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I am currently running this:
Core2Quad q6600
4GB DD2
Geforce 8800 GTS
Asus P5B-E
Hard Drives, etc...

Is it worth right now building a new i5/i7 Quad system or just upgrading some of the components in this rig?

Depends on whether you're overclocking the Q6600 and how far it will go. As long as you can run it at 3+ GHz there's absolutely no reason to upgrade the proc. If you're feeling held back by your card, an AMD 5850 might be in order (anything less probably wouldn't "wow" you with the difference). At most, I'd upgrade the proc to a newer core 2 like the Q9550 and get a 5850 vid card, but honestly unless you're really feeling cheated when you play games I'd leave it alone for at least another year. Getting an i7 with a whole new mobo and RAM would be a pointless waste of money with no benefit.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Depends on whether you're overclocking the Q6600 and how far it will go. As long as you can run it at 3+ GHz there's absolutely no reason to upgrade the proc. If you're feeling held back by your card, an AMD 5850 might be in order (anything less probably wouldn't "wow" you with the difference). At most, I'd upgrade the proc to a newer core 2 like the Q9550 and get a 5850 vid card, but honestly unless you're really feeling cheated when you play games I'd leave it alone for at least another year. Getting an i7 with a whole new mobo and RAM would be a pointless waste of money with no benefit.

You rang?

AMD 5850 Radeon GPU


Cooler Master ATCS 840


Windows 7 Home Premium


Intel Core i7-860 2.8Ghz CPU


Asus P7P55D-E PRO MoBo


Antec Earthwatts 650W


4 GB Patriot DDR3 RAM


64 GB Patriot Torqx SSD for a boot disk.


Salvaged from the Mark One:
WD 500GB HDD


LG DVD-ROM/RW


Creative Xi-fi sound card...maybe

Of course, this is due to Groinstar's Lonestar's computer dying from a freak electrical incident, so he's forced to replace it.

Lonestar wrote:4 GB Patriot DDR3 RAM

With a core i7, this really should be a multipule of 3gb or so as it is tripple channel not dual channel for best perfomance.

That this motherboard has dual-channel DIMM slots and not tripple channel is probably not the best sign.

Creative Xi-fi sound card...maybe

Just say No to Creative.

Xon wrote:

Lonestar wrote:4 GB Patriot DDR3 RAM

With a core i7, this really should be a multipule of 3gb or so as it is tripple channel not dual channel for best perfomance.

That this motherboard has dual-channel DIMM slots and not tripple channel is probably not the best sign.

LGA 1156 processors do not support triple-channel memory.

Just say No to Creative.

It'll be a day long remembered when they die.

phongn wrote:

Xon wrote:

Lonestar wrote:4 GB Patriot DDR3 RAM

With a core i7, this really should be a multipule of 3gb or so as it is tripple channel not dual channel for best perfomance.

That this motherboard has dual-channel DIMM slots and not tripple channel is probably not the best sign.

LGA 1156 processors do not support triple-channel memory.

It incredibly annoying and confusing that Intel calls some of it's 1156 models Core-i7s even though they don't support QPI or triple channel memory or most of the other flagship "Nehalem" features.

I imagine it's especially annoying for people who bought a 1366 board and a 1156 Core i7 processor thinking that since the board said "core i7 compatible" it would take it.

Ugh, god damn intel's marketing.

xon wrote:Just say No to Creative.

Speaking of sound cards, what are the good ones at this point? About the only other prominent manufacturer I know of out there is ASUS, but I recall there being at least a few others.

Auzentech still has a good reputation when it comes to cards with the X-Fi Bravura being good for HTPCs and the X-Fi Forte being good for gaming. I don't think you get much benefit out of stand-alone sound cards unless you're using high-quality speakers though.

starslayer wrote:

xon wrote:Just say No to Creative.

Speaking of sound cards, what are the good ones at this point? About the only other prominent manufacturer I know of out there is ASUS, but I recall there being at least a few others.

Realtek. No seriously, just stick with the integrated sound. This isn't the 90s anymore where a low quality sound chip could make your music or games sound tinny or something. An integrated chip should accurately reproduce any sound that your computer can play. Maybe if you're using studio-level equipment and lossless files recorded straight from the sound booth then a highly trained professional could notice a difference, but for playing CDs the integrated sound is fine.

If you insist on discrete sound, there's Asus and I hear they are good.

I second Creative's suckyness. They may have the best hardware next to Azuzantech (that is superior and only relatively more expensive compared to the xi-fi stuff). I finally got my subwoofer to work under a Xonar DS.

