New Cpu

[Grim]

Guys am am looking at up-grading my Cpu which is a 775 socket running Intel set-up.I now have a core 2 duo E8400 running an ATI 5670 1gig graphics card and want to look at purchasing a quad core.Can I please get advice and maybe some prices if someone has one similar for sale.
The Motherboard is a GA-G31M-S2L

Thanks in advance,
Grim

[Brit]

to be honest mate your due a full upgrade...

775 Quads are quite exxy i would be looking at basic i5 maybe?? not sure what your funds are like and video card needs updating IMO... i can put a basic lil package together for you if you like give you something to work towards

[Grim]

My funds are limited mate :(...thats why I was just looking at the Cpu at this time.

[Hootz]

mate have a look at the amd Hex core set up. 1055T set you back $192 and about $130 for a MB. cheap and great

[Brit]

to be honest Grim i would stick with the E8400 for now and upgrade your video card mate.... what sort of $$$ are you looking to spend right now?

if you could stretch to $200 i would go a HD6850 or GTX465

[Grim]

$$$ are low for me to be honest :(

[Crash]

Just checking - are you sure you need 4 cores?

From my knowledge most games rely heavily on the graphics card and not that much on the cpu, in fact for gaming a quad core cpu running at a lower clock speed might actually be slower than your existing core2 duo :tape:

More cores/threads are really only beneficial if the programs or games your running can properly utilise them..if not then the extra cores will be sitting there doing nothing so more clock speed is what you probably want not more cores, Brits advice on looking at updating your graphics card makes much more sense if its straight out gaming speed your looking for since it'll have the greatest benefit for your $

If you really do need the extra cores with limited funds then maybe check out ebay for a Q series Socket 775

[Bird]

As crash was saying; don't upgrade CPU if you're mainly gaming, IMHO. You'll only see an improvement if you go to something like an o/c i7. Or; upgrade towards a higher-clock c2d. But it's probably going to cost more than what it's worth in any case. (and keep in mind I'm running my i7 overclocked at ~3.4-3.6 only!) so your CPU is pretty well up there.

Also: it will only give you real advantage if you have a strong gfx card. Otherwise the power will go to waste (unless you're playing something very cpu heavy, eg arma2 in low res may benefit...)

It might worth checking where's your bottleneck. (check older comparison charts, what to expect from your gfx card in your games, (eg tomshardware) if you can near those frame-rate values then you won't benefit from CPU upgrade, I can assure you)

If you're not overclocking the CPU yet, maybe try that first (although I'm not sure how well the e8400 overclocks) Apparently it can be done... I've found guys pulling it up to 3.6GHz from the base 3...that's a 20% increase, that's commendable!

Clock speed is king in gaming, still. (well, in most of the games)



This is how you overclock the E8400 (done it myself plenty of times)
Assuming you have 800Mhz RAM

Go to BIOS
Set multiplier to x9
Set FSB to 400
Set Memory multiplier to x2

[Aussiewolf]

his video card should handle the games fine seeing as tho there are still lads gaming with 9800 gts and lads playing with the Hd4750's

[Aussiewolf]

but in saying that the prices of the newer cards are dropping like flies he could get himself a pretty decent card the hd6870 for bout 260 bucks. But is it pc lag or unstalbe drop outs with net. as im with telstra and since the end of december with all the flooding and **** that happened locally they still havent fully fixed the lines