thinking about a gaming machine upgrade ....

[Jeepers]

built this system for a buddy couple of years ago and well he upgraded and gave it back to me so looking for a opinions on this system for current and near future gaming(BF3,MW3) , trying to decide to keep it as-is, upgrade it, or sell it and build a new system ....

here is my system specs right now

this will be a dedicated gaming machine , any suggestions for upgrade other then double the memory ?

upgrade the vid card ?
maybe run in crossfire ? running a single XFX 4890 right now .....

CPU is stock, but GPU is overclocked a bit ...
running Win7 64


case
cooler master stacker

CPU cooler
Cooler Master V8 with upgraded fan

[Time of Flight]

That computer is radical...Your buddy must have mega bucks if he "upgraded" from that.

Seriously though, that should be able to handle any game for the next couple of years at max graphics.

If you build computers shouldnt you already know that?

[Scratch705]

all you need is a new video card, the newer ati 6XXX series or the nvidia's 4XX/5XX can outperform even crossfired 4890. and can be had for around the $300 mark.

one thing i didn't see is the RAM amount? as long as you are above 4gb you should be good.

[Jeepers]

That computer is radical...Your buddy must have mega bucks if he "upgraded" from that.

Seriously though, that should be able to handle any game for the next couple of years at max graphics.

If you build computers shouldnt you already know that?

i just built it to his specs i am not a hardcore gamer, he has since lost his fear of building a 'puter and yes he can aford a upgrade, think he has 1500 into just his new set of vid cards ...lol... if memory serves me correctly this system came in at just under 2500 when i put it together and he owed me 500 so he kicked it down to me ... i am not into the over the top stuff myself and would have never built this for myself, but for 5 bills i figure it would be fun to get into gaming at over 60 fps again ....lol ... i did have to OC the vid card tonite to get max FPS(250 standing still 150 running and gunning) in cod4 .. he kept the second 4890 for his wife's 'puter

[Jeepers]

all you need is a new video card, the newer ati 6XXX series or the nvidia's 4XX/5XX can outperform even crossfired 4890. and can be had for around the $300 mark.

one thing i didn't see is the RAM amount? as long as you are above 4gb you should be good.

its running 6 at the moment

[JDay]

Upgrade the video card, add another 6GB of RAM and that system will handle any games you throw at it. The one other thing I would get is a nice monitor.

[Spearo]

Radeon HD 6950 would be a good choice. Then you can very simply unlock it to 6970 speeds and shader count. It will save you some money.
That is what I did.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150527

The card will eat anything you throw at it, very powerful.

I am running 8gb of Gskill DDR3 @ 1600 7-8-7-24 1.6v and it is more than enough.

Your RAM is low CAS latency, good stuff for gaming. Maybe you can over clock your RAM a little bit.

[UltraLNW]

Do yourself a favor and buy an EVGA 460 2Win video card. It is a two-slot card with one PCB incorporating two 460 1gb GPUs onto it. It is essentially an SLI setup with 2 460s but needing only one PEG lane. Costs about $300 (give or take a couple of bucks) and it is faster than a single 580 GTX.

Here is the Amazon page for it; I've seen it cheaper in the past, so there is likely a deal on it somewhere.

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-PCI-Express-Graphics-02G-P3-1387-KR/dp/B004SU8AUU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313161679&sr=8-1

[ibanezfoo]

Microcenter has deals on the new sandy bridge cpu + mobo combos....

[bigmike82]

In order:

Nice monitor (Like JDay said)
RAM Upgrade (16 gigs is very cheap these days)
New graphics card(s)

Ugh, is that a Caviar green? If you're running into the problem where your computer takes a few seconds while opening up the data, you can code a script which accesses a piece of data on that drive every minute or two (I forget what the spin-down time is). It makes a huge difference.

[Merc1138]

In order:

Nice monitor (Like JDay said)
RAM Upgrade (16 gigs is very cheap these days)
New graphics card(s)

Ugh, is that a Caviar green? If you're running into the problem where your computer takes a few seconds while opening up the data, you can code a script which accesses a piece of data on that drive every minute or two (I forget what the spin-down time is). It makes a huge difference.

The WD3000GLFS is a velociraptor and the 3200AAKS is a blue series hard drive.

But yes, the "green" hard drives these manufacturers have been pumping out are garbage.

Personally I wouldn't bother upgrading the CPU yet, it's more than plenty to last you through the rest of 2011 and then upgrade in 2012 when the newer "Ivy Bridge" replacements from Intel are out(or AMD has gotten their stuff together and produces something that actually competes with Intel's higher end like they used to years ago).

Even upgrading the RAM is iffy unless you can get it dirt cheap(which is possible), because I wouldn't want to be dumping money into something I'd be upgrading in 6 months. 6GB of RAM will run any game out there just fine as long as you don't have a bunch of processes running in the background(like a web browser eating 1GB just because there is a video on a website paused), since it's not like you're trying to run FRAPS or something while playing games.

Get yourself a decent 27" monitor if you don't already have one, and upgrade the videocard to at least an nvidia 570 or equivalent amd radeon 68xx/69xx series.

[Jeepers]

ya my monitor is just a cheap one its a acer 21.5 (g215h) need to upgrade that someday, but its still got a good image for now i see no need as of yet

the reason my buddy "upgraded" is he is really into overclocking now, and wanted full support to dx11 and wants to run eyefinity(for BF2/3 and eve online? never played eve but looks boring lol) ,but when i look at my dxdiag it shows dx11on this card so maybe he just wanted the new and improved cards ..lol .. the eyefinity is cool but from the searching i have done it really drops the FPS even on the new cards

i was looking at the specs on this 4890 last nite and see its one hell of a power hog but does compete fairly well with the newer cards so thinking i may upgrade the power supply as he kept his and i dropped in just a lil 550(think it was a 550 ,might have been a 650, just a spare i had laying around i forget now ...lol) thinking his was overkill @ 1300 but he was running 2X cards in crossfire

the 2 GB 6950 looks good to me @ around 250 XFX HD-695X-CNFC Radeon HD 6950 Video Card - 2GB, DDR5, PCI-Express 2.1 (x16), HDMI, Dual DVI, 2x Mini DisplayPort, DirectX 11
not sure why the 2GB card is bit cheaper then the 1, maybe the cooling system? i see the 1GB card is running 2 fans verse the 2GB has only 1

add 100 bucks for 6GB more memory ,i would still only be into this box at under 900 and 500 of that was $$$ i had loaned him a year or so ago hmmmmm i just might do it .... decisions decisions lol

[almaster666]

That i7 920 can be overclocked efforlessly to 3.3Ghz, especially with that cooler
So far as GPU is concerned, you could do better with an AMD 6870, they're going for less than $200 nowadays.
or the 6950 @ a little over 200