E8400 time to step up?

mickyflinn · 27 Mar 2011 at 21:07

Hi guys , new to the forum so be gentle with me.

I have an e8400 running at 3.6ghz but i cant help thinking im missing out so is it time to upgrade from socket 775? Gaming is the most intensive thing i do at a resolution of 1680 x 1050.
my pc
ASUS P5K PREIMIUM
4GB DDR2 800MHZ OCZ PLATINUM
E8400 @ 3.6ghz
1gb GIGABYTE GTX 460 OVERCLOCKED
SCYTHE MURGEN COOLER
2 X SAMSUNG SSD RAID 0
THERMALRITGHT TOUGHPOPWER 700W PSU

MooMoo444 · 27 Mar 2011 at 21:12

You'd definitely get a good performance upgrade, it would depend on your budget, as you'd have to replace the whole thing pretty much.

Andrew_McP · 27 Mar 2011 at 23:26

I upgraded my gaming/sim machine to a [email protected] from an [email protected] and to be honest I think you'll be perfectly fine as you are. I only see a useful benefit in TripleHead mode when running demanding flight or racing sims.

The bottom line for me is that (unless you have tons of money) you should always upgrade because you are disapppointed with the performance of some software you enjoy running. Feeling left out is not a reason to upgrade... no matter how tempting that may be. And I'm not saying I haven't been tempted like this in the past. :-)

I'm now using my [email protected] in this machine as my main, general purpose box. And to be honest I'm using it for gaming more than my games machine now! That only gets turned on for triplehead simming, which is when I need the horsepower. Everything else runs very well on this machine with a GTX260 running a 1600x1200 screen.

Andrew McP

gurusan · 27 Mar 2011 at 23:36

A clocked e8400 is still plenty for gaming these days at 1680x1050 provided you have a decent GPU (GTX 260/4870 or above)

Unless you have caught a bad case of the upgrade bug, I'd just save some for a rig in the next 6 mo or so

EniGmA1981 · 28 Mar 2011 at 07:29

Clock for clock a sandybridge system will perform a lot faster at 4.3 than my E8400 at 4.3 ever could... plus the other bonus is DDR3 is MILES cheaper than DDR2 lol and a lot faster too (along with being triple channel if you go down the i7 route)

MooMoo444 · 28 Mar 2011 at 07:57

EniGmA1981 said:
Clock for clock a sandybridge system will perform a lot faster at 4.3 than my E8400 at 4.3 ever could... plus the other bonus is DDR3 is MILES cheaper than DDR2 lol and a lot faster too (along with being triple channel if you go down the i7 route)

Sandybridge i7's are dual channel

EniGmA1981 · 28 Mar 2011 at 15:46

Oops, I knew that... was just checking people's knowledge

Devrij · 28 Mar 2011 at 15:57

I went from [email protected] to 2500K @4.7GHz, mainly for FSX, and also for BC2. For those two applications it made a big difference, and it's handy in a few other areas (SSD boots faster, RARing files, etc). I like knowing it's not holding me back, and the e-peen is fun too. I think it was worth it. If the money is burning a hole in your pocket, do it.

On the other hand, you probably don't need it. Like that's ever mattered lol

Brumboy · 28 Mar 2011 at 16:25

Gaming at that resolution and with a dual core @ 3.6ghz, you will gain some performance. Gaming mostly depends on your GPU anyway apart from a few games like simulators/BC2/black ops.

Like others have said, you would need to replace the CPU/motherboard and memory so it won't be cheap.

Quad cores seem to be the sweet spot for gaming. There two's CPU's which come to mind for gaming which are:

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 975 Black Edition "140W Edition" 3.60GHz (Socket AM3) for £150

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - £175

The i5 2500k is quite a lot faster than the Phenom though giving around 30FPS extra in games - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/186?vs=288

E8400 vs i5 2500k - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/56?vs=288

As you can see you will gain FPS and gaming performance, just depends how much you got to spend.

Get a MSI/Gigabyte motherboard, i5 2500k and 4GB DDR3 memory and you'll be set for a good few years. From personal experience my i5 2500k setup is awesome for gaming so I can recommend it.

It will cost you about £360 for a mobo/CPU/memory which is not bad I guess.

mickyflinn · 28 Mar 2011 at 21:26

Thanks for all the advice, i think im going to hold on for a while. I am intrested to see how the bulldozers from amd perform and then i will probably upgrade. If i had to do it now it would definately be the 2500k route, until the bug bites again , MANY THANKS

Phil2008 · 1 Apr 2011 at 00:27

I have also got a [email protected] and just upgraded my ATi 3870 to a ATi 6950, saw a huge performance boost. So now when my cpu causes games to chug set at med-high settings in the next yr or two, it will be then time for me to upgrade my total system, as I will be seeing another huge performance gain, and money well worth spent.

Ppl upgrading every few months must be mad or have money to burn, as I like to see large improvements if I part with huge amounts of money.

MumboJumbo · 1 Apr 2011 at 00:59

We all know you want to upgrade so do it. The way cpu's are is that you could get a Sandy Bridge now and it last 5 years or wait 6 months, get the next tech and it will just last the same amount of time anyway. No reason to wait in my opinion.

Phil2008 said:
Ppl upgrading every few months must be mad or have money to burn, as I like to see large improvements if I part with huge amounts of money.

Sometimes I just get bored haha.

mast3r · 1 Apr 2011 at 09:46

I took an 8400 to an 2500k on my office desktop and what a difference it made, paired with P8P67 Pro

Antilo · 1 Apr 2011 at 14:32

Also went from an e8400 @ 3.6 to a 2500k @ 4.5, great little upgrade

Sata performance is up a tad too, also ready for usb3/sata3.

seekdestroy · 1 Apr 2011 at 15:27

I also went from E8400 @ 4ghz and saw a big step up. I was playing CSS at 1080p with gtx 460 and it was stuttery, all that went once I upgraded to 2500k.

I think CSS is a CPU heavy game and it really improved the smoothness of gaming for me

Phil2008 · 1 Apr 2011 at 17:15

seekdestroy said:
I also went from E8400 @ 4ghz and saw a big step up. I was playing CSS at 1080p with gtx 460 and it was stuttery, all that went once I upgraded to 2500k.

I think CSS is a CPU heavy game and it really improved the smoothness of gaming for me

Your making me wanting to upgrade mine now, But I will need board, mem and cpu, and dont think I have that sort of money atm... The i5 2500 does look nice tho, what coolers are you using to get it to 4ghz?

subbytna · 1 Apr 2011 at 17:25

you had issues playing counter strike? with a 460? hardly a CPU intensive game though?

Phil2008 · 1 Apr 2011 at 21:16

I have to keep telling myself "I dont need to spend £300+ as everything runs fine since the ATi 6950 upgrade and games wouldnt run a whole lot better if I did". But the i5 2500 seems to be a nice upgrade from the E8400 with what you guys say...... Must Resist.

Ardbeg · 2 Apr 2011 at 00:10

My work pc just got upgraded to a e8400 ....as seen as my company runs about 10 years behind current tech i would think yes, upgrade ffs!!

Kinda scary what IBM charge them to run such out of date ****e.

andy_mk3 · 2 Apr 2011 at 00:24

I used to have an E8400 @ 3.6GHz (ran 4.0GHz for benching), it was a great cpu. Maybe upgrade to a Q6600 for now? Get that clocked to 3.2GHz and you'll see a fair difference.