Colin Levy 976130 Posted July 19, 2010 at 05:58 AM Posted July 19, 2010 at 05:58 AM I fly mostly FS2004, but sometimes I will fly FSX and hate the jaggity lines I receive while flying on VATSIM on both sims. I decided to do some upgrades, but wanted to see if they were worth it before I buy. This is what i'm keeping: -Full Thermaltake case, 700W PSU, and 1TB HD, and 3x-1gb PNY DDR2 800 RAM What I am looking to get: -ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131232 -Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036 -PNY VCGGTX260CXPB GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133270 How does this all sound? Is the DDR2 RAM to old, and should I get a DDR3 mobo and upgrade my RAM? I currently have a Intel E6300 CPU, is the E8500 a big improvement? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivan Kovacevic 920456 Posted July 19, 2010 at 06:26 AM Posted July 19, 2010 at 06:26 AM I'd definitely advise against getting an LGA775 platform today. The newer 1156 variants with Core i3 or Core i5 processors which supports DDR3 is almost exact in price, but allows you to easily upgrade later. For example, the Core i5-750 (quad core) is only about 5$ more than the E8500, but it practically has double the processor power (your FS will love you for this). I think you might also need a few bucks extra for the motherboard. About ram: Ideally, you'd want to have 2 sticks of 2GB - that gives you 4GB of RAM working in Dual Channel mode, which is basically the fastest way to have RAM running.They sell 4GB kits nowadays where two sticks are 'hand picked' and matched together to work nicely. While this won't directly improve performance visibly, it's almost guaranteed to save you time and grief setting up the timings and frequencies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Levy 976130 Posted July 19, 2010 at 01:06 PM Author Posted July 19, 2010 at 01:06 PM Thank you, I was looking at the newer i5's, but was not sure if that was the right path. So maybe get the Core i5-750 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115215) and was looking at this motherboard, the GIGABYTE GA-P55 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128425). Then keep the same GTX 260 card, and 4gb of DDR3 RAM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivan Kovacevic 920456 Posted July 19, 2010 at 02:32 PM Posted July 19, 2010 at 02:32 PM I've had two Gigabyte motherboards in the past six months - one P45 and one P55, and I was quite happy with both. Even their lowest priced models are packed with almost all the stuff one needs, really. That particular motherboard you linked to shows that it may have the 'better' CPU socket retention bracket made by Lotes, which is again a big plus given the price. And the i5-750 is, in my opinion, the best computing power per 1$ you can possibly get now. As for DDR3 ram, you could check out Mushkin memory. It's fairly good quality, and usually about 20$ cheaper than the enthusiast manufacturers such as Corsair, Kingston, GSkill or similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Levy 976130 Posted July 20, 2010 at 01:50 AM Author Posted July 20, 2010 at 01:50 AM I ordered the motherboard, cpu, video card, and ram. Thank you for the help Ivan, I really appreciate it. Always wanted to get rid of these jaggy lines in FS. Now I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivan Kovacevic 920456 Posted July 20, 2010 at 06:34 AM Posted July 20, 2010 at 06:34 AM Glad to be helpful. I think you'll be quite happy with the performance boost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Levy 976130 Posted July 23, 2010 at 02:30 PM Author Posted July 23, 2010 at 02:30 PM Ivan, I have a question, since you have had the P55 motherboard. I got everything in my case, started it up, it told me windows was having errors (don't know if that's something that happens with a new mobo/cpu), so I hit find repair, it did its thing, and didn't find any repairs, so I just reinstalled my OS at that point, loaded it up, and installed the motherboard software and updated my bios. Although, every time when I turn on my computer now, the four phase led's on the motherboard show red, orange, green, green (top to bottom) then turn off after windows loads. What does this mean? I was not able to find anywhere what it means, and nothing seems to be wrong. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivan Kovacevic 920456 Posted July 23, 2010 at 03:32 PM Posted July 23, 2010 at 03:32 PM If you got the Gigabyte board (I [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ume you did), the Phaze leds are supposed to turn off, unless you install that Dynamic Saver which turns off phases when the CPU load is low. That's totally normal and you needn't worry about it. About windows problems, it really depends which motherboard you had before. I remember a few years back, XP Repair was something I had to do every time I changed the motherboard, but lately I went from Gigabyte P45 to Gigabyte P55A, and didn't have to reinstall anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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