Worthwhile motherboard upgrade/change !?

Sh3rlock · 15 Nov 2009 at 13:01

Hi.

At the moment I am running a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R. Its been a good board but I am starting to find its limits. Little things such as its not very good at over clocking and doesn't have PCIE 2.0.

I have been offered an Asus P5Q deluxe.

I am thinking of going for it as it looks like a better board. I cant afford to switch to I7/I5 processors so I'm after something which will allow me to get more out of my Q6600 and allow crossfire capabilities.

In the future I could upgrade the chip to a higher Quad core.

I don't know, is this a good idea or should I save for an I7 bundle ?

Geek. · 15 Nov 2009 at 13:10

for a short term upgrade the asus is a good overclocking motherboard! use that until you can afford i5/i7 i would stick with the q6600 it's a good chip then save up to get i5/i7

Avalon · 16 Nov 2009 at 12:24

An overclocked Q6600 to i7 is not a massive performance leap in the majority of cases. Look at it objectivly, the board you have's resale value deducted from what you're paying for the P5Q gives you a cost to change, if it's a lot don't bother, if it's beer money then why not ? Just pray you don't have to do an RMA with Asus though, they are the total opposite of Gigabyte.

SMAndy · 16 Nov 2009 at 12:44

There's no point upgrading to a "better quad core" because the Q6600 is one of the best already.

If you really want a new PC (sometimes just wanting one is enough to end up buying one, regardless of advice) then you should go for the i5. It's a better performing chip in most cases, since the architecture is slightly improved over the i7. Also, without Hyperthreading, the i5 can actually process all the threads its designed to process. i7 fails at this.