$200 Upgrade Challenge!

[_dangtx_]

i wouldnt do anythingright now, rather scram some more casho together and
either go 2500k or bd when it comes out.

[botat29]

Originally Posted by _dangtx_

i wouldnt do anythingright now, rather scram some more casho together and
either go 2500k or bd when it comes out.

$ 200 will not pay the tax on the first BD

[Galcobar]

Skip the mobo -- as noted, the difference between PCI-e 16x and PCI-e 2.0 16x isn't that great.

However, I'd look at an SSD. Speaking as the owner of a E6600 on a P5N-E SLI, the results of dropping one into my system were immense. It's a bigger difference in responsiveness than I observed when my friend upgraded from a system almost identical to mine up to an i7-920. I went with a Vertex2 which benefits from TRIM, but haven't recorded any significant drops in performance, probably because I give the machine about 30 minutes of idle time a day (benchmarking every few months I've recorded a ~1% drop in reads and writes). If you're looking for more aggressive garbage collection, Kingston SSDs are better built for systems without TRIM.

[LarkStarr]

do your games run faster on an SSD?

[Galcobar]

Actually, they do somewhat. Well, more accurately, it does -- I only have time for one, World of Warcraft. It's a relative rarity among games because it's constantly loading items from storage as opposed to one-time level loads. Gained, depending upon the circumstances, 5-20 FPS on the minimums.

However, the responsiveness of my computer is where I noticed the difference. I turn it on and everything works, immediately. No waiting for the anti-virus to load, no waiting for Windows to load for that matter. It used to be I'd open a 30 MB text file and the computer would practically freeze, now it simply opens.

Given the OP has a new video card, he'd have to upgrade his CPU to see any more gains. He might notice the difference. Add an SSD and he WILL notice a difference.

[r0k0]

for 200$ i'd sell you my Q6600 / Asus Maximus Extreme and Patriot 4GB DDR3 shipped :P

doing a platform upgrade myself hehe just waiting for the new stuff then my stuff goes up for sale

[LarkStarr]

Originally Posted by Galcobar

Actually, they do somewhat. Well, more accurately, it does -- I only have time for one, World of Warcraft. It's a relative rarity among games because it's constantly loading items from storage as opposed to one-time level loads. Gained, depending upon the circumstances, 5-20 FPS on the minimums.

I'd like to see comparison benchmarks on that. I understand the fragmented loading of WoW, but an actual gain of FPS?

[Bond007]

Hang on to the $200 until you have enough for a CPU/Ram/MOB. Don't sink money into 775.

[Galcobar]

Originally Posted by LarkStarr

I'd like to see comparison benchmarks on that. I understand the fragmented loading of WoW, but an actual gain of FPS?

I'm not about to reload an entire operating system onto my old hard drive, along with the 25 GB of WoW, to benchmark it.

Minimum frame rates in heavy-loading situations went up. This is primarily in situations where large numbers of units were entering and exiting on-screen, such as in major cities or during raids when there were masses of adds. Dropping in the SSD made a difference, enough that the same occasions with the same graphics settings went from slide-show to reasonably playable.

[ilya]

Originally Posted by Galcobar

I'm not about to reload an entire operating system onto my old hard drive, along with the 25 GB of WoW, to benchmark it.

Minimum frame rates in heavy-loading situations went up. This is primarily in situations where large numbers of units were entering and exiting on-screen, such as in major cities or during raids when there were masses of adds. Dropping in the SSD made a difference, enough that the same occasions with the same graphics settings went from slide-show to reasonably playable.

That just sounds like you're running out of ram and the improvement is coming from a faster page file on your SSD.