What to upgrade to?

[J1NG]

Hey guys, LOOONG time.

Just wondering if you guys can give me a quick heads up on current technologies and what's good to upgrade to and whatnot. Already looking into something like Evildead666's thread. Good reads.

Right, thinking of going all mental (nearly) with what I wanna get like 5 years ago, and just watch as things go by. As in, buy the latest and greatest and just sit another 5 years.

Current get-go is a dual Opteron getup (original 240 series at 1.4ghz) with the K8W (agp) 4GB DDR400 and a X850. And plenty of HD space already.

Used that thing for everything, server, website, development, gaming, video editing, database management, 3D modelling, the works.

What irked me into wanting to upgrade now, is some gaming slow down, and lack of USB2 or High Speed USB, and anything to really push it any further in graphics or CPU level, not without a huge price tag, to which a new system can come from.

So anything anyone can recommend?

Don't mind switching back to Intel, or sticking with AMD. But wanna get people's feel on what's worthy of getting. Thinking at least 8GB RAM (DDR2 or DDR3), and def Quad-Core, but which one? And also, which ones are Dual CPU capable too. (Always was a powermonger )

General Spec in head:
Quad-Core (x2?)
8GB RAM
I-RAM SATA Drives at 4GB (x2?)
SLI/X-Fire Solution
Many GB/TB space

Oh, and any new standards being released soon? Got caught in the AGP/PCI and PCIe changeover back 5 years ago, don't really wanna be caught in that again.

Great to see everyone again!

J1NG

[Marshmallowman]

Can you just upgrade to a pair of dual core opteron?

[UtwigMU]

Unless building on a budget, Intel is the way to go currently.
- I guess your case is long enough already for the new über long graphic boards, so reuse it unless you want to keep current setup. Otherwise Chieftec LBX is an option. I will be reusing case for upgrade so I haven't researched cases much.
- PSU you want 6+8 pin power connector for each videocard. Corsair (Rebranded Seasonic TX750 for SLI, VX550 for single card)
- Motherboard: If you want SLI you need nVidia 790 chipset. If you want crossfire you can go Intel P35: older, lacks PCIe 2.0 and 2 16x slots, a lot cheaper runs as well as X48 which supports 2 16-lane slots but currently there's no benchmark benefits (Think AGP 4x vs 8x). Your board will be obsolete next year when when Nehalem comes out. I'd buy good mature P35 board.
- Memory: DDR2, DDR3 costs too much and there's price premium, 8GB is the way to go
- Crossfire and SLI are mutually exclusive so you have to decide between nVidia and ATI. It works much better than it used to but still there are games where SLI performs as single card. If you play mainstream shooters on big monitor, go SLI or Crossfire with top cards. Otherwise generally single high end card is better than two midrange cards.
- Intel Q9450 is the sweet spot currently.
- nVidia should have new cards out in couple of months but initial reports say yields are not as good as expected (clock, performance). 9600GT and 8600GT are sweet spot now, the 9800GX2 is dual GPU solution. They're better than 3850 and 3870 from ATI.
See GPU price/performance article on Techreport
- HDD Get WD Velociraptor for boot drive and couple of TB drives for storage. You will also need to get SATA optical drives since current intel chipsets lack PATA. Get motherboard with 6-8 SATA ports.

You could also upgrade your Opterons and get AGP AMD3850 and wait for Nehalem next year.

If you want dual socket machine, you'll need Xeons with FBDIMMS, this gets über expensive very quickly and there are hardly any apps that scale well from 4 to 8 cores.

[Mehen]

Nehalem should be out this year. They say second half.

New socket and everything. If you don't mind waiting another 6 months or so, then definitely do it.

By that time you will be looking at:
Nvidia GTX 280 (aka GT200 or previously 9900GTX) or the HD4870 (R700). Or respins of these GPUs.
Nehalem Quadcore - maybe even Octocore
Nehalem Socket#### Motherboard - possibly supporting Octocore+
USB3.0? Probably not yet.
Cheaper DDR3 - which you will definitely want. It is already starting to really pull ahead of DDR2 performance-wise. Triple Channel with integrated memory controller. boo ya!
Maybe some competition for the WD Velociraptor - maybe even cheaper SSD. There are some 64GB drives for just over $1k right now.

edit: 6 core is a very likely possibility.

[Mehen]

If you want to upgrade now:

Q9450 or Q6600
X48 board for Crossfire or single card - either DDR2 or DDR3.
Whatever the newest NV chipset/motherboard is for SLI.
(I like ASUS or Gigabyte for either)
4-8 GB of RAM. Keep in mind the maximum is 2gb right now. For 8GB you'd have to go 4x2GB.
9800GTX (up to Tri-SLI), 9800GX2 (supports 2-SLI - 4 GPU's), or HD3870X2 (supports Crossfire - 4xGPU's).
IMO the current ATI/AMD cards suck. Check hardOCP for reviews. But having a crossfire board opens up the option for the R700 based GPU's, which are supposed to be killer.
WD or Seagate for storage, 500/750/1000 are all reasonably priced.

[J1NG]

Thanks for the tips so far.

MMM:

Unfortunately, the cost of getting two Dual-Core 940 chips (single core high speed ones no longer available at all, certainly not retail, not at reasonable price and not the early steppings either), currently take it to £150 each. Which is £300 already, and really only a stop gap solution should it even work, as the K8W motherboard is a very early revision, and does not officially support later CPU revision steppings at all (so there's the risk they won't even work, or kill the current system from the get go). Throw in the need for a proper USB2/High Speed Card, and a HD3850 AGP, and we take it close to £500. Not really a desirable situation. Hence the need to ask what's good to aim for.

