I have around £500 to spend on my pc and have an idea what i`m wanting but have a few questions.

What i have....

AMD Phenom X2 550 Black Edition 3.3GHz
Sapphire 790GX Socket AM3 DDR3
OCZ 4GB Kit 1333
Corsair 650W PSU
Western Digital 500GB SATA II
Sapphire HD 4850 512MB (crossfire)

ASUS HD 4850 512MB (crossfire)

Windows vista home 32

Arctic freezer pro 7 rev 2

What i`m looking at..

i5 2500k

p68 mobo

8 gig ram

gtx 560 ti

windows 7 64

Questions..

Will it be worth waiting for ivy bridge? will it be the same price as the current chip?

8gig vs 4 gig ram and can i use my current ram?

looking for a sub £200 gfx card, gtx 560 ti vs 6950 (theres about £30-£40 difference)

Upgrade os now or wait for windows 8? (i know my os limits me to 3 gig ram)

I have decided to upgrade now as i`m having a horrible time with crossfire and dont see the point of upgrading just the gfx on this system , plus there is a few games out this year that i want to enjoy playing.

Doesn't look bad but Gigabyte and gaming laptop O.oDarkblueNinja

I dont get it, whats wrong with it? (sincere question for future reference)

PC game, CoD 4 or age of empires 3.

Console woulda been Keystone Kapers on atatri 2600 possibly pong tho hahah

Got it to 3.5ghz but after 10 mins with prime 95 temp was 69 far too hot! Brought it down to 3.3ghz @ 61, i`m happy with that on a stock cooler. Looks like i`ll get an after market fan to get the cpu speed up a little. Also i didnt touch voltage or bus speed only the multiplier.

have u tried unlocking the cpu to a quad core? Not sure if the 550be unlocks but my 555BE unlocked to a triple core pretty easily. If you can unlock it then do so and upgrade ur graphics card to something higher end. After that save up money for a new rig.

blaznwiipspman1

Buy a cheap cooler like the 212+. Chances are if you do get round to upgrading/new pc it can go in there anyway.

Cooler cpu, quieter than stock and overclocking for ~$20

kraken2109

Ok, my pc is starting to fall to minimum spec for the latest games(battlefield 3) I will be building a new gaming rig in about 12-18 months once cash flow is a little better, so looking for opinions on anything i can do to my current setup.

What i have the now is...
AMD Phenom X2 550 Black Edition 3.1GHz
Sapphire 790GX Socket AM3 DDR3
OCZ 4GB Kit
Corsair 650W PSU
Western Digital 500GB SATA II
Sapphire HD 4850 512MB (crossfire)
ASUS HD 4850 512MB (crossfire)

My thought are all over the place on what to do.
1, buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock (i cant unlock the extra cores as the mobo wont let me, but it does see 4 cores)
2, buy a new cpu. phenom ii x4 955 or 965 again im limited to an am3 cpu as mobo doesnt support am3+
3, leave it alone as its fine for most games and then spend the cash on the new rig.
4, F**k this, just get an xbox 360 (haha)
5, For overclocking gpu do i need extra fans for cooling?

So what would you do?

Can you only use an xbox 360 controller with this game?

I cant seem to get my controller to work.... ps2 type.

im looking for a pc game like Constructor, Sim City, Theme Park.

What would your choice be?

also check your firewall.

when i first installed aoe3 zonealarm wouldnt let me play online

This is my results from speed test.

Is this ok for gaming online.... this is a new pc so i am gonna start playing games online.