Ishank

My motherboard and ram sucks. So i want to upgrade it only if I will get huge performance increase. You guys can see my system specs. I want to know that upgrading motherboard to P45 or x48 chipset will help me with a DDR3 ram at 1066MHz. I am a mainstream gamer so tell about performance in latest games like crysis 2 and bullet storm. Thanks in advance.

Judas

to take full advantage of it... you'd have to upgrade your cpu as well...

to find a DDR3 compliant motherboard that'll fit your cpu... you'd like see while some improvement... but not much to make it worthwhile...

I'd say stick with what you go.. it's not entirely bad or slow.... save your cash for a more significant upgrade like moving to the intel i5 with a socket 1155 board (at which point you'd want to try and get your hands on 2x4gb DDR3 1600mhz sticks of ram)

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Ishank

Thanks Judas.

mkk

On the other hand a relatively small/inexpensive SSD as a system drive would pay off well for that system.

Judas

Actually i'm finding that SSD's for older systems are significantly bottlenecked..

to the point of making the system sata controllers start coughing on the excessive speed of the drives.

Unless of course you get the pci-ex card to suit ......

It's quite funny and irritating at the same time.. but the intel pentium 4 machine i had here with a SiS chipset would see the drive there.. but the performance would be stuttery..... slow at times compared to a generic sata drive..

an older via chipset typically worked.. but while performing better on throughput... just wasn't really much of a big advantage.. cutting the SSD's performance by a 1/4 (outperforming the sis chipset mind you)....

It's kinda like putting a giagantic engine under the hood of a car.... but in the end.... using a peice of string to drive your tires..... meaning the engine basically doesn't have a chance to turn over or else things would break...

The only chipsets that tend to work without a hitch but at 1/2 or 1/3 the speed of what hte SSD is capable of seems to be older intel ICH chipset capable of sata.... or some of the "newer" nforce/ati and via/sis chipsets...

I've found Intels Chipset for sata are the best for onboard solutions..

The best performing ones are ICH9R and ICH10R... 10R being the best.

I'd save money that would cost to buy a SDD.. and funnel it into a newer machine.

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A Desire to Game

Correct on all counts Judas. You are also running 32 bit Win 7 from your sig so I would suggest when you do make the leap for a substantial upgrade that you go 64 bit as well.

Be happy with your system, its a little aged but I'm sure it still scoots in the mean time. I'm certain all of your other components (case, PSU, GPU, HDD, etc) will still be good to transfer over when you are ready to switch out the RAM, CPU, and Mobo.

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Three is my new favorite number. (SATA III, USB 3.0, and triple channel memory)

Fantasma

I think that upgrading mobo and memory won´t improve your performance significantly, especially in games. I think it's better to save for a future overall upgrade. Also, I think that your system is more or less balanced now.

Ishank

If I buy an SSD and install my OS and games on it, will it increase my FPS in games? I know that it will decrease my load time.

Jac

SSD drives will make no difference to your FPS in games.

Judas

as i stated above.. getting an SSD for that system while should make some improvements in overall loading times of windows and some games..... in terms of performance..... not really..

the best it can do is either raise your low/average FPS because it's better and faster at loading graphic data to the ram/video card which doesn't dog your performance by making the video/ram wait for the information (causing a FPS drop in the process)...

but as i mentioned.. it could actually present issues rather then resolve some.

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A Desire to Game

An SSD will make the computer feel snappier overall in Windows and apps but gaming is not going to see a whole lot of benefits other than load times.

Why does your RAM and Motherboard suck? If you are a gamer your CPU and GPU are your limiting factors for frames per second. DDR3 RAM vs DDR2 is not going to give you huge increases in frames (maybe a few). Not to mention, when you game at high resolutions like 1920x1080 with AA/AF on, the GPU 9 times out of 10 becomes the bottleneck (seldomly CPU).

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Tipstaff

Food for thought:

Any system I've built around a P45 or X48 chipset, I've had issues with ALL of them. One thing in particular is that they can be very, VERY picky when it comes to what RAM is on them, and by this I mean specific manufacturers, timings, and speed. Some won't run above 1066mhz, hell, even 800mhz. Some will not soft boot or restart (they need to be shut down, then restarted). Sometimes I've had to swap out RAM a half dozen times until I found one that was stable on a specific board (usually Kingstons cheap stuff). It's just not worth it. Believe me, save up your money, and replace the motherboard, RAM, and CPU at the same time.

