Should I upgrade?

[cje]

Hey guys, I'v got the following system:

Q6600 @ 3ghz
4gb DDR3 Corsair 1333mhzC9DHX
2x BFG 9800GTX+ 512mb in SLI
Zalman HP-1000 (1000watt PSU)

I cannot OC the bloody thing higher than 3ghz, as I am not water cooling my board, and also 4 RAM modules puts huge stress on the memory controller and it won't do 1600 fsb with 1333 RAM.

Anyways, at the moment my 2 9800GTX+ are in SLI and all is ok.

I'm gaming at 1680x 1050, which, I know 9800GTX+ in SLI is not used at all.


I was thinking of selling the 2 cards and maybe buying a 295 or 285.

Would the 3ghz quad bottleneck such a new card? Or would the performance increase be negligible?


Other option is to wait a couple of years, and build an i7 rig with whatver gfx is best at that time

 

[Ben M]

I'm gaming at 1680x 1050, which, I know 9800GTX+ in SLI is not used at all.


I was thinking of selling the 2 cards and maybe buying a 295 or 285.

Would the 3ghz quad bottleneck such a new card? Or would the performance increase be negligible?

err... You say yourself that your current gpu setup is underused, so you want a more powerful gpu?

If you want better performance, get a faster cpu, and 2x2gb RAM. Leave the gpus, they're fine.

 

[cje]

Well, I clocked my fsb to 1600 mhz and RAM to same speed and saw only 1fps gain in Far Cry2 benchmark on average.

GTA IV did gain about 5-6fps more.

But since it is unstable at those speeds I left it at 3ghz 1333mhz ram and fsb.

 

[MrMoses]

Well, I clocked my fsb to 1600 mhz and RAM to same speed and saw only 1fps gain in Far Cry2 benchmark on average.

GTA IV did gain about 5-6fps more.

But since it is unstable at those speeds I left it at 3ghz 1333mhz ram and fsb.

Upgrade but dont upgrade the PSU

 

[Rroff]

Its prolly the CPU thats the problem not the board mine seems to have an FSB wall between ~350 and 450Mhz and takes a LOT of voltage to be stable above that :|

tbh tho not much really loads down the CPU at 3gig on a Q6600 the only place you really see major differences above that is in benchmarks (unless you got one of the good batches that can hit 4gig).

 

[cje]

I've found that stock cooling on this mobo is utter pants.

Thing is, anything above 3ghz, and it's the gpu's that are the bottleneck in my current setup. Granted, games like crysis and GTA IV do see a slightly bigger increase but nothing to brag about.

If I get dosh soon I might get liquid cooling and better gfx, but for that money, I might as well keep this setup for 2-3 years and then go the whole hog with an i7 system down the line.