So one of my family members comes to me with this question... he has money to blow and wants to upgrade his alienware computer so these were the two options he was looking at... I told him he's already set up nicely so save the money but he insists on upgrading so can anyone provide advice on which one to go with? CPU or Graphics?
Quote:
my alienware has a core-2 duo 2.67GHz E6700 4M Cache 1066MH CPU and (2) EVGA NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GTX 768MB PCI-E GPU's
i looked up the cost of upgrading to either (2) 768MB nvidia geforce 8800 Ultra Over clocked at $729.99 each or an intel core 2 duo extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8 cache 1333MHz FSB at something around $1400
im not sure how much of an upgrade the quad core will give me over my dual core for my purposes and isnt AMD coming out with a quad core thats supposed to be faster than the Intel?
So what's his best plan of action?
Does he mean to get a 4-card SLI Setup? O_o
I'd say what you did... save up the money, he'll get a marginal upgrade if he's upgrading from 2 768mb cards to 2 slightly better 768mb cards, but he'll waste $1500 to get that marginal upgrade. Quad core sounds pretty sexy... but does he really need it at this point? I would doubt it, though I'd guess that would be a better upgrade... unless once again it's a 4x SLI setup... but then again none of those is really worth it, just think of those new Vista Computer Scores or whatever they're called. They rate your computer based on its worst part, so he can have a quad core processor and 2 768mb cards, but if he has 128mb of ram, his computer is going to run like shit no matter what he does. Rather than blow all his money on one part, maybe he should upgrade everything a little bit. Or once again, save his money.
buy a ubah high powered receiver and speakers...instead.
was a good call for me when I went from "little crap plastic speakers" to "zomgz wtf overkill dj equipment". Its been several years on the dj mode but I'll say this was a major noticeable enhancement, more so then a simple cpu upgrade or video card to play 1 game for 1 year before replacing.
Worth the several grand.
*pets his little crap plastic speakers*
8800 Ultra's are overpriced. I can't think of a game on the
planet ( Outside of Crysis ) that MIGHT take advantage of a
quad core processor.
Bad news though, even WITH a Quad core AND a pair of 8800
ultras, he still won't get 60 fps with all the graphics
maxed in that game. Which is why. . .
he should save it ( for now ) and wait a bit. I read a
rumor today somewhere Nvidia is about to announce the 9
series cards. So you know what that means. . .
PRICE DROP !
Tell em to be smart, be patient and he'll end up with a
better system soon enough and spend half the cash.
-Daye
the new intel chip the penryn is gonna be so nice. just wait for that chip
