Spec me a Quad Core upgrade

Russinating · 17 May 2008 at 19:57

Hi guys. I'm after an upgrade in the very near future of my main components - cpu, mobo and ram.

Current spec is:
AMD X2 3800+ w\ Freezer 64 Pro
Asus A8N-E
2GB Corsair 3500LL
nVidia GF7800 GT
Hiper 580W PSU
Creative Soundblaster SE
And a load of HDDs

Now I'm pretty sure I want to go Quad Core, but I'm undecided as to whether to stick with AMD or go with Intel (as I've heard AMD are changing their socket soon whereas Intel aren't). The choices I've come up with are:

AMD
AMD Phenom Quad Core 9600 2.30GHz Black Edition (Socket AM2) - Retail - £129.24
Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £68.14
OCZ 8GB (4x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Quad Channel Platinum - £111.61
TOTAL: £308.99

or

Intel
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 2.40GHz Guaranteed to run at 3.00GHZ (1333FSB) - Retail - £136.29
Asus P5K Pro Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - 85.76
OCZ 8GB (4x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Quad Channel Platinum - £111.61
TOTAL: £333.66

The main question is to which to go for? The other questions I have are: is the rest of my setup ok with handling this (mainly a PSU and CPU fan question)? And then generally any other recommendations on similar setups and prices but with different components.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

Russinating · 17 May 2008 at 19:59

Oh and I'm also looking at new graphics card, though it's not essential. One I've picked out at the moment is the Leadtek GeForce 9600 GT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (£117.49) though any recommendations of this is appreciated as well.

Strife212 · 17 May 2008 at 20:05

The Core 2 Quad is slightly better clock for clock and clocks more as well. A little more expensive but worth it IMO.

Russinating · 17 May 2008 at 20:12

This is what I'm thinking. I just feel dirty as I've always been an AMD man and always slagged of my mac friends (yes I'm ashamed) when they switched their cores to Intel

Guardsmon · 17 May 2008 at 20:13

um why on earth do you need 8GB ram?
I would definately get he Q6600 setup. I have one which overclocks very nicely to 3.5Ghz without much tweaking and on air, and my boss has the AMD 9600 and he has only managed to get it to 2.5Ghz... you can see the difference clearly.

Why not get 4GB ram (or 2GB would do most people) and spend a little bit more on a board - get something like a x38/x48 or 780i board?

You might also like to consider another cooler if you are planning to overclock. The Artic Feezer 7 is the intel equivalent to yours and is great value for money, but if you want to spend a little more look at something like the TRUE or tuniq.

As for the graphics I would get the BFG 9600GT rather than the Leadtek - same price but better warranty.

It all really depends on your price range and what you are planning to do with the system

Russinating · 17 May 2008 at 20:17

The 8GB RAM is mainly because the upgrade is to support full 1080p video editing on a regular basis. Perhaps it won't have much effect, but for the price it also seems silly not to go for the maximum. Taking that into consideration would you still recommend dropping the RAM to 4GB and upgrading the board?

Thanks for your advice

Guardsmon · 17 May 2008 at 20:24

yes. get 2x2GB of RAM - that should be more than enough, and if you find it isn't then you can still buy another set of 2x2.
Saying this. If you aren't planning on overclocking the system at all then the P35 isn't a bad chipset at all.
why not buy something like this: OOCZ 4GB (2x2GB) GOLD
It is less than 1/2 the price of the stuff you were looking at and the only difference is its 5-5-5-19 rather than 5-4-4-18 - doubt if you'd notice much difference.

Russinating · 17 May 2008 at 20:49

Ok, how does this sound:

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 2.40GHz Guaranteed to run at 3.00GHZ (1333FSB) - Retail - £136.29
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PQ PC2-6400C5 (2x2GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit - £61.09
Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS5 Intel X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £135.11
TOTAL: £332.49

lunarwolf · 17 May 2008 at 21:06

why not go for 8800GT instead of the 9600GT?

mp260767 · 17 May 2008 at 21:10

lunarwolf said:
why not go for 8800GT instead of the 9600GT?

i'm with wolf on that, no real point going for the 9600 when you can get an 8800.

Russinating · 17 May 2008 at 21:31

Any recommendation on which 8800 to get for the same or less price? Seems to be a massive range and I'm out of the loop these days

lunarwolf · 17 May 2008 at 21:32

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-052-BG&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=

BFG OC - can't go wrong with dat

Russinating · 17 May 2008 at 22:41

Thanks lunar. Any other comments on the last suggested upgrades?

lunarwolf · 18 May 2008 at 14:36

not really any more suggestions

q6600 is the way to go if you need a quad (I play games so I don't need quad), from all the posts/reviews it seems to get great overclocking potential. Best bang for your buck. If I neede a Quad I wouldn't hesitate a second and choose that one.

Not sure you need that much RAM, but I am not familiar with video editing. Are you running Vista 64? But if it really doesn't need 8GB I would recommed getting lower latency RAM like 4GB PC6400C4 (if you are on vista 64 since 32 bit won't recognize 4Gb RAM) - but those come in 1G sticks, I have not seen those in 2Gb sticks - so your call if you need the 8G then you will need the 2G sticks.

RE Mobo - I cannot say for sure since I have not used the X38 boards, but it seems good