socket 775, upgrade? or just drop a quad in??

Soldato
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howdy all,

a friend is running the following spec,

E6850 C2d
Asus P5Q Pro
4GB DDR2
9800gt.

He mainly plays BFBC2 and Black Ops, but he says it's been struggling quite badly lately. A lot of stuttering and poor frame rates, he's certain its not just his internet on the fritz.

So he has a budget of £350 (preferably less) for a bit of an upgrade and some1 he works with suggested this......

murphysbuild-1.png


but i'd been thinking that he'd be just as well dropping a quad in, q8300 or maybe a 2nd hand q6600 and and adding a better gpu, maybe the 460 or summat?

any thoughts
 
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For cheap, Go Quad and defo a much better grx card! Or, if its just gaming, the quad may not be needed. Clock that bad boy!
 
Yeah instead off buying all new stuff hes proberly better off getting a second hand quad on fleabay and keeping his current MB ram and just buy a new GFX card
 
thats what i thought, he should also have enough left over to even grab an ssd. i've read, tho i could be wrong but i think BFBC2 and Black Ops quite 'like' a quad?
 
Yeah, pointless wasting money getting a new mobo and RAM when those two won't make a big difference.
I would just upgrade the graphics card as the CPU should be fast enough. Maybe get a better CPU cooler if he doesn't have one already and OC it.
 
i take it the G0 stepping chip is the better for oc'ing? failing being able to pick up a
Q6600 at a sensible price, any other cpu's he should be looking at?
 
The q6600 would be a good choice, they pop up on members market here pretty often, GO is the better stepping compared to the older B3's, the only other quads to consider are the q9450/9550, still a little expensive though, particularly the q9550, the p5q pro will be a great board for clocking any intel s775 quad on.
 
The q6600 would be a good choice, they pop up on members market here pretty often, GO is the better stepping compared to the older B3's, the only other quads to consider are the q9450/9550, still a little expensive though, particularly the q9550, the p5q pro will be a great board for clocking any intel s775 quad on.

ahhh good to know, the fella only uses the pc for browsing and gaming so he's trying to keep to a pretty tight budget. which is why i thought it'd be cheaper just to drop a decent quad in oc it and add a nice new shiny gpu.

how difficult/easy is oc'ing on that board or s775 cpu's in general, only just getting the hang of ocing my i5 and i'm pretty sure it'll have to be me oc his for him :p
 
The p5q series are pretty easy to oc on, a very user friendly bios, had the deluxe version of the p5q, 3.8ghz from both a q6600 and a q9550 on it. The only other s775 board i owned was an nforce 680i, great dual core clocking board, bad with quads though.
 
As already stated, drop a quad in that socket. With that mobo you'll get a decent OC of 3.4Ghz + which isn't to be sniffed at and there's not much that it won't run. Still run mine.
 
Phenom II X4 is only around on par with Core2Quad when on the same clock speed...and considering you have a decent board that's easy for overclocking Core2Quad CPU, I see no reason to go (side-stepping) to a Phenom II X4 with the extra cost of motherboard and rams...

Just get a 2nd hand Q6600 G0 or something and you'd be sorted (and with more money to spare for spending on a better graphic card).
 
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