[techtalk] Re: Upgrade time!
- From: Thomas Hurst <tom.hurst@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: techtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 21:06:10 +0100
* Dave Fisher (dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950PRO 512MB DDR3 Dual DVI/AVIVO (PCI-E) - Retail £130
Looks reasonable. A quick glance at benchmarks suggest similar
performance to my own card; a 7950GT, which is pretty decent. It's also
cheaper, otherwise I might suggest one (since XFX do some very nice
passively cooled ones).
> Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-E DDR2 ATX Motherboard £85
Looks good, but beware using previous lack of problems to predict future
performance; I've been through a few generations of Gigabyte, and I got
rid of my last one (a S939 board) because I wasn't happy with the
stability or design (really, are they so crap at designing power
regulation circuitry that they need to spill it over to an add-on board
to keep it vaguely stable? Seems so).
> Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 2.4GHz 'Conroe' 4Mb Cache LGA775 (1066 Mhz) - Retail
> £145
>
> 2GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix Tracer 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-5300 memory module
> £90
Meh, never really seen the point in Ballistix, and the LED's just strike
me as being retarded. Still, £30 or so isn't too bad, even if you're
unlikely to spot any real difference in performance, unless you're going
to be overclocking.
Crucial is still a good name to stick with.
> I've finally switched back from AMD for the CPU as my P4 at work has
> been great for the past few years, and these new fangled core-duo
> things seem to be all the rage these days :)
A reasonable choice (though P4's are really not a good reason to trust
Intel now, unless you're thinking along the lines of "how much worse can
it get?" ;)
If you hang on a few more months AMD should be putting out new parts
which will hopefully be quite competitive with Core 2, but I expect
they'll be a while before they get low end parts out. I'm definately
waiting, since I'm aiming for quad core for my next system.
> My only concern is my PSU - there is nothing wrong with the one I have, but I
> wonder if I might need more power and/or any extra cables to power the
> graphics cards direct etc ? My system must be at least 4 years old, if not 6,
> but I can't recall whats in there PSU wise.
At that age whatever is in there will be reaching the end of its design
life anyway, so you might as well get it replaced. I currently like
Tagan after I lost a couple of Antec's to magic smoke escapes.
That board as a 24 pin EATX socket on it, as most newer ones have, so
you might need a new PSU anyway, though I think many (most?) of them can
run off 20 pin connectors.
--
Thomas 'Freaky' Hurst
http://hur.st/
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