Time for me to upgrade my PC?

[Hefemeister]

nope it is a new socket. LGA 1366 vs your 775 socket on your board.

 

[King$nake]

ok thanks hefemesiter. Im really interested in this i7 920 chip. This is the first Ive heard of it (been out of the loop for awhile).

What motherboard would compliment this chip nicely?

 

[Hefemeister]

Here are some. I have no experience with any of these so will not comment on them. You would have to upgrade your RAM as well. As far as I believe all of these boards use ddr3.

 

[[Judge]Iceman]

500-600 is a lot of money to spend on the current system.

What are you currently running for settings in the games? I assume they are not maxed so... Depending on what you upgrade, you might see an increase in frames/sec and load times if you continue running the games at the same settings. But with settings maxed out I'd be willing to guess it'll be a bust. The increased performance will allow for the higher settings, but the frames and load times would probably be pretty close to what you were running before with the lower settings.

With that amount of $ to spend, I would save it and start building a list of components for an i7 build. With that system you WILL see a dramatic increase.

I am jealous of you, I wish I had the cash so I could start a build like that.

 

[philbar71]

i agree with every one else go core i7

Newegg.com - Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - OCZ 3GB (3 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

 

[King$nake]

Thanks for this. If I were to purchase these 3 items and install them - would I still be handicapped my my eVGA 8800 GTS?

Also, what kind of reputation does GIGABYTE have for Motherboards? Are they better than Asus?

i agree with every one else go core i7

Newegg.com - Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - OCZ 3GB (3 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

 

[philbar71]

in some peoples opinions they are better than asus, in my opinion they are better. you would be handy capped a little by your 8800gts but the core i7 gives you plenty of head room in the future.

 

[hikaricloud]

I personally like ASUS myself, but Gigabyte has gotten better in the last few years and makes some pretty decent stuff. Also, it's a lot cheaper than the good ASUS boards, by over 100 bucks. So that's good.

It really boils down to a matter of personal preference, but that board would serve you well.

 

[King$nake]

You guys are awesome! Looks like I am going to start spending some money! I just want to be able to run Flight Simulator X flawlessly and hopefully with the i7 I can do that.

It's been awhile since I've built a PC. From a hardware perspective, I cna install things fine - but what changes will I have to make on my PC (BIOS) when I install the new Mobo and GPU? Hopefully it's pretty straightforward because I can't afford to have downtime on my PC hehe

Thanks again guys, your gettin me excited about modifying my PC!

 

[philbar71]

well getting the new board and mem you wont need to change any thing in your bios most likely upon inital boot up.