Upgrade advice

Faladu said:

I am hoping to have my wife's PC survive long enough for the i7-950s to drop to $300ish range, where they aint atm, but that's just me. :)

I certainly hope to see that soon!

Yes, the video card slot version, on the -16 slot doesn't matter, the 2.0 is backward compatible, just won't be at it's max possible speeds, talking around 10% difference at most.

Yeah, it would be nice but the 930 I am sure is huge upgrade for me, although my system as is runs great, my wife will be more than pleased, though the 5850 stays with me.

Darician said:

As best I understood it, I thought PCIe 2.0 slots were backwards compatible with PCIe 1.x cards, isn't that the case?

As far as CPUs, I've thought about AMD but every time I mull over the option, I keep thinking I'm going to regret it as opposed to going with an Intel CPU. I'm upgrading this current machine for some light gaming but mostly media (audio/video) and some light video editing; the plan is eventually to take this current machine and use it as a secondary machine as I would build a brand new Core i7 machine as the main box and keep this older machine as a secondary.

And NTFS, what a coincidence, two or three of my colleagues are like you and have only built AMD PCs. Much like you, I'm biased as well except I've only built Intel PCs.

I'd built a new PC, and use the old one as a home server, although that Pentium sucks juice. Compatibility maybe, performance will suffer.

Trust me, if I had the money, I would build a completely new PC but I don't right now so I want to do a stopgap upgrade as again, then Pentium D is really showing its age and has become very underperforming by today's standards. At the time I purchased it, it was fine and smoked a lot of PCs but now, the only thing it can smoke is maybe a steak.

Faladu said:

Whose looking for cheap, I am looking for balance, I spent hours looking at reviews and other sites reviews of hardware, that X3 445 is excellent for a typical user, not us 3d gaming addicted chuckleheads.

i7s supposedly are superior to the AMDs right now. i7s get rather confusing, 1156 i7s and 1366 i7s are not created equal, and how important is TDP to you, the techie babble never ends.

I am hoping to have my wife's PC survive long enough for the i7-950s to drop to $300ish range, where they aint atm, but that's just me. :)

Maybe, but have you tried encoding a few hundred DVD's with x264? A 160min film takes around 7-8 hours on a 965. Size is reduced down by 70% and the quality is indistinguishable, but every minute counts. 5.1 channel audio included muxed into matroska.

Darician said:

Trust me, if I had the money, I would build a completely new PC but I don't right now so I want to do a stopgap upgrade as again, then Pentium D is really showing its age and has become very underperforming by today's standards. At the time I purchased it, it was fine and smoked a lot of PCs but now, the only thing it can smoke is maybe a steak.

Stopgap? Athlon x2 250 for less than the price of a good steak outside and a 785G mobo.

lol @ LGA 775 is obsolete. My quad core will be ahead of its time for another 5 years, It still over clocks to 3.6 ghz .

jchase520 said:

lol @ LGA 775 is obsolete. My quad core will be ahead of its time for another 5 years, It still over clocks to 3.6 ghz .

3.6GHz? My 965 runs 3.4GHz @ stock and can push 4GHz+, that LGA775 isn't even a native quad, its dual stuck together, old architecture.

The difference is I've had mine for about 5 years already with out having to upgrade

I must have missed where the OP mentioned using the PC for video encoding, I do none of that.
On a budget, I stand by what I recommended.
I could go even lower tier than that stuff, but keeping an eye out for fair performance vs the $ required to procure said upgrades is my method.

yup j, that rig of yours should be fine for most people STILL.
You sure that's 5 years ago? :)

My previous video card is the 8800-GTS 512 it just so happens. Sitting idle in a drawer at the moment waiting for the 1st string QB to break a leg or something.

Yeah my Vic-20 is obsolete! I will give a nod to that one.