Socket 775 gaming rig. Upgrade or ditch

[mhb07189]

Hi guys,

I'm getting back into gaming and wanted to get some input regarding upgrading an existing rig or build a new system from scratch - funds are a little tight at the moment and I'm a little more inclined towards upgrading the existing rig.

Currently I have a socket 775 based obsolete gaming rig on gigabyte P45 chipset with a intel dual core E8XXX cpu & Nvidia 8800 gts. I'm thinking to buy an Intel q9650 from ebay and drop it in and overclock it to 3.8/4.0 ghz. I also have 8gb of ddr2 6400 ram and audigy 2 zs soundcard. This is all to be powered by existing hyper 580W type M power supply. My plan is to install an Nvidia 960 2gb/4gb graphics card and 250 gb samsung evo ssd.

The monitor I currently have is a 22 inch 1600*1200 resolution viewsonic.

The games I'm looking to play are BF4, BF: hardline, Rainbow Six Siege (when released), Wolfenstein: the new order, and crysis 3.

Is it a false economy to be doing this? or should I invest in a brand new system? If I do upgrade then this system is to be used as a stopgap for 12-15 months.

 

[ModernWarfare]

no its not worth upgrading a 775 socket at ALL! even todays pentium dual-core lga 1150 beats the quad-core lga 775. it will not run very well. you can upgrade to a whole new system with lga 1150 or am3+ then that would be good with a gtx 960

 

[blasc]

you will be losing money if you upgrade that PC. The thing is, if you upgrade now, and you want to buy a complete brand new build in 1.5 years, the money you invest now will be lost.

If you build a new rig now, appart from getting a high performance for several years, the value of the new rig will be higher for longer term, and the value of your old PC right now is higher now so you can still get some money of it.


In other words:
(A)
- your current build is valued @100.
- you spend extra 100 to upgrade.
- in 1.5 years it will be valued again @100
- you sell @100 (if you manage to, since technology has evolved even more)
- you then get your new build @500

(B)
- you sell your current build now @100
- you get a new build now @500


In (A), you lost 100, because of lost value from hardware. Obviously you have to see what you can get with your current budget and balance it with the life-time it will get you (5~6 years?) and if it is worth it.

Also, older hardware tends to lose value faster (and is harder to sell) than new hardware. Like an inverse exponential chart.

 

[johnnyb105]

Right now it seems like your system is close to being max out other then the cpu which the one you want to replace with will cost you close to 100 bucks on ebay now....... A Pentium g3258 and a cheap board would be slightly over 100 bucks and out perform the current system you have... But you also have to factory in the cost of new memory and anything else you want to add a new Os and such... I have a system similar to yours as well but with only a e 8400 and only 4 gigs of ram it will run Battlefield Hardline as well my system has a gtx 660 installed for the gpu so they still game just not as fast as the newer ones do because a lot of this tech is from 2007 to 2008.. So either plunk 100 down now speed up your system a bit for gaming or plunk down 500 or so for a newer system..

 

[utgotye]

I turned my LGA775 machine into a file/media server for streaming to my consoles/TVs so they are far from useless. Depending on what you are playing, an E8400/E8500 will still play some games, a Q9XXX will work even better. That said newer processors will work even better.

 

[mhb07189]

Performance wise, how will a pentium G3258 (overclocked to 4.5 ghz) compare to the q9650 at 4.0 ghz?

For the new build, is it better to go socket 1151 or 2011-v3 with a 5820k. The difference only seems to be in the motherboard cost, the 6700k and 5820k are both around the £300 mark. Or q9650 it for a year and then do a new build to socket 2011-v3 or its replacement?

 

[johnnyb105]

Performance wise, how will a pentium G3258 (overclocked to 4.5 ghz) compare to the q9650 at 4.0 ghz?

For the new build, is it better to go socket 1151 or 2011-v3 with a 5820k. The difference only seems to be in the motherboard cost, the 6700k and 5820k are both around the £300 mark. Or q9650 it for a year and then do a new build to socket 2011-v3 or its replacement?

Not everyone will get 4.5 ghz out of the g 3258 your mileage will vary from 4.0 ghz to more even some people who bought the h boards instead of the z97 get even less overclock... I managed 4.4 before reboots so its not a given since the cpu runs standard @ 3.2 already...

 

[johnnyb105]

Why not get the Q6600 its clock at 2.4 ghz quad core and cost around 30 to 40 bucks ebay????? low cost investment until he builds a newer system that way it gives him time to save up and plan....

 

[utgotye]

Well there will always be something new coming so I wouldn't worry about the latter. Grab any of the available i7s as you will be happy with any of them.

Single core performance goes to the G3258. However, the higher the load, the more then C2Q claws back until they will be about equal. Bear in mind that this is at stock but there's not reason to believe that overclocking shouldn't behave similarly. The Pentium should win at those clocks and in theory would be easier to OC as well.

Again, it will all depend on what you are doing.

 

[johnnyb105]

Did the op mention a budget? I didn't see one as for the new skylakes that be something I would wait on see if they come down some in price The cpu is more less a revamped 15 and I 7 as for gaming your best bet is the I5 4690K AND A GOOD Z97 BOARD as the I7 doesn't offer much in the way of gaming but in other aspects it does and its over 100 bucks more for hyperthreading.

 

[mhb07189]

If I do a new build now my budget is approximately £1000-1100 for the base unit.

If I upgrade now and spend £50 on CPU (eBay), £160 on Nvidia 960 card and £90 on ssd, my aim would be to keep it for year and then move onto a new platform altogether. But the budget by then would stretch out to roughly £1500 for the base unit.

I am not all too fussed about selling the existing kit and its residual value.

 

[johnnyb105]

Sounds like a plan more money = better build in the long run.

 

[Cryio]

All in all a really bad upgrade.

1) Buy a 380 4 GB instead of a 960 4 GB. Faster card for usually the same price or cheaper.

2) Core 2 Quad CPUs were left in the dust long ago. If you want to go cheap, buy an AMD chipset 970 based motherboard and an FX 6300, oveclock it to 4.5 GHz and enjoy maximum performance out of your 380 or 960 GPU. That or an i3 Haswell CPU. You really DO NOT need more for GPUs like 380 or 960.

3) Absolutely 8 GBs of RAM. Go for dual channel 2x4 1866 ram if possible.

4) 550-600W PSU would be both awesome and overkill for a setup like this. Absolutely recommended. You could go with a good 500W PSU just as well, if you don't want to stretch it budget.

5) Absolutely, regardless of what CPU you'll buy eventually, buy a decent CPU cooler.

 

[mhb07189]

Many thanks for all your answers.

Cryio, the reason I incline towards Nvidia 960 is due to the power consumption. What you are suggesting is more or less a new build (new processor, ram, psu, motherboard, graphics, cooler). If I do take that route, then I'll go for socket 2011-v3 platform.

Again, if I decide to upgrade, then I'll only use running it for 12 months and then invest in a new platform altogether.

So more specifically the question is, will intel Q9650 paired with Nvidia 960 allow me to get average 40+ fps at resolution of 1600*1200 at medium/high settings with minimum fps being above 25, or will i suffer from stuttering/choppy gameplay.

According to tomshardware CPU hierarchy chart, the Q9650 is in tier 3 on stock speeds. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,review-32901-5.html

Thanks,