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E8600 Upgrade to a quad?

ToejaM

ToejaM

ToejaM

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At the moment my little brother has a E8600, if he was to stay with the same board.. which is an Asus Rampage Formula what would be the minimum quad core that would be worth upgrading to?

Strictly in the sense of gaming, primarily BF3 I'm thinking
 
Arctic Freezer pro rev2, he's got my old chip/board/ram but due to the graphics card being unstable (we're replacing it soon) he's not set it to the overclock I had, which was 4.3Ghz.

His PSU is more than sufficient for it to, its definitely 100% the graphics card :)

Whats the best sort of overclock you can get on air with a Q6600? Is it significantly better than an overclocked 8600?

I'm thinking basically with twice the computing power it would be. Even if I got the 6600 to the same speed as a stock e8600 but wondering how it fairs against an overclocked 8600?

Did that all make sense?

I've been looking in the MM, tis what set me off.. will be after a 5770 or similar if I can, maybe a 460 if the price is right :)
 
Yeah thats what I thought, I just wasnt sure if having a quad would be of a better benefit even if its at a slower speed. I was thinking maybe of getting a higher up Q model if possible, do any of them hit 4ghz at decent speeds.. I think the best of the best gets to no more than 3.8 at every day use right?

I'm itching to get him a graphics card but I dont get paid till friday then I'm gunna set up the overclock on his rig again and he'll feel like he's got a new PC!

At the moment he has an aging 8800GTX 768mb but I'm pretty sure its the card at fault. Its a good 4 years old now.. jesus.. really? Ah good times! :D

I think a nice 5770 for around 40 would be good or maybe a 460 if I'm lucky for a little more :)
 
I'm very tempted as the E8600's are holding some good value at the moment so it'd be a wise investment, sell the 8600 and replace with a Q6600 unless theres a better choice for money in this situation. Moneys a bit of an issue so its a case of selling what we got to upgrade and a quick search on the bay says his chip will fetch around 70-80 maybe more and you can get a Q6600 for about 50 maybe less on here! We'd only make about 50-60% max to the innards of a 2500k build :(

At the moment he plays:
L4D2 (does that support quad cores yet or is that just 2 cores?)
SC2

Thats about it, used to be EQ2 but quit that as its got so bad.

In the future it'll be BF3/SWTOR/Diablo3 so I think a jump to quad core with what we got is the best option and maybe putting another 4gig of ram in his machine
 
Great advice from what I picked out here people, apologies for cutting and running with the thread post. Actually forgot I'd made it.

Managed to get a 4890 gfx card to upgrade his 8800GTX so that should be a solid improvement. If I remember rightly he's running the chip at stock due to some stability issues we thought were related to the graphics card.. since doing a full windows update it seems to have fixed the problem. I swear the boy never listens when I give him advice the first three times round. Convieniantly informs me of no crashes after I buy him the upgrade! He doesnt know there is a 4890 in the post to him though.. so that'll be a nice suprise :D

Anyway he's getting about 60-80fps in L4D2 I dont know how he copes, I'd shoot myself. Gunna talk him through getting the same 4.3ghz overclock I managed as he's got my old stuff with the only difference being the psu and case. Though his psu is a 1kw psu and mine is a 850 I think.

Will be good to see if he gets any boost in L4D2 but I suspect the gfx is the bottleneck these days.

Think what I'm going to do is get his cpu overclocked and see what the framerates are like with the new card and better clock speed.

Looks like getting a suitable quad core to replace his e8600 is going to have to be an i5 build so he'll have to wait. I dont think its worth fannying around selling the e8600 and replacing it with a cpu that doesnt give huge improvements for the time put into it.

I'm hoping he'll at least manage a good fps amount on medium in bf3 (dx10.1 as the new card isnt dx11) but we'll see.. may have to send him another 4890 or something when I manage to sell myself for more money :D
 
I talked him through my overclock settings and all seems well, didnt go over 52c while playing L4D but at the same time didnt gain any fps. Played SC2 most the day and he didnt crash once. Forgot to check temps but no warnings, said he noticed it loading and performing faster.

Current gfx card is definately the bottleneck which will be fixed soon enough, hopefully by Wednesday but if Im lucky itll be tomorrow.

Not quite sure how much of a boost the cpu would need to compete if that becomes the bottleneck, up to 4.6 maybe but dont think thats possible on air though he does have a pimpin chip, cpuz reporting 1.29v under load.

Well have to see how it all fairs in bf3 on the plus side going crossfire on 4890s will be a cheap solution!
 
Well he's running BF3 on high settings with the new(used) 4890 I got him, granted its not dx11 but he's happy so I dont think there is any need for a new CPU right now. I think it'll definately be crossfire 4890s as a next upgrade then maybe a new mobo/ram/cpu if it comes to it. Hell, I think the next upgrade before the lot will be another 4gig of ram.

TY for the advice all :-)
 
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