updated: need system upgrade recommendations (was component deals)

[Al]

I'm looking to upgrade and was hoping to see some drop in prices now but not much has changed as far as I can tell. Plans are to go for something like a E8500 and associated goodies.


I'm presuming with the recent release of the i7 cores there probably isn't going to be much in the near future to push prices down.

EDIT: Updated title and now looking for component recommendations

[shifty_powers]

www.ebuyer.com is always my first port of call...

[Al]

Thanks shifty. Mine too normally but there just doesn't seem to be any good deals at all at the moment. The prices for the Core2s are up about 15% from when I first seriously looked a couple of months ago which is making me reluctant to buy the components at the moment.

[shifty_powers]

thats just the prices atm, not ebuyer. it was always going to happen after the release of the i7 died down.

tbh, if ebuyer don't have the price you want, you'll struggle to find it.

what price did you find the e8400 for back then, and i'll see if i can hunt it down...

[shifty_powers]

ebuyer £131.38
aria £139.09
dabs £139.98
overclockers £149.49
cclonline £141.44
ginger6 £144.84

thats the best i could find...

[Al]

Thanks again. I was really considering the E8500 which was around £130 inc vat when I started looking. Its not a huge difference but I've got a pretty fixed budget in mind and want to get the best upgrade possible as its going to have to last for a couple of years.

[shifty_powers]

well the e8400 is about £130 at ebuyer, and it will easily overclock was past the stock speeds of the e8500. it's a very good processor, so something to think about...

[Rapier]

The problem is the weakness of the pound; imports cost more. I've just bought some bits after watching the prices creep up for a couple of months. I don't think there's going to be much you can do about it before the tail end of this year at the earliest.

[Al]

well the e8400 is about £130 at ebuyer, and it will easily overclock was past the stock speeds of the e8500. it's a very good processor, so something to think about...

I've been considering getting a slower CPU and overclocking but surely the argument of the E8400 can be clocked past the stock speeds of the E8500 is invalid as the E8500 can overclocked too? I know the E7200 got a great writeup on Tomshardware recently for overclocking.

I realise the weak £ isn't helping either. Perhaps I should just bite the bullet and order some stuff.

Anyone got any recommendations for LGA775 motherboards and memory?
The total budget for the upgrade is about £250-300 for motherboard, CPU and ram.

I'm planning on using my existing case, power supply, optical and hard drives etc.

[pjknibbs]

I've been considering getting a slower CPU and overclocking but surely the argument of the E8400 can be clocked past the stock speeds of the E8500 is invalid as the E8500 can overclocked too?

But the 8400 might well clock to exactly the same level as the 8500 will clock to, and it's cheaper. If you're intending to overclock right from the start you get the cheapest CPU that's known to overclock well! This is why I'm running my E4300 (stock speed 1.8GHz) at 2.7GHz with the standard cooler that came with the chip.

[Al]

I wasn't really intending to overclock but might consider it.

How does X3:TC run with your overclocked E4300?

[madness 3D]

I wasn't really intending to overclock but might consider it.

How does X3:TC run with your overclocked E4300?

The modern example would be the E5200
2.5Ghz Stock
800Mhz FSB (200) on a 15x multiplier
45nm too, with 2mb of cache

Very Overclockable (its the same chip as the E84/5/6 and E72/3/4 but with less cache)

[Al]

Thanks but I really want to see what kind of performance folks are getting before considering going for a slower chip and overclocking.

[madness 3D]

Thanks but I really want to see what kind of performance folks are getting before considering going for a slower chip and overclocking.

yes well its about 5%slower at the same speed than an E7200, but the point is you can do
[ external image ]
That with minimal impact on your mobo
it should be enough i would think
i mean i run it fine on an Athlon 6000+ (now have to buy an i7 or Phenom2, made a bet my gf wouldnt break up with me and she did so now i have to go for it )

[simonnance]

Anyone got any recommendations for LGA775 motherboards and memory?

What type of needs do you have with regards to number of hard drives, graphics cards, ect?

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) (£149.49)
Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (£97.74)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (£22.99)
Shipping : £8.49
Total : £270.22

would be a reasonable build, could even toss in another 2GB of ram for less than the £300. The Q8200 might be a more future proof buy though?

[Al]

Hard drive: I'm planning on using my existing Seagate ST3250820AS 250Gb SATA drive.

I haven't given a huge amount of consideration to graphics card, currently running a PCI-E X1950pro. I dont care much about pretty graphics and tend to have everything turned down low to give the max FPS.

Would definitely go for 2 x 2Gb ram to give option of going to 4x2Gb at some future date.

Was put off the Quad cores by the fact there really isn't any benefit over dual cores at the moment in general for gaming or probably ever given my normal usage (only X3 and general browsing/email pc stuff).

[Rapier]

I just got these bits for a tad over £400 (dabs), but the graphics card was about £140 of that. The motherboard was a reconditioned one that I got for about £40 (33%) less than the list price. If you're after a cheap deal you could look for something similar. Performance in X3 is not far off my screen refresh rate with everything on max. so you can turn down settings as you wish. Mind you, I was running on a three year old system before, so anything new was going to seem very good.

[Al]

I'm running an Athlon64 3500 with 2Gb ram so pretty much anything will be an improvement for me too

thanks for the link, thats pretty similar to what I had in mind without the graphics card. Will have a more serious look later on.

[pjknibbs]

I wasn't really intending to overclock but might consider it.

How does X3:TC run with your overclocked E4300?

Don't have any problems with it generally...it's certainly playable, although it can become a bit painful in some sectors (Seizewell, for instance--all those random rocks).

[Al]

what graphics card are you using?