Hey i'm new to tek syndicate community(love the build series and the tek!)
Currently the PC specs I have are:
Graphics Card: XFX Radeon HD 5830 1GB
CPU: AMD Phenom 955 X4 Quad 3.2GHz
RAM: Corsair 4GB DDR3 1333 DKIT XMS3
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H
Hard drive: 500g Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm
PSU: XFX Pro 850W
Case: Casecom CS-13 Full Tower ATX
Monitors: 2x Samsung 22" Syncmasters (1680x1050)
I do alot of visual studio work and gaming (Counter-Strike Go, Dawn of war), the current setup runs well apart from the 5830 is quite a power hog and slows down quite alot now! Also I have a cheeky IDE hard drive that is been used as the primary drive that I will be getting rid of and installing Windows 8 on the new drive!
Would like to upgrade a few parts and would love some opinions on the parts I've picked. I am not trying to spend to much so any ideas for saving would be great!
Pick up a gigabyte GA 990-fxa-ud5 and a hyper 212 evo and OC that phenom 2. Also, that HDD you have picked out looks like trash, get a caviar blue at least.
Would prefer to upgrade to a AMD 8350, can't see myself overclocking much as it will do everything I need. Would this motherboard be better then the one chosen? (Asus M5A97 R2.0) Will change to a caviar blue! Just picked that HDD due to price :P Thanks!
Just been pondering what you've said and it now makes sense! Brilliant idea, great board and will allow me to save not buying a new CPU yet and allows me to get a nice cooler for overclocking :D Thanks very much!
Get a 500gb drive at least, there is almost no price difference and it's worth it, now you are chuncked on those few gigs that you don't see the 1tb world :D
The Phenom is still a very good CPU, but if you want to go 8350 + m5a970 r 2.0 I can't stop you. Btw nice GPU choice, that 660 will hold those 2 monitors, increase your gaming experience and provide you of CUDA for your editing.
The only reason I am a bit weary of the 7870 is the power consumption and only 1 DVI port plus the noise compared to the 660 gtx. Also I've heard the Nvida drivers are more stable then ATI's? But is the FPS in games and usage of desktop applicaitons much more superior on the 7870?
This is not ordinary 7870 this is 7870xt, this is a 7950 chip with less stream processors but with higher clocks, which beat 7950 on default 800MHz, so this card is WAAAAY better than 660gtx.
I had 660gtx and had to return to the store after 14 days cause BF3 would always crash after 10 minutes of gameplay thanks to the shitty Nvidias drivers...
Looks a great price with the games(Could sell the games to make it even cheaper!) I currently have 1 monitor using dvi and 1 using VGA (Uses a vga to dvi adapter on my 5830). Would I be ablet to get a dvi to hdmi convertor for the 7870 for one monitor and continue to use the vga to dvi one on the dvi port? Thanks