Another gaming rig upgrade: £120/$160, but on what?

Middleman

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Hi all,

In advance, genuine thanks to any rig owners who can spare some basic knowledge to help me out.


I'm about to throw around £120/$160USD at my rig (not including the sale of any component i replace).
I purchased it secondhand 6 months ago.

My objective is FPShooter games on higher settings, retaining around 60fpsecond.

As this is my first rig, and I'm a relative beginner, I'm not clear on what components I might now replace / add to the mix.




Here's what I've got:

E8400 CORE2DUO PROCESSOR 3ghz 6 MB

Video Card: ATI Radeon HD '4870 X2'

MOBO: Asus P5K Premium wifi ap
- DMA/ATA 133 (Ultra) x 1, DMA/ATA 66 (Ultra) x 1, Socket LGA775, ATX, Intel P35 Chipset

Sound card: Creative SB X-Fi ExtremeGamer

Memory: 6GB
(2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2
+(2x1GB) Geil Black Dragon 2GB 2x 1GB 800Mhz Dual Channel DDR2

Hard drive: 750GB Samsung HD753LJ

Operating System Version: Windows 7 (64 bit)


If you can advise, I pledge in return to think that you are most excellent.
smile.gif


Thanks.​
 
without a second thought, get an SSD. Best upgrade your rig can get.
I recommend the Intel X25-M 80 G2, it's more or less in your price range.
Get it, you'll thank yourself later ;)
 
sorry this isnt about your upgrades but it might be useful to you.

why does everyone prefure SSd over standard hdds?
 
because they are so much faster than HDDs. your programs load instantly, windows feels snappy and boots in under 30 seconds including all your startup programs.
The reason they are so fast is because their access time is almost zero (there isn't a moving head that needs to locate the information on a platter).
Just so you have a rough idea, fastest HDD's latency is about 100 to 150 times higher than of a SSD.
 
okay thats fair enough, but that doesnt really justify the stupid price of a 160gb ssd.

and they dont have the capacity of traditional hdds
 
I recommended the 80gb ssd to store the operating system on it which gives the best boost in performance.
I guess that depends on what you consider justifiable, throw the same amount of money on a memory or cpu upgrade and you will not see half the boost that the SSD gives.
Hard drives are the biggest bottleneck in todays PCs.
 
i understand that but my o/s dive is sitting on about 130GB because of software and games installed.

these games are what are used mostly and would much prefure they sit on the same hdd as well to gain the increased performance too, but considering the cost of 2 of those drives doesnt really make it worth while.

(trying to get as much info for the o.p here as well as being useful info for myself)
 
you won't gain almost anything from running your games off the SSD.. (levels load faster, that's all)..
For your games - use a HDD, for OS use and SSD.
That's how i see it.
Of course if funds are unlimited then buy two 160gb intels, put them in RAID 0 and you have 320GB of very fast storage.. but if on a budget, 80gb is a good solution. It lets you run the OS and the important soft off the ssd, the rest can sit on your storage HDD.
 

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