My New PC

Arse!! The CPU in my old PC melted. Took quite a lot of swapping about of parts to make certain but it was definitely the CPU..... again, Arse!!

I've recently thought about replacing the PC with a gaming laptop so I started looking at those Alienware efforts......and then I woke up and just bought a replacement CPU for the existing PC. Trouble is, I didn't just get a near match for the old CPU, 'cos I'm a sucker for new shiney things.

The AMD website said the Phenom II CPU range are compatible with my old M2N-E mobo. They say it need a BIOS update, and you know I love a good BIOS update, so I bought an AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2ghz

It worked, with a couple of BIOS setting tweaks to make it run beyond 800mhz, but even at 3.2ghz things were not as good as the old CPU. The forums say some M2N-E mobos are fine and some are not, it's just pot luck. You can guess what I did next so I'll cut the story down to a 4 words and slash; Damn you Novatech / Overclockers.

So here is the resulting full Spec:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2ghz AM3

4GB DDR3 RAM

MSI 890GXM-G65 Mobo

MSI ATI Radeon 6870 1GB GDDR5

Coolermaster GX 550 Watt PSU

Coolermaster Storm Scout Gaming Case

500GB 7200 Western Digital HD

Samsung SATA DVD Rewriter

Please don't ask how much that all cost, I refuse to think about it. Just look at these pretty pictures instead... LINK

/mub

Update:

Here are the benchmark results from 3DMark Vantage:

Using old ATI 4850: P8003 - DETAILS

Using new ATI 6870: P14350 - DETAILS

I also did a run of 3DMark 11 but only with the ATI 6870: P4007 - DETAILS

I've never looked at DirectX 11 stuff before and I can tell you ..... Oh my word!!

I don't plan on over-clocking this thing until I really need to, which is unlikely for a while I reckon.

/mub