Upgrade on system

[cmolson]

Hey guys I would like to spruce up the old computer a bit. What would you recommend I change/add?

Current System:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13ghz @ 3.6ghz with scythe ninja
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
2 x 1GB Team xteem DDR2 800
2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800
2 x ATI x1950 pro 256mb Crossfire
1 x 150Gb WD Raptor
2 x 500GB WD SATA
2 x 320Gb Seagate
1 x 300Gb unknown
1 x DVD Burner
550 Watt Psu

I find crossfire is utterly useless, especially since it is unsupported in linux. I found it barely made any difference in windows, and in some games made it slower. So I was thinking maybe upgrade the old video card to a 8800, or perhaps wait until the 9800 come out.

I was also contemplating getting a quad core q6600 and sell my dual core.

Another crazy idea that popped into my head was get 8gb ram.

Is water cooling even worthwhile thinking about for my system? I have an Antec P180 case and it has excellent cooling. Water cooling would end up being more of a hobby type thing rather than a useful addition I assume.

Lastly I was thinking I should get an actual soundcard, right now I am using the onboard HD audio. I have a set of logitech 5.1 speakers, but I could also hookup my surround sound system via coax, or optical.


Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[Poizen22]

pick yourself up a 8800gts cheap from ncix. for like 270$, and try and sell ur e6400 and try to get a q6600, its a monster chip.

 

[almightyobo]

First of all how much are you wanting to spend?


Def upgrade the graphics card

You could also get a quad processor

8GB of RAM is generally underutilized by the average user


What do you use this for mostly? Gaming, photo/video editing, general use?

 

[cmolson]

Sounds like a plan, regarding the video card and cpu.

I use my computer for gaming, as a media center (playback of HD videos). I played crysis on this machine, but I had to set most settings to low. I do some light programming in C. I convert videos sometimes from xvid to DVD as well.

I agree 8gb is overkill i bet, usually my computer sits around 40% ram usage and pretty much never hits anything above 85%.


Nvidia also has fairly good drivers for linux right now which is a bonus.

When I was using Vista a few months back with my two x1950s in crossfire I had to disable crossfire so that I could output to my monitor and tv at the same time....and enabling/disabling that was really buggy.

 

[Poizen22]

ur at 40% ram usage with 4gb, and they say linux is memory efficient omg i sit at like 15% on 2gb on windows xp, and i havent formated since december.

 

[cmolson]

The 40% ram usage was with windows vista. Currently with linux it is using 25% for the system and all my open apps (firefox, compiz, deluge torrent and more..) 56% is being cached for programs I use frequently.

I haven't checked the memory usage in XP but I expect it to be much lower.

I also did a 'tweak' to disable the hard drive swap file so it may be using more ram for that...

 

[tbsk8er04]

I personally think all you need to upgrade is your graphics card, get a evga graphics card preferably in the higher 8 series.