Recent content by chrisiomuk

"Anyone who actually promotes the HD 5770 either has one and wants to feel less retarded about their purchase or thinks the HD 5770's 42w advantage over the GTX 460 actually makes a difference (and is also retarded)." As 'retarded' as someone who would get so worked up that he needed to call...

Its not that hard to get into and newer players can easily find a place to thrive however it is a social game and joining a good starter corporation is the way forward, bear in mind that with the retail copy of eve you do get a full 30 days access to the game and in this time you can join a...

You could probably get a secondhand 17" monitor with 1280 x 1024 res really cheap, that would be a good investment if your low on cash as that res is where stuff starts looking good.

I have just upgraded from a 4850 to a 5850 and the 4850 ran WoW in 1080p with graphics on high so much so that it doesn't run much smoother on the 5850 so you will be fine. AND I only have an Athlon II x3 (unlocked to a phenom II mind)

FX60 even, typo but wont let me edit for some reason.

If its socket 939 then you can still upgrade the processor with 2nd hand units all the way upto the mighty FX62 (still a bit steep in price though), should be easy to find a cheap Athlon 64 X2 4400 or 4600 (939) on ebay or the like.

EDIT : on a down point, it has been written that it is very hard to overclock the barts GPU at all so if its overclocking your looking for then a 5850 may be better.

6870 is the same price as a 5850 and offers slightly higher performance in most things but also comes with new display port and 3D technology, all tests show that noise and power usage is slightly below the 58** cards too, I will be moving from my 4850 to a 6870 in the next month or two.

I only know how to unlock on the Asus 8 series chipset boards, you press 4 on startup, thats it, does the rest itself, even reverts if unstable without CMOS reset. Not sure on Gigabytes though. Wasn't much help I know sorry.

Is it running at 55 degrees when under load or idle, should be running at around 30 - 34 degrees when idle, if its running at 55 at all times when not modified then you either have a faulty CPU or the heatsink isnt making good enough contact with the CPU.

I have yet to read a post saying an unlock killed their CPU so I would assume it is quite safe to 'try'. Also with the X3 Athlons you have a chance of it unlocking the level 3 cache if it started out life as a Phenom like many did. My Athlon II 440 had a faulty 4th core but the L3 cache unlocked...

Cool'n'Quiet is working fine on my Athlon II 440 with the L3 cache unlocked and a 100MHz overclock so I have just left it. However the CPU fan does not seem to drop to its lowest RPM anymore after the unlock but its not loud enough to bother me, CPU-Z shows the CPU dropping to 800MHZ when idle...

4 Cores will produce more heat, the Phenom II X4's come with an uprated heatsink and fan using copper cooling pipes, If you upgrade to a good cooler that should bring the temp right down while the 4th core is unlocked.

Not as good as the Asus option then, looks like your stuck with 2 cores sorry :(

Might not be 100% intelligent and may need you to deactivate 1 core through the bios and run it as an X3. although with the PII X2's 2 faulty cores is unlikely but not impossible. In the bios under the UCC settings (if its like Asus Core Unlocker) it will give you the option to activate it then...