£250-£300 to spend on an upgrade

Adcook

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Hi All

I have about £250-£300 (excluding any cash I might get from selling old parts) to spend on an upgrade. I dont remember exactly what components I have as I cant find the receipts from when I built it back in 2008 and Im not sat in front of it but broadly its as follows:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4GB Ram
Geforce 9600GT
Asus ATX motherboard, cant remember the model number
Seagate 1TB 7200RPM HDD
Cooler Master Elite case

So should I just be putting all my cash into a new GPU or should I maybe add some extra memory. What upgrade path is going to get the best bang for my buck?
 
4Gb of memory and a Q6600 should be fine for most games, really. Also, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if a motherboard you bought to put a Q6600 in wouldn't take 8Gb in any case. I'm still overwhelmed with how much faster everything is with an SSD, so I'd get one to supplement (not replace) the existing hard drive, then replace that 9600GT. A quick look at eBuyer shows you could get a GTX660 (not Ti) and still have enough in your budget for a 128Gb Samsung.

But then I don't know what your power supply is - you'll need to check if it will handle any new card, and adjust your budget accordingly.
 
Hi All

I have about £250-£300 (excluding any cash I might get from selling old parts) to spend on an upgrade. I dont remember exactly what components I have as I cant find the receipts from when I built it back in 2008 and Im not sat in front of it but broadly its as follows:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4GB Ram
Geforce 9600GT
Asus ATX motherboard, cant remember the model number
Seagate 1TB 7200RPM HDD
Cooler Master Elite case

So should I just be putting all my cash into a new GPU or should I maybe add some extra memory. What upgrade path is going to get the best bang for my buck?

If I had that setup I'd go for a new motherboard an i5 processor and if need be a RAM upgrade for the 1600MHz.

That said I'm not to familiar with graphics cards so not sure if that would be a more pressing need.

The only issue is any PC needs a good starting point (i.e. motherboard) as that tends to limit everything in else in terms of what it supports.
 
Thats a tough shout, a top end gpu might be slightly bottlenecked by the cpu, get an overclock on it if you havent, that'll help. That said upgrading the cpu and mobo will give you no real improvement at all.

No doubt a gpu is going to yield biggest improvements, the 9600 as you know is old hat now, whereas the 6600 can still hold its own as far as cpu's go.

I'd get a 670 with the £300 and then an extra 4gb ram or 60gb ssd with selling the 9600gt. Probably the ram.
 
Well I might go for the GPU and perhaps stretch to a SSD with selling my 9600GT. I might be able to put a couple of hundred more into it after christmas when I might look to replace the MB and processor, thanks for the advice all.
 
Bite the bullet, theyre much better, they have a 680 pcb, so overclock and are cooled better, plus are a lot quieter.

You wont go wrong with the evga ftw, gigabyte, or msi top end offerings
 
I'd look at the 660 unless you can find some benches with a Q6600 and 670. With a decent overclock your chip shouldn't bottle neck a midrange card but high end cards might see some falloff. A 660 will be a massive jump in performance for you and will more then tide you over until you upgrade the whole rig. An SSD and extra RAM will be massive anti climax on that rig although if you can afford a 128+ GB SSD after a new GPU then its a sensible upgrade that can be used on your next rig. 60GB SSDs are not very useful in my opinion unless they are going in a HTPC.
 
I'd look at the 660 unless you can find some benches with a Q6600 and 670. With a decent overclock your chip shouldn't bottle neck a midrange card but high end cards might see some falloff. A 660 will be a massive jump in performance for you and will more then tide you over until you upgrade the whole rig. An SSD and extra RAM will be massive anti climax on that rig although if you can afford a 128+ GB SSD after a new GPU then its a sensible upgrade that can be used on your next rig. 60GB SSDs are not very useful in my opinion unless they are going in a HTPC.

I get what your saying but assuming Im going to be able to upgrade to an i5 or even an i7 early next year would it not be worth getting the high end GPU and accepting the fact that its being bottlenecked for a few months?
 
I get what your saying but assuming Im going to be able to upgrade to an i5 or even an i7 early next year would it not be worth getting the high end GPU and accepting the fact that its being bottlenecked for a few months?

For that reason I personally wouldnt go less than the 670, especially as you have the budget for one, if you have/get a decent OC on your cpu it will be negligible bottleneck at most.
 
I get what your saying but assuming Im going to be able to upgrade to an i5 or even an i7 early next year would it not be worth getting the high end GPU and accepting the fact that its being bottlenecked for a few months?

For that reason I personally wouldnt go less than the 670, especially as you have the budget for one, if you have/get a decent OC on your cpu it will be negligible bottleneck at most.

If it were me I would buy the right component for now, not "down the line". PC parts move very quickly in price and performance. You could buy a 670 and it never reach its peak performance in your current rig. By the time you come to upgrade 7970s could be selling for sub £200 etc There will always be a buyer when it comes to moving parts on 2nd hand etc. That said, if you have your heart set on a 670 then you should go for it. That after all is the fun of PCs :thumbsup:
 
If it were me I would buy the right component for now, not "down the line". PC parts move very quickly in price and performance. You could buy a 670 and it never reach its peak performance in your current rig. By the time you come to upgrade 7970s could be selling for sub £200 etc There will always be a buyer when it comes to moving parts on 2nd hand etc. That said, if you have your heart set on a 670 then you should go for it. That after all is the fun of PCs :thumbsup:

You've convinced me, the difference in price between the 660 and 670 is more than I expected, with whats left I can afford a 128GB SSD and up my ram to 8GB
 
The answer on the graphics card can only be given when you consider the following:

How bothered are you by having everything on full?

If you are OK with having solid performance in 1920x1080 and do not need something that does everything in Ultra @ High FXAA, then the 660 or 660 Ti is probably a good value purchase that will last for 3-4 years.

If you want more performance then you can buy the more expensive graphics card.

Personally I do not need to have my games running at 90FPS at full and most of the games I play are not as hardware intensive, therefore I went mid range on the graphics card and CPU.

An all round good upgrade would be the 660Ti with a 128GB SSD, then change the CPU later on.

If you want pure graphics performance then go the 670, but you will probably have to wait until you swap the CPU to be able to really push it.
 
Yeah I think Im convinced that the 660Ti and the SSD would suit me best at the moment for pretty much the same price as the 670 on its own. Im going to pick them up after work.
 
Yeah I think Im convinced that the 660Ti and the SSD

You will not regret getting an SSD..... I love mine :)
 
You will not regret getting an SSD..... I love mine :)

Agreed :smashin: just put a 128GB OCZ Solid 3 (£54 @ Novatech) in mine to run Windows and made my original 1TB SATA a storage drive, it's like a new computer!!
 
After spending most of the afternoon trying to move my system drive to the SSD I've decided to do a fresh install.
 

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