Official "Upgrade Help" Thread

[Miktar]

Okay tech ***s, put your hardware upgrade requests in here, instead of making a new thread every week asking "wut case/videocard/mb/hdd/weenie sud I getz".

[FEN1X]

OK, ill go first.


Would an upgrade from DDR2 667 to 800 give a significant boost?

[Lysis]

I think that would depend on the rest of your system. If the rest of your system is reletively high-end in comparison to the RAM I do believe it would bottleneck the system.

[Wesley]

OK, ill go first.


Would an upgrade from DDR2 667 to 800 give a significant boost?

Yes it definately would. Its not a significant boost, but its definately one that you will notice. Plus, the higher RAM speed you have the more information you'll be able to relay to your CPU and GPU at a faster rate. And yes, contrary to popular opinion, your memory speed actually can bottleneck your system.

[G8crasha]

I'm looking for a decent PSU for my rig. I'm looking at the CoolerMaster Extreme Power 650W PSU because it's the cheapest one I can find, and I don't really mind their products. It's got dual +12V rails, so it should be adequate when I upgrade to the new intel Core i7 chip next year.

If anybody has any suggestion regarding a PSU that falls around the R1000 mark and pushes out at least 650w, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[HolyMackerel]

How can I run my 4Gig RAM at it's full potential? It's only running at about 3Gig???

[G8crasha]

OK, ill go first.


Would an upgrade from DDR2 667 to 800 give a significant boost?

The timings are a big thing when it comes to RAM, but generally I would say yeah, you might find a slight increase in performance if you go for 800 RAM, especially if you use a 64 bit version of Windows.

I recently formatted and installed XP x64, and I have definitely seen a performance boost and I'm running 4 gigs of DDR2 800. The increase is partially attributed to Windows being a fresh install, but at least my games now have about 3.93GB available to them instead of 3.25GB.

[Chevron]

I'm looking for a decent PSU for my rig. I'm looking at the CoolerMaster Extreme Power 650W PSU because it's the cheapest one I can find, and I don't really mind their products. It's got dual +12V rails, so it should be adequate when I upgrade to the new intel Core i7 chip next year.

If anybody has any suggestion regarding a PSU that falls around the R1000 mark and pushes out at least 650w, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

What makes you so sure you need 650W? Most of the good brands give 550W in that price range.

Take2:

Corsair VX550W Power Supply - 550w Price: R 1,180

Antec NEO HE Power Supply - 550w Price: R 1,195

Corsair TX650W Power Supply - 650w Price: R 1,464

How can I run my 4Gig RAM at it's full potential? It's only running at about 3Gig???

Get a 64bit os.

[HolyMackerel]

Thanks Chevron

[Wesley]

I'm looking for a decent PSU for my rig. I'm looking at the CoolerMaster Extreme Power 650W PSU because it's the cheapest one I can find, and I don't really mind their products. It's got dual +12V rails, so it should be adequate when I upgrade to the new intel Core i7 chip next year.

If anybody has any suggestion regarding a PSU that falls around the R1000 mark and pushes out at least 650w, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

I suggest looking at Intel's recommendations for their Core i7 power requirements and comparing them with the PSU's Chevron suggested to you. He's usually right so dont worry about anything he recommends.

How can I run my 4Gig RAM at it's full potential? It's only running at about 3Gig???

You are probably running on a 32-bit version of Windows, which cant fully see or work with the full four gigs of memory. You should consider upgrading to a 64-bit Windows install to see all your memory and a really sweet performance boost.

[HolyMackerel]

You are probably running on a 32-bit version of Windows, which cant fully see or work with the full four gigs of memory. You should consider upgrading to a 64-bit Windows install to see all your memory and a really sweet performance boost.[/QUOTE]

I have windows Vista Home Premium, 64Bit. . . Could it be because this specific OS uses more RAM than XP?

[G8crasha]

How can I run my 4Gig RAM at it's full potential? It's only running at about 3Gig???

I stand to be corrected, but the reason why Windows 32 bit reserves so much RAM is for its processes. It reserves over 500MB of RAM so that it can happily puff along when the going gets tough!

[Wesley]

You are probably running on a 32-bit version of Windows, which cant fully see or work with the full four gigs of memory. You should consider upgrading to a 64-bit Windows install to see all your memory and a really sweet performance boost.

I have windows Vista Home Premium, 64Bit. . . Could it be because this specific OS uses more RAM than XP?[/QUOTE]

Yes, from the start Vista chews through more than twice the amount of memory that XP required when it was first released. But seeing as though you already have a 64-bit OS (which is weird since you still report that it doesn't see all 4gigs) I'd put it down to Vista acting strangely and still reserving memory space for its processes. It happens.

[HolyMackerel]

Okay, so at least it's normal. I was wondering what was chewing my RAM so much. Thanks for all the input guys (and girls, if there are any)

[Bazo]

Hey Guys (and girls).

Ive got a Sapphire HD3870...is it worth upgrading to any current graphic cards or should I wait untill january?

[Chevron]

Hey Guys (and girls).

Ive got a Sapphire HD3870...is it worth upgrading to any current graphic cards or should I wait untill january?

Wait for the DX11 cards dood.

[Bazo]

Awesome...any word on release date?

[Chevron]

Awesome...any word on release date?

Guessing somewhere around March. Don't quote me though.

[Wesley]

Hey Guys (and girls).

Ive got a Sapphire HD3870...is it worth upgrading to any current graphic cards or should I wait untill january?

No, dont upgrade now. In fact, save up as much as you can, because I have the sneaking suspicion that ATi has another trick up their sleeve when next year rolls in. Look out for the new DX11 cards that should be coming out then (just dont buy any budget products from Nvidia, they just did the whole rebranding thing again). I would peg the DX11 cards at a late July release, March seems a bit too close for comfort.

[Chevron]

No, dont upgrade now. In fact, save up as much as you can, because I have the sneaking suspicion that ATi has another trick up their sleeve when next year rolls in. Look out for the new DX11 cards that should be coming out then (just dont buy any budget products from Nvidia, they just did the whole rebranding thing again). I would peg the DX11 cards at a late July release, March seems a bit too close for comfort.

Yeah, you're probably right.