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Effects on processor for gaming

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

Soldato
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
8,152
Location
Surrey
I currently have an overclocked e6400 and am looking to upgrade. Whats out there for around £200 that will be good for gaming? Will I see much of a difference in my games or not? Worth it?

Cheers
 
For gaming just change your gpu.....for that sort of money the usual suspects (GTX260/HD4870) will give more tangible improvements over a cpu swap.
 
If you get a newer £200 worth of CPU, your gfx card would just bottleneck it, especially at 1900x1200 or w/e 24'' res is.
 
Would agree with comments made ref. better to spend the money on a new gpu than cpu.

If you still want to upgrade cpu then would either go for a E8400/8500/8600 dual or q6660/q9550 quad.Personally I went for the q9550 - no regrets
P.S. Am assuming that your motherboard will accept all/any of those listed
 
For £200, a 4870 or 260 is what you want. Like it's been said, you won't see enough of an improvement upgrading the CPU, but get yourself one of the cards mentioned and you definitely will.
 
Thing is I've just upgraded to a 4870 and I seem to be at the bottom end of all benchmarks. For example in vantage I get a mere 5400 points which is nothing, 8800GTs are getting higher scores than that. Also in things like Farcry 2, my FPS scores seem to be a fair bit down on other people and the only thing I can think of is the CPU?
 
thecremeegg said:
Thing is I've just upgraded to a 4870 and I seem to be at the bottom end of all benchmarks. For example in vantage I get a mere 5400 points which is nothing, 8800GTs are getting higher scores than that. Also in things like Farcry 2, my FPS scores seem to be a fair bit down on other people and the only thing I can think of is the CPU?
Click to expand...
Yep if you have a 4870 get a better CPU then the extra L2 cache makes a difference on games right now. Get a Q9450 or Q9550 as some games benefit from the quad cores as well and in future this may improve as well. Remember most benchmarks use the quad core to generate some of the score but real world results count and extra L2 cache on the CPU will help a bit.
 
thecremeegg said:
Yea thats what I was thinking, my CPU has a small cache which probably isnt helping. Cheers :)
Click to expand...

But does it matter, do you find games don't play well ? Your'e at the bottom end of benchmarks for the same card but are you experiencing bad gameplay ? To be honest, with a 3.2 ghz core 2, I think any benefits you see will be marginal. It's all good for applications, especially dcc apps to add more cpu power but I expect it will make no important difference to games.
I'd spend it on monitor / peripherals or software - games or other.
 
Last edited:
Quixote said:
But does it matter, do you find games don't play well ? Your'e at the bottom end of benchmarks for the same card but are you experiencing bad gameplay ? To be honest, with a 3.2 ghz core 2, I think any benefits you see will be marginal. It's all good for applications, especially dcc apps to add more cpu power but I expect it will make no important difference to games.
I'd spend it on monitor / peripherals or software - games or other.
Click to expand...

I upgraded so I could max out games like fallout 3 at 1920x1200, but currently its struggling at that res. COD4 is fine, but fallout seems to be too much which is annoying seeing as its hardly cutting edge graphically. Dont need to spend money on monitor or peripherals, 24inch is enough for me ;)
 
In that case (change your sig ;) ) then get something like an E8400/E8500 E0 stepping and clock it to 4Ghz+ :D
 
Is you cpu at 100% usage when playing your most demanding game? if not then upgrading the cpu will do nothing.
 
AWPC said:
Yep if you have a 4870 get a better CPU then the extra L2 cache makes a difference on games right now. Get a Q9450 or Q9550 as some games benefit from the quad cores as well and in future this may improve as well. Remember most benchmarks use the quad core to generate some of the score but real world results count and extra L2 cache on the CPU will help a bit.
Click to expand...


Will a q6600 be ok (i just bought one).
 
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