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Ollie

(Yet another) PC upgrade info needed thread.

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How much is that cpu fan, is it noisy? I have a E6400 and I overclocked it a little bit, once, then put it back. I have a big fan on my cpu but not sure how good it is. I would like to overclock, and it would be worth it to have a bigger fan in time for when I change mobos and cpu in a month or two (well, that's the plan anyway)

 

Noisy? No, its a standard case fan size but it spins slowly and it dispels heat very fast.

 

I think it was £35 off ebuyer...

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Don't bother, the Core 2's are so easily over clockable... Buy a good fan (I have a Scythe MINE), over clock the shit out of it.

 

I got my E6600 to 3.4ghz (1ghz higher than stock), not a single issue.

 

He can't oc it. IIRC his pc is the same as mine. And you can't overclock a Dell.

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So this is what I ordered:

 

CPU

RAM

GPU

 

Luckily I have a good motherboard, PSU and HDD setup from my last upgrade meaning that I could spend more money on the components that really make a difference this time around.

 

Its nice to know my rig is going to be good now after having to skimp on these components last time :yay:

 

Let me know how you get on Oli, i'm due an upgrade fairly soon and i'm trying to decide between sticking with my existing Mobo and popping a Phenom in, or going with the new Intel chips. If the system runs well with the Phenom then i might go with that and save myself the £80 it'd cost me for a new mobo.

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Noisy? No, its a standard case fan size but it spins slowly and it dispels heat very fast.

 

I think it was £35 off ebuyer...

Hmm looks like they're sold out on ebuyer. Was it easy to install? Found what looked like a similar priced item with good reviews but sounds like it takes an engineering degree and steel skin to fit it.

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The Zipang is not made for over clocking. Look around for a MINE, its a far superior fan.

 

As for easy to install? Yes and no. Its honestly huge and the connector pins are pretty fragile so you have to be careful.

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Hmm it's very tall... I have like this airflow regulator thing on the inside of my case that would have to come off. Still it is very tempting. Wouldn't have to bother upgrading my cpu for a while if I could overclock it enough. Add a new graphics card and I would be happy. Have you decided which you're going for yet, gfx wise?

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Yeah, i bought a Radeon 4850 seeing as the difference between the 4870 and 4850 wasn't too huge.

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Let me know how you get on Oli, i'm due an upgrade fairly soon and i'm trying to decide between sticking with my existing Mobo and popping a Phenom in, or going with the new Intel chips. If the system runs well with the Phenom then i might go with that and save myself the £80 it'd cost me for a new mobo.

 

Will do, the kit is due tomorrow and I can't wait.

 

I know that everyone says Intels rock atm, but I'll always love AMD in terms of bang for buck.

 

I'll try and give a nice accurate opinion but can't compare it to an Intel as I don't have one :heh:

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Will do, the kit is due tomorrow and I can't wait.

 

I know that everyone says Intels rock atm, but I'll always love AMD in terms of bang for buck.

 

I'll try and give a nice accurate opinion but can't compare it to an Intel as I don't have one :heh:

 

The settings that you can run various games on and how smooth they flow will do me nicely. Basically i just want to know how hard you can push it before you find the machine starts to choke :)

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How much is the i7 going to cost? Not sure whether to improve my cooling and overclock or wait for an i7, as I do want a new mobo for other reasons...

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Until next month, who knows?

 

You know its a new socket (thus new motherboard) and will also require DDR3 RAM right (and new RAM...)?

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Well, I wanted more RAM too. My motherboard is really lame, something went wrong with it a while back and due to some issue with the PCI bridge, the bridge itself and most of my devices are reinstalled almost every time I start windows. This includes my wifi card, which means entering the WEP every time. I also have inexplicable ping problems on games which I can't seem to pin down to anything (nothing else on my network has the problem, even in the same games or from the same distance -and I've tried with different network adapters).

 

Maybe I should just buy a new PC.

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So pleased with my purchase of a Gigabyte DS3 mobo over two years ago now, never had a hitch with it.

 

Gone from a Pentium4 D, to a Conroe and then to what I have now being a Quad Core. And I can't see myself needing to upgrade that processor within the next 18 months.........there's just no need.

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What mobos are on their way with i7 support? Just the asus p6t? Next month is going to be interesting....

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There'll only be a high-end X58 chipset for quite a while, which all mainboard manufacturers are going to use. Midrange chipsets are only going to come in Q2 2009 if my info is correct.

 

The i7's use a new socket, so you can't use Core 2 chipsets.

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The X58 is looking really great, despite its obvious cost flaws...

 

At the moment i have:

Core 2 Duo E6600 (3.4ghz OC)

Asus P5N-E nForce 610i motherboard

3GB DDR2 RAM

Radeon HD 4850 512mb

Creative X-Fi Gamer sound card

 

I just wonder if there's any point in me bothering to upgrade, unless the Core i7 has some SERIOUS performance upgrades.

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I'm upgrading from an E6700 fo' sure. Assuming the money is still there.

 

I'd like to get a microATX motherboard/case this time if at all possible, what are the chances of a microATX i7 motherboard at release?

 

A 2.93 GHz Nehalem "Bloomfield" system has been used to run a 3DMark Vantage benchmark and gave a CPU score of 17,966. The 2.66 GHz variant scores 16,294. A 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 scores 4,300.

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I'm upgrading from an E6700 fo' sure. Assuming the money is still there.

 

I'd like to get a microATX motherboard/case this time if at all possible, what are the chances of a microATX i7 motherboard at release?

 

Chances are very, very slim. I mean, have you seen the size of the chipset on the boards alone?

 

msi-x58-eclipse.jpg

 

The one near the CPU looks like a damn Pentium 3!

 

A 2.93 GHz Nehalem "Bloomfield" system has been used to run a 3DMark Vantage benchmark and gave a CPU score of 17,966. The 2.66 GHz variant scores 16,294. A 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 scores 4,300.

 

3DMark Vantage is very, very good at calculating raw numbers. Something the Core i7 appears to be great at doing. But in actual practise? We'll have to see. Its the same case with the Cell processor. Its extremely quick at calculating 1's and 0's but it can be fairly useless for normal gaming tasks due to its complex architecture.

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Ok, so I got the sexy new hardware yesterday (I'll get some pictures tonight if your interested), this is the setup:

 

Asus M2N32 SLi deluxe

AMD Quad Core Phenom 9850

Ati 4870 - 512Mb

2 x WD 250gig Sata drives in Raid 0

4Gb Crucial Ballistix (800MHz) Tracer ram

Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

 

I was pleased that Vista recognised the raid, I was worried I would have to poke around injecting drivers, but I didn't, and Vista was intalled in about 15minutes - wow!

 

I haven't overclocked anything, and probably not going to, we'll see.

 

UT3 installed, everything on full, and runs like a dream. I need to do some research to see if there is a way of editing the config files to make it run with higher settings. More on this soon.

 

Tonight I am going to spend some time tweaking my OS install. There is a lot of bloat in Vista that I don't need, so a bit of streamlining will make a nice improvement.

 

I was surprised at the amount of heat the ATi kicks out, I am going to do some testing on this too, at least it will get better after a few cycles.

 

So nothing concrete to report yet, but initial opinion is...AMAZING!

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unless the Core i7 has some SERIOUS performance upgrades.
Apparently it kicks the shit out of a Core 2 real bad. It's really such a shame AMD can't do anything about it.

 

AMD's Phenom revision at the end of the year is going to rival Intel Core 2 Penryn performance at best...

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After doing a little reading about what the i7 is (i have been living in a dustbin) I saw this article and they are supposed to be not that much better for gaming... linky link

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