Part of the problem is that they really pissed in the driver department. Old Augigy cards have problems under Vista.

Xon wrote: Just say No to Creative.

Didn't even bother to try to see if it worked, as my integrated sound is working fine.

The Mark One's motherboard actually came with a discrete ASUS soundcard that SUCK BALLS. Whenever an explosion went off in a game it sounded as if cats were getting raped. It was painful.

I haven't sat down with a stopwatch, but it really does seem to boot up much faster than my old one. Win7 rocks.

Xon wrote:Ugh, god damn intel's marketing.

What is worse, Intel's or nVidia's?

nVidia: "come buy this 8800GT 9600GT GT250!!"

Ok, so as my combined Christmas/Birthday present for probably the next three years, I got a new Toshiba Satellite A505 laptop. Specs below:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
System Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
System Model: Satellite A505
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.1GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3958MB RAM
Page File: 1332MB used, 6583MB available
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 310M
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 310M
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 2220 MB
Dedicated Memory: 497 MB
Shared Memory: 1723 MB

So, how does it rate?

RogueIce wrote:Ok, so as my combined Christmas/Birthday present for probably the next three years, I got a new Toshiba Satellite A505 laptop. Specs below:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
System Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
System Model: Satellite A505
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.1GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3958MB RAM
Page File: 1332MB used, 6583MB available
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 310M
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 310M
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 2220 MB
Dedicated Memory: 497 MB
Shared Memory: 1723 MB

So, how does it rate?

Laptops can't be judged just off of the processor, ram and video card. What's the screen size? How much did you pay for it? What's the battery life? How much does it weigh?

That actually looks like a pretty decent system. Online reviews favour it as a decent laptop. Toshiba is one of the better manufacturers, or so I have been told.

Zixinus wrote:Toshiba is one of the better manufacturers, or so I have been told.

Not really.

Dominus Atheos wrote:Laptops can't be judged just off of the processor, ram and video card. What's the screen size? How much did you pay for it? What's the battery life? How much does it weigh?

I sure can. The screen size is 16". As for the battery and weight, neither concern me. I don't take it around places, so it's going to be plugged in and sitting on a desk. So yeah, I am more asking if the processor, RAM and video card are good.

RogueIce wrote:

Dominus Atheos wrote:Laptops can't be judged just off of the processor, ram and video card. What's the screen size? How much did you pay for it? What's the battery life? How much does it weigh?

I sure can. The screen size is 16". As for the battery and weight, neither concern me. I don't take it around places, so it's going to be plugged in and sitting on a desk. So yeah, I am more asking if the processor, RAM and video card are good.

The video card is pretty low-end. It will play back hd movies, but won't play most modern games. 4gb ram is standard. The processor is good, although your specs say it's a quad core, which is untrue. The core i3 330m is a dual core processor.

Once again, how much did you pay for it? It would be a great laptop for $500, an average laptop for $700, and a terrible laptop for $1000.

His system is misreporting the multithreaded processor (dual-core dual-thread)

Ok. I can't hear the subwoofer again. I knew I was able to get it working when I got the card and since then, I did not change anything. Dad did the low-battery test on the sub-woofer so the thing works, the cable works and the computer is sending some kind of signal. But nothing else.

I can do the "switch center/bass output" thing in the Xonar control panel, but I don't hear so much as a whisper from the goddamn subwoofer. I tried turning FlexBass on and off, to no effect.

I figured out the problem: it's the connector that the sub-woofer receives the signal in. Goddamn.

It's not a system that I can brag about, but it gets the job done on 1280x1024 (which gets me satisfactory performance on GTA IV). Just want to share what I'd put together over the last few weeks:

Intel E5300 @ 2,6Ghz
Gigabyte G31M ES2C
2GB DDR2 (I was planning to bump it up to 4Gb but right now, frankly, I just don't see the point)
ASUS EN9800GT running a Glaciator fan (1024mb DDR3 version)

What is funny, it runs on an old 360W Chieftec PSU. I was concerned at first because Chieftecs rep has been bad lately (although when I was buying it many years ago it was supposed to be a good and reliable PSU) and it's below manufacturer's recommendation for this kind of system (which are crap anyway, but still). But after about of a month of flawless operation I decided not to spend money on a new PSU since the old one does the job just fine.

Im a gamer and I could definitely make use of a better system, but quite frankly, the jump from a single core AMD 2000XP+ with GeForce 7600 has been such a leap for me that Im still gazing in awe at some of the things at 1280x1024. Im very happy about the bang I got for the buck I spent.