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E6700 or upgrade?

Skilty

Skilty

Skilty

Associate
Joined
18 Nov 2004
Posts
535
Location
Brixham, Devon
Ok I still got my trusty E6700 from when they were released back in 2006. Currently sitting in an Abit IP35 dark raider, not overclocked. Got 4gb of memory running on Vista 64bit. The setup is purely for playing games and used as a media centre.

Question is, is it time to upgrade to an E8400 as I want to pair whatever CPU with a 4870 or a 4870X2 (when its available). Any advantages to a Q6600 overclocked to the E6700 or E8400?

Ideas on a postcard as for the first time in a while I am a wee bit confused about my options!!!
 
Overclock the E6700. You'll likely get it to atleast 3.6ghz under your watercooling.
 
Used purely for gaming and as a vista media centre.

I did rip out all of the watercooling and went over to a Noctua cooler just for ease of maintenance.
 
My E6700 is so rarely taxed by games that I dropped the 3.4Ghz overclock (which it does happily on air cooling and 1.35v), and went back to stock speeds. I game at 1920x1200 and am GPU capped long before the E6700 is stressed. Its been a great little chip which like you I bought very early in the Core 2 lifecycle (First week OCUK had stock!)

If I was you, I'd get the new graphics card that you want, and then see how the performance is in whatever res you use. If you feel the CPU's bogged down overclock it. It will clock well over 3ghz, and should be able to keep up with most current overclocked dual's.

If you really want a CPU upgrade, wait until Nehalem towards the end of the year. Its looking like the Nehalem on Bloomfield will be offering 30-50% performance increases clock for clock even with single threaded (1 core in use) applications.
 
Skilty said:
Used purely for gaming and as a vista media centre.

I did rip out all of the watercooling and went over to a Noctua cooler just for ease of maintenance.
Click to expand...

Should still be able to get an easy 3.4ghz if it's a half-decent chip.
 
Thanks for the sanity check :D

Will stick with the E6700 and see what ATi has to offer on Wednesday cos I sure ain't going with the green team after seeing the prices!
 
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