New upgrades for ezflow

[Bellanie]

Lo guys,

the time has come for me to upgrade ez's pc,

she is currently running a

Intel q8200 quad with 4gb ddr2-800 ram and 32bit win7, gpu is a nvidia gts250.

now what i want to do is upgrade her mobo, ram to ddr3 and run the gts250 in SLi with another one i have.

the cpu i am thinking of is a Intel I3 530 2.93Ghz more info in the link
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-311-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1671

the Mobo i am thinking of getting her is the Asus X58 Sabertooth more info in the link
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-429-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1692

the ram i would like to get her for now would be 2gb of ddr3 1333Mhz ram. Now this is what i want to know would the cpu be a upgrade over the quad?, i have compared them both on the charts over at toms Hardware, and they both seem about the same with the i3 being better with power and energy usage.

also with switching to a sli system would it bottleneck in anyway and decrease performance from what she use's now.

the other option would be to get a new Sli board somthing like the Asus P5N-D
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142585?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products

and keep all her current stuff and just add in the extra card.

any thoughts on this would be great

thanks
Bell

[lionheart]

You know the I3 is only a dual core?

Not worth upgrading to DDR3 unless you're doing the whole system.  Keep what you've got, overclock the quad a little, sell the 2 GTS250 and buy a better single graphics card.

[Tutonic]

You'll need to make sure your power supply has enough juice for the 2nd graphics card - how many Watts does the current one kick out?

Upgrading DDR2 to DDR3 isn't really worth it - you won't notice much of a performance increase. The same goes for the i3, the peformance would increase but it's debateable as to wether or not you'd actually notice it. You might want to consider going up to an i5 instead.

I've used Asus motherboards for years, and they're generally very reliable with plenty of features.

[Gorion]

If you can wait till January 2011 you'll get a bigger bang for your buck.

Sandybridge is coming out and cpu prices will drop.  The Radeon 6 series will also be coming out shorty, so more money saved.