Opteron 165 (stock) to Intel Quad Core

[morpheus9394]

You are right. For most people Quad core is over kill.
I had to buy a new motherboard, new ram plus the cpu, which cost me about £600 in total but I know that I should have to upgrade my PC for a while now.
I like to have the "eye candy" set to the max when playing games and I was starting to notice that some games were just too taxing when playing at 1920x1200, Obilvion, STALKER, DIRT and Lost Planet being the main culpits.
I also wanted to build a PC that would be able to cope with Crysis and UT3, when they finally arrive.
Anyway - It was an very expensive upgrade but well worth it if you can afford it.
The file transfer improvement may have happened due to the switch from a nforce4 motherboard or it come be due to the much faster RAM I have now or just due to the increased clock speed or all of the above.

 

[ChrisD.]

For most people the move up to an Intel rig is going to mean binning their Mobo and CPU and I'm just not sure it's worth it over buying a decent GPU.

I have a 8800GTX in my rig and for the games I play I can do so at 1920 x 1200 mostly at MAX, spending £250/300 of a new mobo and CPU just ain't worth it for a few FPS.

I agree that more cores are the way forward and I'm more than likely going to be buying one next week, but that's mainly for stuff other than gaming. Obviously where the games utilises all 4 cores (DIRT) it's gonna wipe the floor with a game that is CPU bound, if the game is GPU bound it won't make hardly any difference.

Also I'm not sure quad core would help much in terms of file transfers

HEADRAT

I used to think the same mate, but I've just jumped ship from a Opty 175 to a E4300 and the difference is staggering. Even in BF2 at 19" native res, the game runs smoother, loads quicker and overall the system as a whole is a lot better.

Opty was a 2.4GHz, E4300 is running at 3.2GHz.

 

[HEADRAT]

Opty was a 2.4GHz, E4300 is running at 3.2GHz.

What GFX card?

 

[TheOtherOption]

The gfx card I think is key here too as if I want to get smoother fps at my native res something like a 640mb GTS is a minimum to be honest and in all fairness i'd even go as far as a GTX ...

If I could get an opty to over 2.6Ghz or so then it would do me well until it would be more economical for a move to quad core (student life an all that!)

The move to a GTX is all round going to be less time consuming and costly than a complete overhaul to a decent setup with a lesser gfx card ...

 

[morpheus9394]

Originally I have a Op 170 coupled with a Geforce 7950 and most games would run fine at 1600x1200 though some games, like FEAR I would have to drop to 1280x1024 and Obilivion I had to go right down to 1024x768. Nothing would run smoothly at 1920x1200.
So a couple of months ago I changed to a 8800GTX, which game in a big improvement but Obilivion and STALKER still had to be run at 1600x1200 if I wanted all the eye candy on. and what with Crysis and UT3 on the horizon and all the good times I was reading about the Core Duo processors I thought it was time to go back to the Dark Side.
I couldn't be happier with my system now. It is VERY stable, very fast, multi-tasking is out of this world, games look and run great. 1920x1200 gaming is definately the way to go, if you can afford it.
It was a pain having to change the motherboard and ram but that's PCs for you.

 

[TheOtherOption]

I won't deny it would be great to go all out and get a C2D and an 8800 but that just isn't going to happen this year - will have to wait till after I finish uni to do anything more adventurous

Thing is ... what to change ?

an 8800 GTX could just be added = min £317 (OcUK one)

or

get a C2D mobo / E2160 or similar + 2gig DDR II and wait it out till 2nd gen dx10 cards are out ...

I'm thinking it would be better to go C2D as for £320 odd I could get a decent setup but i'm going to need a new OS too which is min £55-60 on top of that !

 

[ChrisD.]

What GFX card?

XFX 7900 GTX 512. Used to have two in SLi.

 

[El Jimben]

I'm prolly gunna look to do something similar to Headrat - in that if I can scrounge a decent clocking dual core opty of some kind then i'll just nab an 8800 GTX and stay with that for another year or so before moving intel !

*Native quad core an all that coming up

Anyone know if the current opty 170's OcUK have are good clockers ? - £88 doesn't seem to bad !

If they've got the 0704 stepping chips in I would bag one, I've seen quite a few hit 3GHz on stock volts. That said, I've seen OEM 175s elsewhere for £28 less than OCUK are charging.