CPU upgrade question

[Dougiebabe2003]

Hi there,

Right, well I was planning on upgrading in a couple of months anyway but have begun thinking about this now.

I have an E6600 on an Asus P5B atm but this doesn't like any speeds above 3ghz.

My orignal plan was to get a Penryn Quad (Q9450 probably) but having read that these quads are going to cost around £250-£280 in the next couple of months & won't O/C well im now not sure.

I use the PC for normal things (web browsing etc) gaming every now and again (COD4, UT3, Crysis etc) and S@H (Quad would be handy here)

Basicly my question is this, would I be better off buying a cheaper dual core (E2180,2200 (or maybe dual Penryn?)) as this would probably O/C further than my year old E6600, getting a Q6600 and seeing how far it goes or getting a Penryn Quad (either Q9350 or Q9450)?

Don't have tons to spend as I thought that the Penryns weren't going to be more than £200. This means I could deffinatly get the Q6600 or cheaper dual core (and clock it faster than E6600) but the Penryns could be out of the window due to price in a couple of months.

Another question is how much will SSE4 help with an optimized client in S@H? (Aimed at DC people really)

Sorry if these questions have been asked before but im really stuck on this.

Cheers very much, Doug.

 

[Hesky82]

your Asus board is your weakness, don’t hold out much hope for a decent overclock on any quad, be it a G0 steeping Q6600 or Q9450 Yorkie.

I’m surprised you only managed to get 3Ghz out of your E6600, switching to a lesser processor such as the cheap Pentium core2 range would be silly. they run a 1/4 of the cache your E6600 has and on your current mb they really won’t offer much more overclocking head room if any.

The new Wolfdale 45nm dual cores might be your best bet, yes your board supports both quad and dual core 45nm chips but I’m sure it will be able to push a dual core much further thanks to the higher multipliers and less power they require.

 

[Dougiebabe2003]

Cheers for replying!

I have been thinking about it long and hard over the night.

I think my new plan is to upgrade my CPU cooler (ACF7 atm) to something for around £50-£60 (price of the E2180) & try to get more out of my E6600.

This then means that I can upgrade other parts (PSU, HDD & RAM)

Another thought that has gone through my head now though is this:

Will a heatsink from 775 fit on the new Intel socket? (Nehalm)

Does anyone know what RAM the new socket will be using? (DDR2 or DDR3?)

I only ask because I will try and keep my current mobo till the next socket upgrade and moving the RAM & Heatsink to the next mobo would be nice.

Looking at it I can get 4GB of RAM & a decent heatsink for the same price of the Q6600 so I will deffinatly do this

Cheers again, Doug.

 

[Hesky82]

If temps are holding you back I think this is worth doing, don’t go crazy though. 50-60 is a heck of a lot of dosh for an air cooler!

Nehalem brings with it two new sockets, I’m sure in time you will be able to get different retention brackets for old coolers to fit the new sockets.

Nehalem will be native DDR3, whether some motherboard manufactures produce DDR2 crossover boards based on Nehalems microarchitecture only time will tell.

I wouldn’t worry about thinking ahead, it rarely ever works out. Things just move to fast round here.

 

[Dougiebabe2003]

If temps are holding you back I think this is worth doing, don’t go crazy though. 50-60 is a heck of a lot of dosh for an air cooler!

Nehalem brings with it two new sockets, I’m sure in time you will be able to get different retention brackets for old coolers to fit the new sockets.

Nehalem will be native DDR3, whether some motherboard manufactures produce DDR2 crossover boards based on Nehalems microarchitecture only time will tell.

I wouldn’t worry about thinking ahead, it rarely ever works out. Things just move to fast round here.

Cheers for replying again!

Had a look at coolers and the Thermalight Ultra 120A with a Noctua fan sounds good and thats about £38-£42

Had a go @ OC/ing again today and, only 2 hrs stable but has been 16+ hours stabel before, hit 2.97ghz. 330 X 9 with the RAM @ 990mhz. Temps now are 67 & 65 with S@H running and side panel on. Side panel off drops to maybe 63-64 so I know my case is poo as well.

Was only thinking that the more that can be took across to the Nehalem the better. Thinking now that keeping my dual core & mobo for another year + a bit is the better choice as this allows me to replace my case, PSU & HDD's instead which means i'll be all set up for the Nehalem upgrade

The only reason I want the quad is because it's all new etc. Nothing really struggles with my current CPU and with a better OC it would be even better so will save me dosh for the time being I think

As for the RAM, it was more wishfull thinking than anything else. When the time comes to upgrade im sure there will be people who will love to have my uneeded RAM

Cheers for you help again, Doug.

 

[Hesky82]

Hum, sounds like you have your ram running on a 2:3 divider, why not try it 1:1?
I don’t know what ram your running, but it may give it more headroom to push the FSB higher.

Sounds like a few more case fans and a better cpu cooler will benefit you