E6600; upgrade to e8400 or not

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maxietheboss

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I am looking at upgrading my pc.
at the moment i have a e6600 running at 3ghz, an asus p5b (yeah i know there wasn't much choice), 4 gigs of ddr2-800 and an hd4870 1gb running at 850/1000

i mostly do photoshop/lightroom combo and some gaming (fallout 3, bioshock and far cry 2)
the games are running at 1920x1080
i think that the e6600 can be overclocked more than this, it's just that the p5b is a really basic MB.
So my question is: should i go for for an E8400/phenom 2 x3 720 and a midrange motherboard or should i keep the E6600 and buy a high-end motherboard and overclock like hell.
I'm going to buy watercooling (high-end) so temps shouldn't be that much of a problem.

If buying a high-end motherboard is a better choice, can you suggest me a good motherboard. (max 150-175 euros)
 
maxietheboss said:
I mostly do photoshop/lightroom combo and some gaming (fallout 3, bioshock and far cry 2)
the games are running at 1920x1080
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I would recommend a quad just on this alone...however the E8400 would be an upgrade from the E6600
 
Crosshairs said:
I would recommend a quad just on this alone...however the E8400 would be an upgrade from the E6600
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problem is that the budget is just not there for the quad-core, well it would be there if i'd skip the watercooling but that's something that i really want.
if you're talking about an upgrade, percentage wise how much performance increase would you see.
 
What about a used q6600 from the for sale forum?

I went from an e6600 to an e8600 and kinda wish I would have stuck with the e6600 as it was fast enough for me at the time and the jump to a faster dual core is not really that noticeable.
 
well if i skip out the watercooling for now i could buy an x58/i7 system. hard time deciding. I can always start to save up again for the watercooling
 
maxietheboss said:
well if i skip out the watercooling for now i could buy an x58/i7 system. hard time deciding. I can always start to save up again for the watercooling
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Doesn't sound like much of a choice to me, I'd go i7/x58 hands down... Though I'm not sure how you jumped from not being able to afford a C2Q (at $180) to being able to afford i7/x58 (at $270 + $180 + DDR3 + new PSU possibly) just by skipping on the watercooling. :p What problems were you having OC'ing on the P5B anyway? I know it's an older chipset (P965 no?) but still, most mid-range ASUS mobos are usually decent OC'ers...
 
Impulse said:
Doesn't sound like much of a choice to me, I'd go i7/x58 hands down... Though I'm not sure how you jumped from not being able to afford a C2Q (at $180) to being able to afford i7/x58 (at $270 + $180 + DDR3 + new PSU possibly) just by skipping on the watercooling. :p What problems were you having OC'ing on the P5B anyway? I know it's an older chipset (P965 no?) but still, most mid-range ASUS mobos are usually decent OC'ers...
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watercooling would cost me 350 euro, x58 price was the same as the p45 motherboard i was looking at, 720 is 220 euro's ddr3 was 70 euros, rest is going into a cooler and vid card cooler.
the p5b would just not boot past 333mhz fsb, and yeah i raised the voltages.

I have a question about the mugen 2, does it come with a 1366 retention bracket standard or do i have to buy that too
 
Absolutely no reason not to go with i7/X58 if you were gonna spend big bucks on a premium P45 mobo imo (really not worth it, 'specially with i7/X58 as an option).
 
i think i made my choice. Going for the i7/x58 combo.
What matters most to me is not even the performance, it would be an upgrade path.
socket 1366 will be here for years to come i think, so no point in investing money in old tech, when you have to pay for a new motherboard cpu etc when the next generation is released
 
I have a E6550 (2333mhz with 1333 FSB) and I was curious how it compares to the E8400. I don't overclock, and my motherboard cannot do quad cores, so I can't do that.
 
Well the E8400 runs at 3.0GHz, so it'll certainly give you more pep in a lot of apps... Take a look at the recent article [H]ard published on CPU scaling, I believe they compared several processors at stock speeds (2.4-2.6GHz range) to OC'd processors at over 3.0GHz, in a lot of games it made a noticeable difference. If your motherboard can't handle quad-cores it may be worth considering an upgrade to that as well though, depending on your needs/use, P45 boards are cheap.
 
imo an upgrade to e8400 is not worth it unless you find some deal too good to pass up
 
maxietheboss said:
well if i skip out the watercooling for now i could buy an x58/i7 system. hard time deciding. I can always start to save up again for the watercooling
Click to expand...

go this way - i7/x58 is v stable now >6months on...then save for next gfx cycle,,etc etc..
 
I would wait. I am in the same boat as you. E6600 although I do not run in 1920x1080. I fortunately only run 1680x1050.

Anyways I think if we wait a little longer we will get a better bang for our buck when we do upgrade. My friend with an E6600 just upgraded to a GTX260 and he says it has taken care of any sluggish gameplay performance.
 
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