Thread: Upgrade Advice

Originally Posted by Pooky

Here's what I have currently:

Gigabyte GA-965P Motherboard
Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
4GB DDR2 800
GeForce 9600GT 1gb

I can run Far Cry 3 at medium detail at around 30-35FPS

What would be the best upgrade that is also cheap and will get me a nice performance boost?

Thanks!

GPU Your are not going to gain much from upgrading the CPU.Dump the board and find some thing that will allow ocing the crap out of CPU, and a decent cooler for a 24/7 OC and DDR3.

You should be able to get 3.6 easily, which will add a nice little bump, without having to be concerned about temps too much.

Second option is selling the current system, add some cash and get another system. 3k should get you a nice little system on the forum.

Quickest upgrade is the GPU, a 560ti or 6870/7770 just over a grand, second hand

The big problem with this system is, its age.

Even if you upgrade the GFX card as suggested by the posts above mine, you won't see much of a performance improvement. I was in the same situation a year or so ago.

System was:
Some motherboard,
Core2Quad Q9300
8800GTS Fatality OC'd some ****.
4gb mem

I then proceded to upgrade the GFX card to a Asus 460gtx.
Guess what...my FPS was still exactly the same in games.

My bottleneck ended up being an older pci express buss. Upgraded to a Core I7-2600k keeping the 460gtx, and that did the trick.

While it has a pci xpress x16 slot, I can't make out whether it is v1 or v2, which is what is important, if it is v2, a gfx card upgrade may help, if it is v1, it won't help at all.

I agree with Tinuva. The Q6600 definitely shows its age when it comes to gaming.

If you want a good gaming experience on the cheap, get a sandy i3 chip and entry level 1155 motherboard. For pure gaming needs, it's hard to get more bang for your buck in terms of performance.

After that spend the rest of your budget on a GFX card.

My advice comes from experience, I also had a Q6600 with 9600gt. I then bought a gtx 460 and didn't notice as much of an improvement as I would have liked. I then bought an i3 setup and really enjoyed the boost that i got from that.

Can I find whether it is v1 or 2 somewhere?

Even if you upgrade the GFX card as suggested by the posts above mine, you won't see much of a performance improvement. I was in the same situation a year or so ago.

Sigh perhaps if you noticed I said OC the CPU with an updated board, DDR3 ram, and better GPU, and at 3.6GHZ which can be run at 24/7 no problem, it will lessen the bottle neck quite a lot actually

Mini review: Q6600 vs i5 2500K

Point is a 460GTX will not bottle neck a Q6600 that you will notice.And would be a really really healthy bump over a 9600GT seriously.High end GPU requires a high end CPU.

Originally Posted by Evan

I agree with Tinuva. The Q6600 definitely shows its age when it comes to gaming.

If you want a good gaming experience on the cheap, get a sandy i3 chip and entry level 1155 motherboard. For pure gaming needs, it's hard to get more bang for your buck in terms of performance.

After that spend the rest of your budget on a GFX card.

My advice comes from experience, I also had a Q6600 with 9600gt. I then bought a gtx 460 and didn't notice as much of an improvement as I would have liked. I then bought an i3 setup and really enjoyed the boost that i got from that.

I saw a huge increase on a q9550 going from a 9800gtx to a gtx460, think something else in your system help you back


Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

Originally Posted by g0l1athrulz

I saw a huge increase on a q9550 going from a 9800gtx to a gtx460, think something else in your system help you back


Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

Most probably the motherboard, running older generation of pci-xpress buss, aka v1 instead v2.

Now if your motherboard has to be upgraded to a newer one running pci-xpress v2, you might as well upgrade the whole system to an I3 based one. No need to patch up an already aging system. Lucky for me, I found a buyer for my old system at the time.

Running an older revision of PCI Express might bottleneck you about 10 % but that's it, it CERTAINLY wasn't your issue.

Originally Posted by Tinuva

Most probably the motherboard, running older generation of pci-xpress buss, aka v1 instead v2.

Now if your motherboard has to be upgraded to a newer one running pci-xpress v2, you might as well upgrade the whole system to an I3 based one. No need to patch up an already aging system. Lucky for me, I found a buyer for my old system at the time.

sigh so you buy a board on the forum that supports DDR 3 and better OC features, what do you do with the old board and ram ? you sell it of course.Clearly you don't understand CUD yet, the OP said cheap upgrade, so at most you are going to pay for the upgrade is R300.00-R350, considering that with a new GPU and the CPU at 3.2ghz, if you don't get at least 15% to 25% increase I will print this page out and eat it, period

How much will a new i3 system cost ? R550 for the board R1300 for the CPU and another odd R400 for the ram, might have to replace the psu as well then you still need to get a GPU, that is hardly a cheap upgrade.Guess what if you keep the 9600GT, the 9600GT will be the bottle neck.

A "cheap" upgrade depending who you are speaking to, is considered a GPU, or adding more ram.Buying a completely new system isn't a "cheap".

Problem is going to an I3 for a quad CPU is just a total waste.There is maybe a 30% increase over the q6600, however you lose two cores and when it comes to games that really needs 4 cores you are screwed.I would never ever recommended an i3 to some one going to predominately game on it.Unless you gain half the performance over your previous system, you are wasting money some people may happy with less.I don't settle for less. My 2500K offered basically 50% or more increase in performance, and I didn't have to give up any cores and it will out last the any I3.Again a 2500K isn't a cheap upgrade.

Simply I don't recommend an i3, and most users here that do use an i3 for gaming, either scaled down their system because they got a console or real life is keeping them busy and don't game all that much.

As a cheap upgrade a GPU would be fine in this case, however his board is as old as the CPU it self.There is some gains to be made from using a newer board and ram which has more bandwidth then DDR2. I am sure a lot of users here if budget permits, would replace the board in a heart beat.

Getting a much newer board/Ram and GPU, will still work out cheaper then replacing the whole system.