Reality is, to get the parts you need to upgrade just your system you could be looking at $200 (P45) - $300 (X48), and that is IF you can find a P45/X48 board (remember, these are now 2 generations old). Tack on another $50 for 4GB of DDR3 (and that's the 1066mhz Kingston), and you're hitting $250-$350. It's more cost effective for you to upgrade to a newer format, which you should get 2-3 years or more out of rather than trying to upgrade something you might only get another year out of before you're at this point again anyways.

As a suggestion, you could go with something like this:
Intel i5-2500k CPU (Quad Core, unlocked)
Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 motherboard (mid-priced board, Asus is more expensive, MSI being cheaper)
Kingston HyperX Blue 4GB DDR3 kit (2x2GB, DDR3-1600mhz)
Total cost = $400 (roughly, +- depending on what board/RAM you get)

You could also recoup some money by trying to sell off your old parts, or even build a cheap system out of those old parts, and sell that off or keep it as a second system.

The key here is that you will get a huge leap in performance from the newer CPU, which also requires less power to run, you should notice an increase in performance from you video card (which is CPU bound, so the faster the CPU the better the video card performs), plus the faster RAM, memory controller being in the CPU, board layout, and faster chipset... overall you should see your whole systems speed/performance go up too.

Just something to think about.

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blibbax

Your motherboard and RAM are both fine, and certainly not a significant bottlekneck in that system.

If you want to upgrade that system, the best upgrade you can do is one that's free. Switch to 64 bit Windows.

Regardless of Judas's musings about installing SSDs on ancient systems, your system is far from ancient, so an SSD would probably also be a decent upgrade. You could put your OS and some of your most demanding regularly used applications on it for faster loading times and general usage. It won't increase your FPS in games, but then upgrading your RAM or Motherboard would have very little impact in that area too.

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Ishank

I don't want to upgrade my whole rig as TIPSTAFF said.....Now I am going to buy Cooler master hyper tx3 cooler for my processor.......So can I overclock my CPU with my current motherboard?

blibbax

Yes, I see no reason why not, providing that your case is well cooled and you are careful.

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Ishank

My motherboard is intel dg43nb and I have heard that It's not good for overclocking. Since i don't know too much about overclocking I have checked articles over the net. I have seen that BIOS is being used for overclocking CPU. But there is no option for overclocking in my board's BIOS. I have also updated my BIOS, but there is still no option for overclocking. WHY?

blibbax

Are you sure? What about options to alter the FSB (default should be 333 or 1333). You may need to enter some sort of "manual frequency selection" mode first - I had a board like that once.

Intel make quite good motherboards for their own chipsets, though I wouldn't be surprised to see a few "enthusiast" options disabled.

Did you buy the motherboard, or did it come as part of a PC?

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Ishank

I have assembled myself so I have buy it separately. Now I am going to check my BIOS again.

Ishank

Ya I checked. There's nothing. I can only change RAM voltages and can set my ram speed to 667 or 800mhz

blibbax

How unusual

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synthesis204

I would save up money and get a Sandybridge or Ivybridge rig. They're looking to thrash Gulftown () and the other current high-end processors. You would notice an exponential increase in performance and at a very good price point.

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Neshi

There is really no need to upgrade that system unless you're gonna include cpu and gpu. I know the feeling that you just want to change hardware... but in the end with just a mobo and ram... not worth it.

Just keep at it and when you've saved enough to do a system overhaul, go for it! Like Sythesis said, Sandy or Ivybridge would be the way to go.

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Tipstaff

Never said the whole rig. You mentioned upgrading 2 components, the RAM and motherboard, for your existing CPU, which IMO, would give you very little gain. What I proposed was to upgrade 3 components to current gen, with the CPU being the only real extra money added to what you were already looking for advice on. Those 3 components would give you a faster CPU (even more so as it has Turbo, and even more so since it's the unlocked version which is primed for overclocking), and overall your whole system would run faster.

And no.. the Intel DG43NB has no overclock features. That board is built for stability at a low cost, not overclocking. Intel leaves that to their Extreme line, or to other manufacturers. Sorry.

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