Decent upgrade from a E6400

[killerk]

Current systems spec is E6400, A Asus P5B Deluxe, 8800GT and 4Gb reaper RAM. What would give me an overall noticeable increase in performance for a budget 400 - 500 tops. been looking at the phenom II's but how much quicker will they be?

 

[95thrifles]

The only thing you would notice is gfx card, and thats dependant on your resolution anyway. Just clock the 6400 and you should be fine. What res do you game at? If its round 1920*1200 then Id look at a 285 which should give you a noticable boost, below this it may not be worth it. If youre not comfortable OC'ing, or the moneys burning a hole in your pocket then you could just go for an E8400, the increase in cache as well as stock speed/FSB would be good

 

[mame]

If you have the E6400 overclocked to 3GHz or more then I would say a E84/500 or don't bother.

 

[SneeuLeeu]

I just upgraded from a e6400 tonight. That was clocked 3.2ghz. My e8400 is oc'd to 4.05 straight up 1.3v vcore and its stable. Havent even tried to push it yet but think i could go more. Its hard to notice the difference tbh but oh well I also have a gtx280. You money would be better spent on a gfx card.

 

[bloodline76]

What are you looking to get a performance in? If its games, then a 280/285 would see a nice leap. Id just clock your current card or go for a E8400/500

Or both

 

[Vir]

Clock it to 3Ghz or further, if you don't want to overclock get a E8400.

 

[formby]

my old 6400 did 3.8ghz went to a 8400 @ 4.2ghz and to be honest the 6400 was plenty fast enough for games my money would have been better spent on a faster graphics card.

 

[pieman109]

I think the only thing you "migth" notice is the minimum game framerate might be a bit higher, but I've found that for gaming, not benching, you only need a cpu to hit abround the 3ghz mark with 3.2ghz being the max, and the gpu will start to be the bottleneck. How it peforms at higher resolutions I cant twell you, but around the 1680 x 1950 area, I doubt very much you'll see a difference.

 

[throdgrain]

Amazing that these old processors hold up so well.

Is it not true though that games utilise quad core these days, and that only having a dual core might be a disadvantage? Crysis warhead seemed a bit jerky to me. (Game wernt very good anyway mind ...)

 

[RobK]

Seems crazy that it's still hardly worth upgrading a CPU that's nearly 3 years old! Not that I'm complaining

 

[realscot]

Unless going to quad from an E6400 then i wouldnt bother, i did that and even then I dont notice that much of a difference in games. Video encoding etc however is significantly faster. I agree with the other posts, get a GPU upgrade, or if you can SLI get another GT. I don't know what HDD your running as your main, but maybe consider an upgrade on it if your running something a little older and smaller/slower. I noticed a difference between having a 250GB WD AAKS HDD and now a 750GB Sammy F1 HDD as my main drive.