that's not the overwhelmingly positive response i expected, tbh.

i can probably hold off on a full upgrade for another year i suppose. guess i'll wait and see. thanks for weighing in. :) 

I sav a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 a little while ago on aria.co.uk - 500MB/s Read speed and 450MB write. That is really fast. SATA 6Gb/s interface recommended. My point is that it was �140 which really wasn't bad. I was tempted. But I doubt I would put Steam on it, though I maybe could. I would want my OS on it, for the general performance increases, and slow loading apps like GIMP probably. And Quake, obviously..... 

Although it's in a laptop, and laptops have traditionally had slow drives, and I haven't had it very long. 

Dont get one, they suck:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8150_9.html#sect0 

just one question, is it worth to switch to win7 ? currently im still on xp 

yes, very much! I use Linux and don't even have a copy of win7 but whenever I get to use it for some repairs or teaching it is a bliss. 

Yeah it probably is. Not so much if you have Vista, but XP is little outdated. I like win7. Get 64bit though, not 32bit. 

My PC is seriously out of date and I'm just getting poor performance and such in my games lately. My old specs as follows;

Asus P5VE VM Motherboard
Intel Pentium D 3.40GHz Dual Core
Radeon HD2600XT Pro
2GB Ram DDR
450W Powersupply

I've been looking around and putting together an idea for a PC build that seems within a good affordable price range and pretty modern (?) I have a preference to Radeon because I've been using them since I remember. Results of this are below, I'm wondering if this is pretty decent or if there's anything I should know about? Wish to get a new PC together as soon as possible, but any pointers is helpful since I'm a newbie with hardware (besides the setup part)

Case: Corsair Carbide 400R Mid Tower Case
Card: ATI Radeon 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express
Board: Asus P8H67-M Intel H67 (Socket 1155)
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz
PSU: Corsair Builder Series CX 500W or 600W (slightly more �)
Win: Win 7 Pro
RAM: Two, Corsair XMS3 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz
Fan: Zalman CNPS9900-MAX Blue LED CPU Cooler or Zalman CNPS11X Extreme CPU Cooler, depends on price/availability
Monitor: Asus VE228H 22" Widescreen LED

Cheers! 

heh, your old rig is better than mine. :P

that said, is there any reason you don't want an SSD? even just for your OS? to buy all those toys and stop short of one... 

Actually, good thing you reminded me. I had my eyes on an SSD after reading up on them, simply for the OS, but the thought went off my mind while I was looking up all the other stuff. Cheers. 

The 2500K is a monster of a processor (good taste in CPUs BTW), but it is predominantly designed FOR overclocking. You dont need much cooling either to get it up past 4Ghz. I have a crazy cooler, and mine is running at 4.6, although I was running is at 5Ghz for a long time.

BUT

Your motherboard is a H67 motherboard, which is a chipset which is designed for Sandy Bridge CPU's but it doesn't support overclocking.

You need to pair your CPU with a P67 or Z68 motherboard. Then you will be able to overclock it.

If you dont want to overclock, then you might as well get the i5 2500 (non-K), because it's exactly the same thing, but it has a locked multiplier.

The P67 or Z68 motherboards compined with a K series CPU allows for very easy overclocking. You can get surprisingly far by only adjusting about 2 settings in your BIOS.

Don't skimp on the RAM either. Especially because 1600Mhz RAM is so cheap! You will gain performance from the better RAM in this instance. Sandy Bridge CPU's like 2133Mhz RAM, but that is a little more pricey, but you might aswell go for atleasy the 1600Mhz stuff. Just make sure it's 1.5v or less. 1.5 is fine.

I would go for the 600 watt PSU, but im sure you could even overclock on the 500 if you wanted to. 

Since I don't think I'll be overclocking, then the 2500 should sit well enough for me. it also answers the question I've been wondering about the 2500/2500K difference. Though I've never overclocked before, so I should do some research into this and tweak my choices where viable.

As for RAM, I was playing it safe since I'm a little confused in that area, whether or not the motherboard I chose will work with the RAM or such. So many numbers. So I should be safe with choosing 1600Mhz or higher for my board choice then? 

Yeah - 1600Mhz is ideal

Overclocking is a lot less intimidating then it used to be. With Sandy Bridge K CPUs you leave most of the settings as they are, you just adjust the multiplier and you will get quite far. I think you disable speedstep and increase the multiplier. You wont have to adjust any voltages to get to around 4Ghz. You only have to adjust a little bit to get a little bit further. Multiplier of 33 gives 3.3Ghz because the bus is locked at 100Mhz. So you just increase the number to 3.8 for example.

