[Upgrade] Time for some new parts.

[a5hm]

Hi it's time for me to be upgrading my pc. I am looking to upgrade the following components

* Ram
*Motherboard
*Hard Drive(s)

I would like to keep my AMD cpu as it seems to meet criteria of the games i play, My graphics card is running smooth and does ok for it's self for the time being, But this will be upgraded to a 6870 in time to come. I would also like to stay on the AMD side of hardware.

The problem is i don't know what i should look for in a motherboard. Also the same with ram, with boards i've looked at and ram ranging from 1666mhz the MOBO requires OCing.

Anyhow i would really appreciate any help in trying to find these parts as my main concern is Battlefield 3, it ran perfect on high but i just wanna give it the extra boost to ultra. I'm hopefully trying to keep a price range of £100-£150. Thank you for reading and any help concerning.

 

[Maguscreed]

There is no system that will run bf3 perfectly on ultra.
It runs fine on high on my own system which is terribly outdated. (minus a somewhat recently upgraded graphics card)

I have never heard of something 'requiring overclocking' such a thing would be absolutely ridiculous.

Some things that might be useful in getting suggestions though.
What is more important for your hard drives, speed or storage space?


My honest opinion is you should just keep the ram you have for now, or just replace with 8 gigs of the same.
Your biggest hold up is you are using a 32inch display.
This is going to make graphics all the more picky.
I personally have access to a 42inch display but actually use my little 24 inch asus as it seems to render cleaner.

 

[badger906]

how would a 32" 1080p display differ from a 24" 1080p display?

 

[Maguscreed]

Size of the pixels primarily.

 

[badger906]

Surley a smaller display wth the same resolution would be more gpu intensive as it has to pack the same amount of detail into smaller pixels.

 

[stormy13]

Just used these on mine (actually the EVO version, which I can't find in the UK at the moment),

Asus M5A97 PRO 970 AM3 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard | Ebuyer.com

Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz HyperX Blu Memory.. | Ebuyer.com

and have been very happy with it so far.

 

[Corazon]

Surley a smaller display wth the same resolution would be more gpu intensive as it has to pack the same amount of detail into smaller pixels.

:shock: Tell me you didn't just say that...

If anything, a smaller display would tend to use a lower resolution, thus less pixels and less work for the videocard. But then, with today's astronomical fillrates it doesn't seem to make much difference anymore except with extremely demanding games...

 

[Beta]

Your systems not that bad. I would go out and buy a MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III and unlock it to a R6970. Keep everything else the same.

Newegg.com - MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

Unlocking

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition Unlocking - Unlocking Guide

AMD Radeon HD 6950 to HD 6970 Mod | techPowerUp

 

[linnemeyerhere]

I like this MSI mobo it will last many component upgrades.
MSI 990FXA-GD80 AMD 9 Series AM3+ Motherboard - ATX, Socket AM3+, AMD 990FX Chipset, 2133MHz DDR3 (O.C.), SATA 6.0 Gbs, RAID, 8-CH Audio, Gigabit LAN, SuperSpeed USB 3.0, SLICrossFireX Ready at TigerDirect
Corsair ram....how can you go wrong?
Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9 Vengeance 8GB PC15000 DDR3 RAM - 1866MHz, 2x4096MB, Non-ECC, Unbuffered at TigerDirect

 

[Beta]

.The problem is i don't know what i should look for in a motherboard. Also the same with ram, with boards i've looked at and ram ranging from 1666mhz the MOBO requires OCing.QUOTE]

All that means it the CPU on supports 1333MHz ram speed. This means that to run you ram at 1600MHz you will need to overclock the Bus to reach that speed.

 

[a5hm]

Thats what i meant beta! Thanks for the more crisp explanation. Also stormy i like the motherboard and ram you picked out. Great price range and good brands. I think i'll definatley be going with those 2. Now i'm going to look around for a good hard drive. I'd primarily be going for speed over storage. But would like a mixture of both. Anyway Thanks for the info and suggestions so far. They are really appreciated.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Crucial CT064M4SSD2 m4 2.5 Solid State Drive - 64GB, SATA 6Gbs at TigerDirect

 

[Maguscreed]

to revisit what I said earlier. The idea is simply this.
a 40 inch 1080p display and a 24 inch 1080p display have an identical number of pixels.
It's much more noticeable on the larger display especially since people are commonly only 2 feet or so from their monitor at a computer desk.

I personally can't for the life of me figure out why people use enormous displays. When they are right in their face. It makes sense when the display is across the room but this is hardly ever the case.