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After some advice please.

maforduk

maforduk

maforduk

Associate
Joined
29 Aug 2009
Posts
142
Location
Swansea, S.Wales
Hi all, I'm kinda new to the forums.
Here's my spec:
Mobo: ASRock socket 775(max 1600 fsb)
CPU: Pentium D 3.2Ghz (borrowed off mate)
GFX: Leadtek GTX280 1Gb
RAM: 4gig of Corsair

The advice I'm after is, do I save up for an i7 system or just upgrade my CPU to a quad or dual core?
Thanks.
 
What is the exact model number of the motherboard (check using CPU-Z)? As this will determine what CPU upgrade options you have available.

Also, what do you use the system for mainly? Considering the graphics card I would guess gaming, but are there any other resource-intensive tasks you do frequently?
 
In that case I would suggest picking up a second hand Q6600 for £70-80.

This compares the performance of the Q6600 with an Intel Pentium D (extreme edition, 65nm, 3.4 GHz), this extreme edition is a bit faster than the current CPU, but the performance will be relatively close.

As you can see, in all tasks the Q6600 is quite a bit faster.

If you do want to do a full system upgrade, then I would suggest going for an i7 X58 system or an AM3 Phenom II X2 system. However, for gaming an overclocked Q6600 should be fine for quite some time.
 
I reckon that in the vast majority of games, if you got a Q6600 and overclocked it to 3GHz then the limiting factor in your rig would no longer be the CPU, but become your GTX 280 graphics card.

If you want to know the maximum performance that is, then I suggest you look for some GTX 280 reviews. Also, the newer GTX 275 has very similar performance - so some reviews of that would be useful too.
 
Oh no, its not out of date - it will still play modern games at decent resolutions very well.

The point I was making was that your current Pentium D is holding back the performance of your system (and your GTX 280). If you upgraded it to a much better CPU (the Q6600) then you would no longer be limited by the CPU, but performance would increase to the point that it will be the graphics card that is limiting the performance in games. This is nothing to worry about as pretty much all gaming systems are limited by the graphics card, as games are usually much more demanding on the graphics card than the CPU.
 
No real point saving up for an i7 when a Q6600 will keep you going until the Sandy bridge 'enthusiast' 1365 boards/chips are out.
 
I think Q2 or Q3 next year, release date hasn't been confirmed yet even for the 'mainstream' sandy bridge chips which are coming out first.
 
The enthusiast level sandy bridge chips are expected in Q3 2011, but the cheaper (and still very capable) mainstream chips will be coming out at the end of this year.

AMD is also releasing new chips based on a very new design in Q1 2011.

My suggestion would be to get the Q6600 now and see how these future releases go. The Q6600 will only cost you £70-80 and in a years time you will be able to get most of that back if you sold it on.
 
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