here,s another 1

[ozzyDe]

my father PC is running a E6550 @2.4 with a abit ip35 MB 4gig looking to upgrade would it be the AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition 3.40GHz which does overclock well or go for,
Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) overclocks well or
Intel Core i5 650 3.20GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) dont no about OC
they are all about the same price.
The pc will be used for game playing 90% of the time cant go over £160 on the proc so any advice will be grate.
thanks
Dean

 

[crisbduck]

Id go i5 750

 

[regulus]

I'm biased since I have the 965 BE. It's plenty fast. Pick the one that's the cheapest. You will be happy with it regardless.

 

[cmndr_andi]

What graphics card is in his machine and have you considered more heavily overclocking the current CPU?

The P35 motherboard your father owns overclocks rather well - I would suggest spending £30 on a good CPU cooler and try to overclock it to ~3.5GHz.

As far as upgrading is concerned, I would suggest looking for a Core 2 Quad Q6600/Q6700 (preferably a G0 version) and overclocking it well past 3GHz. For a second-hand Q6600, you will only have to spend £70-90and a good cooler like this will cost around £30.

As for a i3/i5 upgrade, they are good chips for gaming, but the upgrade will be very expensive (i5 CPU costs ~£150, s1156 motherboard costs at least £60 and 4GB DDR3 costs £90). Therefore you would be looking at paying around £300 for this kind of upgrade (without even touching the graphics card).

Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) overclocks well or
Intel Core i5 650 3.20GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) dont no about OC

Please bear in mind that the i5 700 series uses nahalem based true quad cores, while the i5 600 series uses nahalem based hyper threaded dual cores with integrated graphics on the CPU die. Both overclock well, but the i5 750 is the much more powerful chip.