What CPU could my pc take?

[Metalface Mark]

I have a dell 9200, it has a 965 chipset. It currently has a e6600 dual core 2.4ghz chip. Theres no bios upgrades at dell to say it can be upgraded, or what to, but what could i stick in there to give it a bit more juice?

Would an e8500 work? If not, would a Wolfdale e7500 work?

My ram is PC2-5300.

 

[Moeks]

No, the 965 chipset was never designed to run 45nm chips. Really the best that you can do with that is a Q6600, which wont really be any different to your E6600 unless you have a particular need for 4 cores, which I suspect you do not as you would have already known if you did. To run a 45nm Wolfdale or Yorktown chip, you will need at least a P35 chipset.

The whole system will be a bit smoother when running lots of things at once, you will basically have greater multitasking capability, but you won't gain anything in outright speed unless the application you are running supports more than 2 cores. In other words for gaming and what not, you will gain very little indeed (unless you play a lot of Supreme Commander, the gains will be much greater here as it supports more than 2 cores).

 

[RJC]

Without a BIOS update I will be surprised if any of the latest cpu's work, on Gigabyt's website only Rev3.3 P965 boards can take the new Wolfdale CPU'S with the latest BIOS.

Sorry I can't be of any proper help.

 

[Metalface Mark]

I sort of suspected that I wouldnt be able to put anything faster in it, guess i need to track down a 2.93 chip to give it a bit more oomph.

 

[Moeks]

I doubt you will notice very much 'real' differance to be perfectly honest. I don't think it is worth you changing the cpu, if you want to really improve performance I think you should invest in a new motherboard and cpu, and being a Dell, probably a new psu and case too.

 

[Metalface Mark]

I doubt you will notice very much 'real' differance to be perfectly honest. I don't think it is worth you changing the cpu, if you want to really improve performance I think you should invest in a new motherboard and cpu, and being a Dell, probably a new psu and case too.

There is a decent difference between my two pc's with identical mobo chipsets, one with a 2.6 @ 3ghz and the dell at 2.4ghz, i get about 10-15 fps more on WOW, which is why i want something a bit faster, i might just chuck in a faster graphics card though to make up the difference.

 

[Sweetloaf]

There is a decent difference between my two pc's with identical mobo chipsets, one with a 2.6 @ 3ghz and the dell at 2.4ghz, i get about 10-15 fps more on WOW, which is why i want something a bit faster, i might just chuck in a faster graphics card though to make up the difference.

Just be aware that if it's particularly for WOW the graphics card makes a lot less difference than you may think, it's very CPU dependant.