Then you get Coretemp (free), and Prime95 (free), run the blend test (default) on prime95, and check your temps. If it's less than 65degrees (70 is probably fine TBH) after ten minutes, and the test is still running, then you know you are OK.

The RAM. You want dual-channel DDR3, 240pin 1.5v 1600Mhz 9-9-9-27 or 9-9-9-24 are gonna be the timings. The lower the numbers, the faster the RAM. The last number should hopefully be 24 and not 27. The other three will be 9. If the last number is 27, it will still be fine.
You want to buy a 4Gb or an 8Gb kit. 4Gb is still OK, but a couple of games claim to be able to utilise more than 4Gb. 64-bit OS for more than 4Gb.

The same RAM will work with most of the AMD motherboards, the Intel socket 1156 and 1155 motherboards, universally. The 1156 RAM was 1.65v. But most 1156 mobo's will take 1.5v RAM, just not the other way round. YOU are buying 1155. This does NOT like 1.65v. It is designed for 1.5v or less. 

If you go with H67 you are limited to a max speed of 1333 Mhz. If you went P67 or Z68 than you could use up to 2133.

But if you are going to stick with that motherboard then you might as well get the 1333Mhz stuff. 

 

This is some useful, clear info. Makes it easier to see where I should go from here. Cheers man! 

i think what stops me from upgrading all the time (my machine is almost 6 years old!) is having to relearn all the hardware stuff every time.
most of ricky's post i'd never heard before, and i've been building my own machines for like almost 15 years now. 

Yeah it is a pain having to learn and research what all the latest best hardware is. It changes so fast.

I think the 6970 Radeon is only slightly more expensive? Get a 120gb SSD if you can, then all your programs can go on there too. There's some cheaper brands out there.

And get 600w power supply. 

I switched to a 600w PSU, changed the chipset to a P67, grabbed an i5 2500K and picked out a 60GB SSD. I already went over my intended budget so I didn't want to spend too much over that which is why I stuck with a 6950, but I think this should be worth it. Already have a 2TB HDD which I can now use primarily for games (partitioned for XP & Steam atm) Ordered it all and everything besides the fan has been dispatched. Hope they have a fan instock or I'll have to try elsewhere.

Cheers for all the help guys. 

the 6950 overclocks like a dream, too. And crossfire isgenerally like 90-100% or some shit man, srsly 

It's pretty similar to my system quakis - 8gb ram, p67, 2500k. Except I got 120gb SSD, 700w power, and GTX 560 which I wouldn't recommend - out of the box it had issues which weren't resolved until I underclocked it. I didn't get any extra fans or cooling for it though.

Make sure you get 64bit win7. 

right, this may not be the 100% most correct thread to post this in, but i put it here under the suspicion that the solution may involve some kind of hardware upgrade...

basically on HL2/portal and doom 3 (so two completely different engines) i've been getting extremely annoying bouts of slowdown, where framerate plummets to something like 3-4 fps, for periods of 30-60 seconds. this happens regularly every 5-10 mins or so, regardless of the type of area i'm in, and continues even when i escape to the menu and move the mouse around. after a while it just snaps back to normal speed as if nothing happened

now my comp isn't exactly great, but it was decent enough in 2008 when i bought it and i managed HL2, both episodes & portal back then without a hitch, but now it isn't having any of it, despite me not making any hardware changes since then.

i'm wondering if something could be knackered... gfx card, memory, cpu.. but thought i'd throw the problem out here to see if anyone's heard of it before and might be able to narrow down the possible causes! 

could be a heat issue? If something is overheating it will throttle itself (cpu,gfx card) in order to not explode :) Check your fans etc to see if they are spinning freely.

If its not that, then perhaps a rogue process in windows that routinely hogs the cpu for something every few minutes, could by spyware or a legit program, keep an eye on task manager while the game is running and see if any other apps sudden rise to 100% cpu usage. 

Does it do it for newer games? HL2 and D3 shouldn't be that graphic intensive. My first guess would be check it's not overheating. Get a little program that checks temperatures. 

Cleaned out all that dust? You'd be surprised at how much of an improvement that makes, all that stuff clogging up the heatsink/fans and any vents. Can really turn up the heat. Otherwise, just ignore me.

Few years back, this never occured to me for some reason and upon actually checking and doing a thorough clean made a huge difference.

'tis the only suggestion I have.