• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Do I need a new CPU?

MeatLoaf

MeatLoaf

MeatLoaf

Soldato
Joined
1 Dec 2005
Posts
14,627
Location
Stoke on Trent
I'll be getting a GTX460 at the end of the month to replace my GTX275.

Will my current E5300 @ 3.4Ghz be likely to bottleneck it? I use thre machine a lot for gaming

If i was to get a quad it would be a Q6600 or a cheap 45nm quad if i can find one, as i dont really feel that replacing my mobo is needed.
 
Even if you go for the Q6600 you're not exactly wasting money even if you resell it and do a full upgrade in 12 months time as I highly doubt the value will be that much different a year from now if you need to resell.
 
Personally I'd get a E8400 or E8500 as they have three times more cache than your E5300. No point in going for a Q6600 imo.
 
I have an E6600 @3.1GHz on air with a HD5870 @ stock on a 975X chipset mobo; I have no inclination so far to upgrade it at all because it struggles with nothing.(Despite it being bottlenecked by PCI-E R1.0 for starters) You may well find any money you spend disappointing IMHO. But if you were desperate for a little extra speed I'd probably stick with 2 cores for the higher clocks.
 
The 65nm Exxx and Q6xxx are both slower clock for clock than the Q9xxx and i3,i5, and i7. If your motherboard supports the 45nm Q9xxx's they are better chip overall(compared to Q6600), otherwise save your money and wait until you can afford an i series processor/motherboard.

For most games a 65nm dual core @ 3.4ghz will more or less keep up with the 65nm quads. Few games really increase in performance beyond 2 cores even when they support 4 cores... Many games still have a single heavy thread driving the graphics engine, which ends up the overall bottleneck.

Strangely with an Nvidia card, the sweetspot for newer games seems to be 3 processor cores, with an ATi card, several review sites have noted that the sweet spot is still 2 processor cores!.
 
To be honest ive been umming and arring about going for an i5 rig

If i did it would be an i5 750, the cheapy P55M-UD2 gigabyte mobo and 4Gb of PC12800 ram, probably the corsair stuff. Id also want a new PSU and possibly a case

Ive put a thread up in proce checks to see what id get for my stuff then i'll decide if its worth it or not.
 
Tbh, with the p5n d board, clocking a q6600 wont be that easy as the nforce series werent that great with quads, on a 680i the best i could ever manage was 3.0ghz wouldnt go any higher for love nor money. Had to invest in a p45 board with which i was able to take the same quad to 3.8ghz.
 
setter said:
Tbh, with the p5n d board, clocking a q6600 wont be that easy as the nforce series werent that great with quads, on a 680i the best i could ever manage was 3.0ghz wouldnt go any higher for love nor money. Had to invest in a p45 board with which i was able to take the same quad to 3.8ghz.
Click to expand...

This is what i was thinking really. Im not going to invest anymore cash into another s775 mobo.
 
if it was me i would not buy a q6600 as some people mentioned i would go for a q9550 for that little extra cash you will get quite a bit more out for it

the 680i was not a good board but the 7 series i found were good i had a striker 2 extreme and i could clock my q9950 to 4ghz easy. i wanted to go higher so i bought a gigabyte UD3 and im struggling to get it to 4ghz now
 
Last edited:
Yep, the 7 series nforce boards were a replacement for the 680i series. Basically the 680i's couldnt use 45nm quads such as the q9550/q9650. So compatibility was restored with the 7 series.
 
In the end ive nabbed a Q6600 off the MM, should be here tuesday. Then on thursday/friday i'll nip up to ocuk and pick up a GTX460 :)
 
I was going to open up new thread, but as this thread is for the exact type of CPU i'm looking to upgrade from. I'll ask in here if the OP does not mind.

So yea, looking to upgrade from my E5200 myself seeing as i will be sooner or later looking @ the GTX 460.

Mobo is a P5Q Pro, I'm not looking to move away from the 775 socket yet,
So my only option will be Core 2 Duo's and Core 2 Quad's. Looking @ bay i've seen used Q6600's at around the £90-100 price point, is this good? It looks a better buy to me than say the Q9550 which is a tad pricier.
 
£90 is a little high for a Q6600, however they're still decent chips and as I mentioned before the chances are they won't lose their value too fast now as more of the 775 owners decide to go quad core.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom