An0TherXnUMber

hey guys, (i apologize in advance for being a n00b) late november 2007 i, with the help of a friend, built my first rig, It runs half life 2, oblivion, crysis, and far cry 2 all on pretty high settings, well far cry 2 bogs occasionaly lol but. here are the specs.


Motherboard: ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E6750

Graphics card: PNY XLR8 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported

Power Supply: ePOWER EP-520XP-C1B 520W ATX12V Power Supply

Ram: pqi TURBO 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive



Now, as you can tell its a bit outdated.. haha how did that happen so fast.. anyways, I have been wanting to upgrade, I was planning on maybe getting an Nvidia 9 series G-card or going SLI, but this time i dont have the help of that friend, so i wanted some other opinions as to what you guys think needs upgrading most, and i have some other questions

Can someone inform me more about HDD's mine which is 7200 RPM, i was wondering per say how much RPM's effect gaming performance etc

Could i run Vista (well)?

To add Ram do they need to be the exact same models and manufacture?

SLI-ing 2 of my cards VS. New 9 series (or other) card ??


Answering any of my questions would be a huge help, thanks alot guys

wrench97

There isn't a lot of difference between the 8800GTS and a 9800GTX, the 8800 is still a decent card

I think the weak link in your set up is the power supply For a GTS/GTX card I always use 700w or higher in a quality unit (see the power supply link in my signature) to handle peak loads and run cool.

In order to SLI I think you'll find you will need a 850w PSU and a matching 8800GTS the card will be hard to find now and expensive when you do unless you find a good used one but if you are using smaler then about a 26" monitor you shouldn't need it as at smaller screen sizes/resolutions SLI can actually slow frame rates.

A ram upgrad would be beneficial to you I prefer using 2 sticks in those boards over 4 sticks so I would say go with 2, 2Gig sticks Something like this> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227269

The other thing I would do is upgrade the power supply To something like this> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817341011

If you are using the stock CPU cooler upgrade it to one of these> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118019

And then overclock the Cpu to about 3.2Ghz.

Also have you check the temps on your video card and CPU lately?

krisb

wrench made some great suggestions. Your HDD is a good one. 7200rpm is good so i would say to stick with it and focus on your PSU and RAM for now. I am wondering though what case you are using.