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Decent CPU upgrade step for me.....

StevieP

StevieP

StevieP

Soldato
Joined
2 Jan 2004
Posts
7,782
Location
Chesterfield
I've not had any kind of upgrade for quite a while and am running a core 2 duo 4300 currently overclocked by 50% to 2.7ghz. (with a coolermaster hyper TX cooler on the current chip!)

My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA P35 DS3P and I have got 4gb of PC2-8500CS memory running at stock.

I was just wondering what the best bang-for-buck CPU is currently out there that wouldntt require me changing anything else in my setup??

The reason for the upgrade is primarily gaming and HD video streaming.

Any opinions welcome......

Cheers,

StevieP
 
Thanks for the rapid replies guys!!

I've had a look on OC and the Q9550 is a bit out of the price range I had in mind at £170.00....but the E52/5300's look a decent prospect!

I assume my mobo would accomodate one of these without any problem??

Any idea what sort of performance increase I'd get with the E5300??

If I went a bit bonkers (and didnt tell the wife what I was spending ;)) - is it worth going for the quad core Q6700 over the above E5300?? - are there many applications/games that benefit greatly from quad-core chips?? (and would my mobo support one??)

Cheers,

StevieP
 
Is the performance between dual and quad core chips a great deal with applications/gaming these days?
I mean, do a lot of games for example take advantage of them??

Cheers,

StevieP
 
I dont think youd see a difference, but the arguement for either side rages on. I could not tell the difference between a 3ghz e8400 and a 3ghz q9550, until I played with virtual machines.

Id suggest the fastest dual core intel you can fund, and using the members market. You can get an e8400 for about 90 quid I believe, which would blow you away
 
There are more games about now that prefer quad cores;

Crysis
Source engine games
GTAIV
World in conflict

I'd go quad if I were you, as there will be more and more coming (Especially games which are ported from consoles, which seem to work best with 3 or more cores.).

Often the quad core shows it's strength by providing higher minimum frame rates rather than higher headline maximum frame rates. This is because within a game, the PC can swing between being GPU bottlenecked and CPU bottlenecked within a scene (think loads of people suddenly appearing, or big explosions.). When the game swings to being CPU bottlenecked, often a Quad core will deliver higher minimum frame rates than a higher clocked dual core (If the engine is well threaded).
 
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I do hate it when there are good arguments for both sides!!! Why cant you people all agree and I can just follow one unified set of advice!?!?! ;)

Given the cost difference I think the favourite is still going to be a decent dual core - I know its difficult but since I'm running my 4300 @ 2.7ghz, does anyone know what sort of % performance increase I'm likely to get with either of the 2 dual core's mentioned above?? (E5300 or E8400)

Thanks for all the continued advice guys.........

StevieP
 
An E0 e8400, which is very likely to be what you'd buy, is very likely to sit happily at 4ghz. This will be rather quicker than your current one. I miss my 4ghz dual core, I never got my quad that high.

We do agree. Theyre different tools for different purposes. Quads are amazing for encoding and virtual machines. Dual cores aren't so hot at this. A 3ghz q9550 is better than a 3ghz e8400 in every way except cost and power consumption, your heatsink wont like it much. But then, its quite literally two e8400s on one die. Compared to a q6600 however, different game. E8400 all the way then, the 45nm tech is about 10% faster clock for clock and reaches far higher clocks. A new q6600 might hit 3.4, but probably not on your cooler. A new e8400 will go much quicker, run cooler and more efficiently.

It comes down to cost. THe e8400 clocked is better than the q6600 clocked, as it clocks far higher for a given cooler and runs faster at a given clock speed. The q9550 is better, but only if you can cool it, your motherboard can clock it (P35 is great for dual, not as hot for quads), and you can fund it.
 
domthecondom said:
hey i got a quite cheap E6850 on the MM :P
Click to expand...

I could very well be interested (although its listed as an E6580 in your MM post!?! ;))

Any idea if my existing PSU (a 460W Akasa) would still be OK for this kind of CPU and also would I need to get something beefier than my Coolermaster to cool the thing??

StevieP
 
Get the Q9450 + cooler that's overclockers have just got. You've got 8500 RAM so it'll make perfect use of it when you starting overclocking! Dont see 3.6-3.8 ghz being unreachable :)
 
Psu will be fine. The thermal envelopes of the two processors are very similar if not the same. The coolermaster will be fine, wont clock it as far as a better cooler but I daresay you know that. The e6850 comes with the same stock cooler as the e4300 after all.

re ssd, he has a point. It would probably make more difference to your system than a new processor.
 
Well the reason I said the E5xxx is because theyre much cheaper than the E8xxx range, and they are the same 45nm process so clock really well, the last one I used got to 3.75Ghz without any problem at all with a similar cooler, and im sure I could have got to 4Ghz, but I didnt because it was for my cousin and I wanted it to be rock solid stable for him and i didnt have much time that OC took about 5min. And I have never noticed a difference between equivalently clocked E5xxx and E8xxx, so to me it wouldnt hold much benefit spending the extra money.

Hawker
 
OK, now im properly confused!!! :confused:

When I was looking at buying my netbook I did a bit of research on the differences between a regular hard drive and a solid state drive and every bit of info I could find (including a side-by-side speed test video on Youtube) said that the SSD drives were slower than regular drives!?!?! (especially when writing to them!!!)

How could one possibly speed up my system more than a quicker CPU?!?!?

StevieP
 
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