CPU upgrade fx4 or x2 560?

Raiden82 · 2 Dec 2011 at 11:04

Hi, i currently have this system but want to upgrade the cpu without spending a fortune, use it mostly for Starcraft 2 and some Battlefield 3:

-Intel Pentium Dual Core E6600 Socket 775 3.06GHz 1066FSB 2MB Cache
-Gigabyte GA-G41MT-S2P G41 Socket 775 DDR3
-Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V
-Seagate 500GB 3.5" Barracuda SATA-III 6Gb/s Hard Drive - 7200RPM
-Powercool Modular 450W PSU 80+ Dual 12V V2.2
-PNY XLR8 GeForce GTX 550 Ti OC

I was thinking on these items:

-FX-4 4100 black edition
0r
-Phenom x2 560 black edition (and hopefully unlock to 4 cores)
and this MB:
-Asus M5A78L-M

Cool extra is that with this MB i can run hd in raid since i already have those :-)

, the price difference between the 2 solutions is £20 so just want want to go with the best one, what do you think?

Thanks for the help!

Martini1991 · 2 Dec 2011 at 11:09

Go for a Q9550 secondhand.

Combat squirrel · 2 Dec 2011 at 11:14

Martini1991 said:
Go for a Q9550 secondhand.

This

Doomedspeed · 2 Dec 2011 at 11:14

Martini1991 said:
Go for a Q9550 secondhand.

I second that. You them other upgrade will not be more of a performance boost to the Q9550.

It will also save you a bit of money to put towards a sandybridge/ivybridge/haswell upgrade in the future.

EDIT: I third the suggestion.

Orcvader · 2 Dec 2011 at 12:08

Martini1991 said:
Go for a Q9550 secondhand.

+1 (I fourth that?

)

The Phenom II series performed similiar to the Core series. This would be your best bet, overclock to 3ghz+ and you'll be a fine CPUwise. SC2 will be fine with that setup, but depending on your resolution, I'm not so sure about BF3. And that PSU...

HeX · 2 Dec 2011 at 12:15

Yup, just get a Core2 Quad, no need to change platforms.

Martini1991 · 2 Dec 2011 at 12:15

With the money saved from not getting a new board, a PSU upgrade could be on the cards too.

Raiden82 · 2 Dec 2011 at 14:37

Thanks guys but that cpu its' £300 :-(

the one i was thinking of it's £120 with MB plus the benefit of using my extra 2 hdd in raid at no extra cost, all for the price of an SSD, seems a good deal right?
I've seen benchmarks and the cpu you suggest performs exactly the same as the FX4, unless there's something i don't know..

Martini1991 · 2 Dec 2011 at 14:41

Q9550 for 300 quid?

Orcvader · 2 Dec 2011 at 14:59

That can't be right, unelss you're looking at brand new price? Just get a second hand one, I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find one for £40.

Martini1991 · 2 Dec 2011 at 15:02

You'd never find a Q9550 for 40 lol.
You can Q6600's quite cheap like.
But it's like, you can find i7 920 D0's for less than 100.

Orcvader · 2 Dec 2011 at 15:06

Martini1991 said:
You'd never find a Q9550 for 40 lol.
You can Q6600's quite cheap like.
But it's like, you can find i7 920 D0's for less than 100.

My bad, was getting mixed up with the Q6600 :rolleyes:

Maybe OP should find a secondhand Q6600 too?

Raiden82 · 2 Dec 2011 at 15:16

Yes, was the price for a new one :-0 btw is it fine to run a 550ti on a pcie 16x and non 2.0?
Do you guys know where to buy that cpu second hand, seen only on ebay but had bad experience lately and would like to avoid it..

Orcvader · 2 Dec 2011 at 15:22

Yes, no problem running a 550Ti in a PCI-E 1.0/1.1 slot.

There's OcUK's Members Market, but you need 250 posts and be a forum member for 3 months. Apart from that I don't know any other places, and even if I did, we can't mention them as it's against forum rules to mention competitors.

Martini1991 · 2 Dec 2011 at 15:28

Gumtree, the bay, overclock.net etc MM and other MM's?

Raiden82 · 2 Dec 2011 at 15:43

found a q6600 for £100 is it worth it?

fungus · 2 Dec 2011 at 16:11

Raiden82 said:
found a q6600 for £100 is it worth it?

You should be able to find the faster Q9550 for that much....

joem1983 · 2 Dec 2011 at 20:18

I saw some second hand Q6600 for 60£.
I'd get the q6600 and start saving.
and get a new set up.

If you bought the AMD stuff you may just be wanting more. But then I run AMD and do everything I ever want! My only issue is the wait while i encode. Really slow.

Raiden82 · 6 Dec 2011 at 22:53

Thx guys, i got the FX4 and the better motherboard, i see a big improvement on my games, i was suffering of choppy performance and control lag, the fps are almost the same but much more fluid game both SC2 and BF3.
With this MB i can OC, and got 4.5 Ghz on the CPU!! (stock cooler which seems nice).
Can't run raid since my 2 80gb extra drives are different speeds and where going slower than my main one, so getting an agility 3 for xmas...

Thx again for the replies!

Martini1991 · 6 Dec 2011 at 23:08

Thanks for all the replies to tell you to do against what you did

?