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What would you upgrade here?

Post Date: 2009-09-14
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Vandermint View Drop Down
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Joined: 25 Jan 2008
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Posts: 10 		  Quote Vandermint Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: What would you upgrade here?
    Posted: 14 Sep 2009 at 11:34am
Hi all--I bought this system from DS in January of 2008. It's running all my games just fine (I play on a 22in monitor I think--the one where native resolution is something like 1680x1050) and honestly I haven't been disappointed by performance at all. Still, it is getting some age on it and I thought I could maybe put a few bucks into it. As a frame of reference, the games I'm most excited about coming out are Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, and Starcraft 2.
 
Any thoughts on what I could/should upgrade? Memory/Video card/Processor? Actually, getting a new processor and mobo is probably more than I'd want to spend. Or since I'm having no issues maybe I should sit tight? Thanks for any advice...
 
Case: Digital Storm Twister LITE (Black Aluminum Edition)
Power Supply: 560W SilverStone Strider (Model: ST56F) (Silent)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz (1333MHz Front Side Bus) (4MB Cache)
Motherboard: nVidia 650i Core 2 Quad (By: eVGA) (nForce 650i Ultra)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Corsair at 1066MHz Dominator (Dual Channel) (Extreme-Performance)
Floppy / Card: Sony 1.44MB Floppy (Black Edition)
Hard Drive 1: 320GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Optical Drive 1: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
Optical Drive 2: - No Thanks
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8800GTS 512MB (By: eVGA) (PCI-Express)
TV Tuner: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Motherboard Multi-Channel High Definition Audio (7.1 Channel)
Physics Card: - No Thanks
Cooling: Air Cooled Stage 2 (Silent Artic Cooling Heat-sink (Copper Heatpipes)
Case Lighting: - No Thanks
Round Cables: - No Thanks
User Manual: Personalized Platinum Digital Storm Binder (Includes Paperwork/Benchmarks/CDs/Manuals)
Overclock Processor: Yes, Overclock the processor as much as possible with complete stability
Overclock Video Card: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)
Overclock Memory: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my memory
Tweak Windows: - No Thanks, Please do not tweak the services on the operating system
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based)
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Bill the Cat View Drop Down
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Posts: 1150 		  Quote Bill the Cat Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 14 Sep 2009 at 6:10pm
You and I are in pretty much the same boat. My original DSO machine is a tad older (it turns "2" next week), but a tad faster than your. I also am still content with its gaming performance, but starting to think about an upgrade. I've concluded that the upgrade probably has to be pretty massive.
 
Our "old" NVidia motherboards kinda get in the way. My 680i won't take a substantially better CPU. I don't believe yours will either. Mine Is PCIe 1.0 based. I believe yours is as well. So it goes.
 
You could double the amount of RAM, but you'd need a 64-bit OS to really take advantage of that. I think you could swap in a GTX 275 GPU without saturating the PCIe bus on the motherboard.
 
I'm inclined to let some of the current dust settle. Wait for Windows 7, see how the new i5 motherboards work out, maybe even wait for USB 3.0 (although that's turned into a real stretch.
 
If you can't list a couple of things that your current computer can't do well, I'd get a 64-bit copy of Win 7 and double or triple the RAM, or do nothing except start saving up for the next new rig.
3.6 GHz E6850,       4 GB RAM, GTS 250,   TJ9, Win 7 64-bit
4.4 GHz i7 3930K, 16 GB RAM, GTX 670, 550D, Win 7 64-bit
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DST4ME View Drop Down
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Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Posts: 36758 		  Quote DST4ME Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 14 Sep 2009 at 6:13pm
Ya you will need to change too many things, psu, mobo, ram, gpu, might as well get a new pc.

Nvidia Drivers----AMD Drivers
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Vandermint View Drop Down
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Posts: 10 		  Quote Vandermint Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Oct 2009 at 3:36pm
Sorry to bump this old thread, and thanks for the replies. Not long after my original post I began getting some errors and without going into a long story on the forums they run, I'm not satisfied with the way DSO has responded to them. So new question: if I tried to sell this system on ebay, as is, what would be a fair price?
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kukuruza View Drop Down
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Posts: 12 		  Quote kukuruza Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 19 Oct 2009 at 10:34am
You could double the amount of RAM, but you'd need a 64-bit OS to really take advantage of that. I think you could swap in a GTX 275 GPU without saturating the PCIe bus on the motherboard.
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