like to spend a little and get the most of out of my current system rather than having a complete newbuild like another mobo and cpu with ddr3 etc instead of all this id like to get rid of the micro stutter in my gfx and maybe upgrade to a 285gtx which is a single GPU card which would eradicate the problem of microstuttering and maybe keep me happy for another year or so

 

I can get a BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-E Retail for £275 total including delivery etc which is alot cheaper than anywere else ie overclockers.co.uk and any other store ive seen.

im thinking of upgrading that because i could sell my 9800 for around £180 so it wouldnt be costing me that much to actually upgrade..

Microstuttering is the main cause of all this cus the games im playing are not smooth at all..so tbh 60fps feels nothing like and it seems as though its laggin and its bugging me arggh¬

I'm really considering buying this GTX OCX edition for 275 total price..help me please as i can sell the other card its gonna be costing me about £100 to upgrade do you think i should?

 

I would still bump up the RAM first - there are many using the 9800 who are happy with it.

I also note that according to BFG, the GTX 285 OCX 1024MB requires a

While the wattage requirements are about the same as the 9800GX2, the GTX285 requires 42amps on the 12V rail while the 9800 wants 40A. That may not seem like a significant difference, but if your current PSU is already running near capacity, it may be an issue.

 

Appreciate for pointing that out, Im using a 730W PSU and sometime i even wonder if i have much left over, deff need a beefy PSU for the GTXs(i got a GTX 280)

You said you play LOTRO? cant say ive played that before, but my current list of games and FPS are as followed:
EverQuest2: 45FPS(Extreme Quality)
Call of Duty: WAW: 91FPS (high Quality)
Rainbow Six Vegas 2: 78 FPS (High Quality)
Oblivion: 90 FPS (High Quality)
Thats really about all that i have installed and played, All these games rae played in 1600x1200 resolution as well.

And as for Digerati's response to 64bit. Im now sure if the OP(Original Poster) is familiar with 2boxing or if he does it in his LOTRO, but i do it in Everquest2(Basically 2box is running more than one instance of the game on a single machine and playing in both) So doing this on one computer eats up more resources, so me having 6GB IMO gives me an extra edge in switching between the two instances, and running my current programs(anti virus, instant messenger, firefox ect) But thats just my 2cents.

EDIT: I do not suggest getting a BFG product. Go with EVGA, they have an amazing support forum and top notch customer support, BFG has kind of died out imo and they are not as good as they use to be(i have owned three previous BFG cards) so yea i highly reccomend getting EVGA

 

my psu is this:

Coolermaster Real Power 700w Modular

I'd hope that would be enough?

I play rainbow 6 vegas 2 aswell ill try and get an average fps in a sec..

 

It would be interesting to see how much memory is actually being used at that moment, and if a side-by-side blind comparison with an identical but 4Gb machine would have the same results.

 

I stressed tested this machine pretty well.

Ive ran two Everquest2 clients, call of duty world at war, oblivion, and raindbow six vegas 2 all at once when i had 4GB of memory and my virtual memory got really low at that point but the RAM usuage was showing at 90%, and thats with 4GB so now that i got 6GB im sure it wouldnt be much of an issue, maybe i dunno i have no tried it yet.

your 700w PSU will be enough to handle a GTX285.