New System Build Help Please?

[ashmista]

Hey guys, I've finally gathered some money to upgrade my computer I normally upgrade my computer a lot but I decided to save a little and go all out this time.

My current system is:

Pentium 4 3.8 GHZ
4gb DDR2 1066MHZ OCZ Reaper
Asus Maximus Formula
256Mb BFG 8600gts
WD 320GB

Yeah you may laugh but I play crysis on high , and no lagg.


But my budget is around £750 I may increase a little if neccesary but i'll see for now. I will mainly ues it for games but I do do alot of graphics work in photoshop and 3Dsmax but like I said mainly games.

So please enlighten me with you knowledge

 

[Helloworld_98]

i7 definitely with a GTX 260 and download the win7 RC for free.

 

[Onus]

The graphics work suggests you'd benefit from a quad-core CPU. The charts I've seen show Intel booming AMD pretty handily on those kinds of things, whereas the GPU matters more for games. If you can fit it, I also think you'd like an i7 build, but if not, you could re-use your DDR2-1066 with an AMD PII X4 940 for a lot less money.
People do laugh at the 8600GTS these days, but if you've been happy with it, there's no need to spend a lot of money for top-of-the-line. Read the Best Graphics Cards for the Money article: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-gtx,2270.html. Pay attention to the chart on the last page. You may find that a 4670, though the "bottom" of today's heap, may still be a substantial jump up from what you have now, since it's five tiers higher. Furthermore, a GPU is usually pretty easy to upgrade.

Edit: CPU Comparison - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=80&p2=47

Choose a quality PSU, from a company like Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power & Cooling, or Enermax.

 

[photonboy]

If this is an LGA775 motherboard, I'd seriously considering just swapping out your CPU and graphics card for something like:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
NVidia GTX 275

I'm not sure about your PSU.

The main routes are an AM2+, AM3 or X58. All have pros and cons. Keeping your RAM sounds great but then what do you do with that computer? The X58 can be quite expensive.

Anyway, if you decide to build a new system completely I'd get an AM3 ATX MOBO, AM3 quad-core CPU, 4GB DDR3 etc.

You also can get Windows 7 RC as of May 5th so I'd get that from Microsoft (free) and use it until an OEM version is available rather than buying Vista now.