Mehen: UtwigMU:

Sounds like the single CPU Intel solution is probably most what I'm after, as I can't even find any Opteron Quad Core's in the UK at the moment, and there's no Dual CPU Opteron motherboard I know of that has PCIe 2.0 available either, or X-Fire possible, SLI yes, X-Fire no. Not anything in a reasonable price range anyway.

USB3.0 from what I've read seems to be slightly going back to the 1.0 stages, probably ignorable for now. 1394/a/b and USB2.0 High Speed is probably what I need more for everyday use now, so that being fitted on a motherboard already would be ideal.

OK, I guess the new setup is starting to look as follows:

Q9450 (Relatively cheap in UK right now): £230 odd
4x2GB (8GB) DDR2/3 (Is there that big a performance difference between the setups with the above CPU?) Upto £380 for DDR3 (Seems reasonable)
X-Fire Board (Wanna try those R700's ) Upto £220 (Looks like it's gonna be an Asus P5E3 Premium/WiFi-AP @n)
Any mid-range graphics card for now (depends on price here as it's not a permanent card) HD3850/70? £120

Just under £1000 which isn't bad.

Only real question is would the new Nehalem CPU + RAM performance really be that great a difference from this set up to wait for 6 months? Since the only times I might want that extra "oomph" would be use of databases, web server usage and possibly 3D modelling, I doubt gaming would really need it. If the difference is really that great, I would definately consider holding it off. But the current setup price is very reasonable, and looks like it can stave off jumping to the bleeding edge like I did 5 years ago in 6 months time, and missed an important leap in technology. There were many minor technical changes as it was first edition of the Opteron (especially for the then Single to Dual Core changes), and of course, the AGP/PCI to PCIe1.0 (and current PCIe 1.0 to 2.0) so going with second revision stuff these days, safer for upgrade routes I think.

But still, the key question is, is that jump in 6 months time really that big? Or can I get away with it with the setup I'm looking at now? It looks like so to me. But want everyone elses oppinion, since I've sort of dropped out of the tech loop a little.

Thanks all.

J1NG

[Mehen]

They should be quite a bit more powerful. This is a big architecture change, like going from the Presler (Pentium D) to the Core2. Whether or not there will be that big of a performance gap is yet to be seen.
That said, the current Quadcores are insanely powerful - total overkill for most of what's out there.

Videocards - for budget - 9600GT/8800GT or 3850/70. I like the NV ones, but it really depends what you need it for. The NV ones will have the edge in gaming, the ATI/AMD in HD/TV type stuff.

So, yes, you can get away with the "whats out now" setup.

[Mehen]

The Wiki article on Nehalem is pretty good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_%28microarchitecture%29

[J1NG]

Damnit! Just noticed that the upgrade path is dead after the current Core 2 set, so looks like I'll have to hold off for 6 months actually. I'll see if I can get any cheap second hand parts for the K8W for now until then. Otherwise, I'll be doing what I did 5 years ago and stuck with no upgrade path.

Thanks all. Watch this space for the Nehalem setup when it arrives!

J1NG

[Wulfman]

I'll be doing what I did 5 years ago and stuck with no upgrade path.

reading your first post it seems as if that didn't bother you last time.

mfg
wulfman

[J1NG]

Well, I was hoping to pull the old girl a little further along originally (making the old girl run 7-8 years instead of just the 5; yes, I'm mean... with money ). I'm seeing if I can locate some Dual-Core's now. Which should just about give another 2 years odd (Just found some second hand and some sale 2x280 Opteron CPU's at less than £300 for the total upgrade). Which was the original plan back then, just that the needed revision change on motherboards for the Dual Core's caught me (everyone) off guard.

You make a VERY good point Wulfman, it's not really a major bother back then, but back then I had more "unlimited" funds to build a system with.

Looking at pricing now of all options for all solutions available to me.

Cheap parts for current setup (£300; if I'm lucky; probably try one first to see if it works)
Setup being looked at now (£1000 odd; great jump ahead for gaming, but seems to be a dead end in 6 months time rather than 5 years time)
Projected prices for the new lot in 6 months (£1600+probably if not more)

Seeing which one's most economical and a good enough starting stage to repeat 5 years ago again (looks like the new Intel in 6 months time). I have funds, but not quite as "unlimited" as before, hence the greater scrutiny.

J1NG

[UtwigMU]

1000 quid is way overkill for a rig these days. Prices have fallen. Currently mainstram desktops cost 400€ slap in 9600GT and you have good gaming rig, decent laptops cost 700€ (business grade, discrete graphics).

X48 chipset and DDR3 are of no benefit and you'll be stuck with board when Nehalem comes out. When you'll need DDR3 it will be same price or cheaper than DDR2.

Here's my wishlist, don't know if I'll build it, if I do it will be step by step.
Reuse case
79€ Corsair 550VX
101€ Asus P5K Pro
332€ Q9450
168€ 8GB Corsair PC800 (4x2)
175€ Asus 8800GT
240€ WD Velociraptor
46€ 2xNEC SATA DVD burner
TOTAL 1062€ or 845 quid, probably less since VAT here is 20%

[Evildead666]

I was aiming to get one of the P5K boards, but they don't sell them here anymore.
They have the DDR3 versions out tho, replacing them...

I'd personally wait 6-12months and get Nehalem, the DDR3 will be cheaper, and a lot faster, lower latencies...

The only reason I built a PC now was because i was given the CPU, and just HAD to build a PC around it...

[Mehen]

I was aiming to get one of the P5K boards, but they don't sell them here anymore.
They have the DDR3 versions out tho, replacing them...

I'd personally wait 6-12months and get Nehalem, the DDR3 will be cheaper, and a lot faster, lower latencies...

The only reason I built a PC now was because i was given the CPU, and just HAD to build a PC around it...

I built one now because I actually have cashflow during the summer - and I needed to play Supreme Commander!