Worth it to upgrade Mobo+New RAM or just get DDR2?

[Meresgi]

Looking into getting some more RAM as my computer has been a little sluggish with all the multitasking I do. I have 4gb of Patriot DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) and a GA-MA785GM-US2H Mobo.
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128394)

I've noticed that DDR3 8500 RAM is the same price or even a little cheaper then DDR2 6400/8500 but to get it I would need a new mobo as well.

What are you opinions? Is it worth it in the long run to just replace the mobo now and shell out some extra cash for 8gigs of DDR3? Or just drop the 60ish bucks on 4 gigs of DDR2 and wait for prices to drop even more in the coming years? I play a lot of games on the PC, Win7 64bit, and every now and then when I have firefox open+games on 2 monitors my computer slugs a little bit here and there which is getting a little annoying.

[hagun]

Seems more cost effective to just buy extra 4GB DDR2 memory. With a new mobo, and new RAM, you are gonna end up spending double if not more than the cost of 4GB RAM. Not to mention it saves you the entire reinstall time from scratch when swapping out a new board. Then you might have to get a new CPU. Now a simple RAM issue becomes a wallet killer. Take the simple path.

[Isiolia]

Not worth it to upgrade mobo. Put money towards an SSD if you aren't already running one.

[Meresgi]

Not worth it to upgrade mobo. Put money towards an SSD if you aren't already running one.

I honestly havnt looked into a SSD. I'll check it out. Is it that noticeable of a diff if you toss your OS/Games on it?

[Isiolia]

The cost per GB makes it hard to justify putting a lot of games on one, and many games are already tuned for background loading/etc. Games aren't usually the big reason to get one. Multi-tasking, however, is. SSDs excel at access speeds - literally a fraction of HDD's. They also tend to have read/write performance as good or better than top end HDDs. Between those two factors, SSDs dominate HDDs in accessing/writing the little files that programs tend to look at regularly. The end result tends to be a much zippier system.

I've seen multiple PC hardware editors state that an SSD is your best performance upgrade for a modern PC. Personally, I've found them to make a noticeable difference.

[Meresgi]

I'll look into one then, thatnks for the advice.

[SaviorSelf]

+1 for SSD. Best investment in my system by far.

[Meresgi]

Question about the SSD. I have 2 HDDs right now, my C: has a good 20gb free space still, the other has 572gb free. Would a SSD really make that huge of a difference or should I just even out my files across my 2 HDDs I currently own?

[Isiolia]

While shifting some files over to your second drive wouldn't hurt, it won't do for you what an SSD will.

[Olo401]

Looking into getting some more RAM as my computer has been a little sluggish with all the multitasking I do. I have 4gb of Patriot DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) and a GA-MA785GM-US2H Mobo.
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128394)

I've noticed that DDR3 8500 RAM is the same price or even a little cheaper then DDR2 6400/8500 but to get it I would need a new mobo as well.

What are you opinions? Is it worth it in the long run to just replace the mobo now and shell out some extra cash for 8gigs of DDR3? Or just drop the 60ish bucks on 4 gigs of DDR2 and wait for prices to drop even more in the coming years? I play a lot of games on the PC, Win7 64bit, and every now and then when I have firefox open+games on 2 monitors my computer slugs a little bit here and there which is getting a little annoying.

Before you do anything, you should know that your board doesn't support DDR3. That said, even if it did the speed difference you get switching from DDR2 to DDR3 is minor, and going from DDR2-800 to DDR2-1066 is even less. You may notice a slight boost in multitasking but it really won't be that much. The real speed difference is going to come from a processor upgrade, whether it be just changing from a dual-core to quad or upgrading to a newer generation CPU.

For now I'd leave the memory as-is (if you can get another 4gigs of DDR2-800 really cheap, do it) and go with the SSD idea. And start setting aside a little money each week towards a full rebuild - by the end of the year you might have enough money for a Bulldozer or Sandy Bridge-E setup.

[Isiolia]

Before you do anything, you should know that your board doesn't support DDR3.

I think that was his original question though - whether to swap motherboards to be able to put DDR3 in, or just get more DDR2.

[Meresgi]

@Olo401

Yeah it doesn't support DDR3 which is why I was asking if I should upgrade the whole set or not. From your post and some more research I think I will look into upgrading my CPU 1st. I have it at 3.7 right now, but I can purchase an AMD quad core 3.4 standard for only around 160$ (surprised how fast quad core prices came down).

From all my reading most people say that 4gb is fine for Win7 64bit+gaming+multitasking so I think in the long that would be a really good choice for my 1st upgrade and get a new mobo/more RAM down the road.

I was sad to find out that my AMD IIx2 is one of the types you can unlock 4 cores on, but it doesn't work for my CPU (just unlucky with the one I got >_<)

Thanks for the insights.

[Meresgi]

Question on CPUs. I'm looking up info on a Quad Core 3.4mhz vs a hexcore 2.8mhz. I've read on anandtech.com that as you gain more cores, the overall speed has to go down so it seems like a quad core would be ideally in the middle..but then further reading stated there is something called a Turboboost which ups the speed of each core individually to compensate for the slower speed.

Still I don't know of a hexcore is ahead of its time and I should wait awhile while getting a faster quadcore right now. As an idea here are the two I was recently looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103727

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103851

[chiyio]

unless you encode video or something, you're probably going to be happier with the higher mhz Quad core.

[Meresgi]

unless you encode video or something, you're probably going to be happier with the higher mhz Quad core.

I figured, wasn't sure if it would be a good investment for the future, but yeah I guess ill side with the faster quad core for a few bucks cheaper.

[Guyverarmor]

Honestly, I purchased a 3.4 tri core AMD processor for 70$ off of tigerdirect and unlocked the 4th core. So I got a quad core 3.4 for 70$... helluva deal but the one thing with tricore processors is that sometimes you cannot unlock the 4th core, or if you do, it's a dead core ( since that's how they started selling em anyway. ) your choice.

[Senji]

Yeah, hexacore is ahead of its time, most people/programs don't take advantage of quad core yet.