upgarade worth the money?

[jimmymac]

Have been comtemplating upgrading lately but really not sure whether or not its worth it. Right now i'm running a Q6600 with a 4870 on it and its doing everything I need but I am conscious that the processor is a good few years old now and the gfx as usual are rocketing along.

Now when I upgraded this one I did the motherboard, cpu, memory and GFX and it wasnt massively costly, think the lot was around the £400 so I wouldn't want to be going out and spending thousands.

So what's the upgrade options, are they worth it? For about £500 max I figure I could get an i5 or a Phenom II, 1333 memory, motherboard, gfx but am I going to notice the imrpovement or should I just stick with what I am on.

On a side note, is it worth upgrading the monitor? Using a 20" dell thats a good few years old too, runs happily at 1600X1200 but its not got HDMI input at all, am I missing out on anything by not having that?

[Rik]

In my opinion Jim there really is no need to look at upgrading the CPU yet, a Q6600 @ 3Ghz is not too far off the latest new CPUs to be honest.

If you find it struggling by all means look at the i5/i7 but my processor (Q6600) hardly breaks out into a sweat, coupled with the 4870 X2 (2GB) there really is no need to upgrade.

The only upgrade im looking at is an SSD eventually.

I suppose you could do with upgrading the 4870 or perhaps if you have a crossfire mobo just adding an near identical one

As for the 20inch monitor, its like anything, if you sat in front of my Dell 24inch monitor, you certainly wouldnt want to go back to a 20inch screen!

It all depends what you feel you need, I personally would shove in another 4870 (if u can pick one up cheap enough, and your PSU is up to it) as long as u dont mind the extra power consumption and noise/heat.

[jimmymac]

aye, not overly convinced there is any need myself as in fairness it does everything I want, maybe the next generation of processors would make it worth it but for now I think i'll leave it.

Its happily just run Mass Effect 2 without breaking a sweat and we'll see how it handles Bioshock 2, if thats ok i'll leave everything, otherwise as you say, perhaps just add another 4870 in there

[hold the Bells]

In my opinion Jim there really is no need to look at upgrading the CPU yet, a Q6600 @ 3Ghz is not too far off the latest new CPUs to be honest.

If you find it struggling by all means look at the i5/i7 but my processor (Q6600) hardly breaks out into a sweat, coupled with the 4870 X2 (2GB) there really is no need to upgrade.

The only upgrade im looking at is an SSD eventually.

I suppose you could do with upgrading the 4870 or perhaps if you have a crossfire mobo just adding an near identical one

As for the 20inch monitor, its like anything, if you sat in front of my Dell 24inch monitor, you certainly wouldnt want to go back to a 20inch screen!

It all depends what you feel you need, I personally would shove in another 4870 (if u can pick one up cheap enough, and your PSU is up to it) as long as u dont mind the extra power consumption and noise/heat.

Agree with Rick I'm still on "older" hardware, that said a Quad core Extreme CPU, 8GB of Ram and a GTX 295 still get me by

Aside from less heat I don't see a reason to upgrade my CPU at the moment.

[eyleyro]

aye, not overly convinced there is any need myself as in fairness it does everything I want, maybe the next generation of processors would make it worth it but for now I think i'll leave it.<snip>

Think you answered your own question there ;-)
I'm in the same boat tbh, have a core2 6750 and a bfg 8800GTS 320mb! I promised myself after 3 years of service I'd upgrade this Jan, but I haven't really got the money to do it properly, and it's playing everythig I want at high'ish settings, so think I'll hold off till next year. COD modern warfare, wolfenstein and crysis are ok, so can't see the point right now. And that's on one of those lush 24" Dell widescreen TFT's.

I've managed to step off and stay off (just) the "my rig does what I want it to, but it's so far off the pace now and some new kit would be exciting" bandwagon. Being skint also helps

edit: as per the thread title "upgarade worth the money?" - if you don't need it, and higher benchmarks don't make you moist, then clearly not.

[Spectrum Analysis]

Yeah I'll chuck my hat into the same ring as well

My mobo and CPU are 2 1/2 years old now (Core Duo E6700 (I think) running at 3.26GHz), have upgraded graphics card a couple of times in that time, from X1900XTX to a 4870 and then a 4890, only did the upgrade to the 4890 to get the 1GB of RAM on the card as there was no 1GB 4870 at that time.

Been playing Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 Beta recently - 1900x1200, everything turned on, everything maxed out, doesn't miss a beat.

In a way I'd like it to be struggling with stuff then I could justify buying a shiny new PC, but the fact is there's nothing out there that'll push it, and considering the 360 is basically the lead platform these days (a five year old DX9 PC in a little box), that's not really surprising.

I've been looking at some very tasty i7 based systems recently, but there's no change out of £1000 and frankly, it'd make fuck all difference to my day-to-day PC experience.

If it ain't broke and all that......

[jimmymac]

I think one of the interesting things is game creators being more
clever with the tech, mass effect was an xbox port but a damn fine one that gives excellent gaming and graphics without the need for million pound super machine. Looking like bioshock will do the same and I think I am right in saying modern warfare too was the same. Seems to me that the focus is back on gameplay a not on taxing the crap out of top end systems

[Spectrum Analysis]

I think one of the interesting things is game creators being more
clever with the tech, mass effect was an xbox port but a damn fine one that gives excellent gaming and graphics without the need for million pound super machine. Looking like bioshock will do the same and I think I am right in saying modern warfare too was the same. Seems to me that the focus is back on gameplay a not on taxing the crap out of top end systems

Yeah the fixed architecture of the consoles has been a very good thing in that regard, we can still ramp up the resolution and extra effects on the PC versions (Modern Warfare 2 for example includes a complete 'EXTRA' set of textures, whereas 'HIGH' is the same texture set as the 360 version) - but the fact that they have to get the games running on the 360 and PS3 means even a pretty mid-end PC can pretty much max the games out.

PC coders were definitely getting lazy, if you look at what they're squeezing out of the 360 now, you have to ask why they needed the system specs they were asking for of PC games not so long ago......

[Fishsta]

considering the 360 is basically the lead platform these days

Interesting... nearly twice as many Wiis sold, yet the 360 is the "lead" platform?

Before anyone jumps on the "but it's more powerful" bandwagon, that argument didn't work in the times of the Spectrum or Playstation, they were the most popular systems of their time despite not being up there with the most powerful contenders, and were considered the "lead" system.

[Rik]

I loved my Spectrum from the bottom of my pencil case!

[Nemmie]

MW2 is the Doom 3 engine with a few extras bolted on.

Another reason why Carmack is God.

[Spectrum Analysis]

Interesting... nearly twice as many Wiis sold, yet the 360 is the "lead" platform?

Before anyone jumps on the "but it's more powerful" bandwagon, that argument didn't work in the times of the Spectrum or Playstation, they were the most popular systems of their time despite not being up there with the most powerful contenders, and were considered the "lead" system.

The Wii has sold more but its 'attach rate' (i.e. the amount of cash that its owners spend on games, DLC, marketplace etc) is dreadful.

On those counts the 360 and PS3 are far more profitable, a lot of third parties have made bugger all cash out of the Wii, and the fact it's played host to so much shovelware hasn't helped either.

Beyond that, the 360 and to a lesser extent the PS3 have architectural similarities to the PC, so development can be shared across all three platforms, whereas the Wii is so far removed that it needs to be taken on its own. (The Wii being, effectively, an overclocked Gamecube.)