is it worth it?

[Jay_2]

I mainly play games and do a bit of video editing. Is it really worth going from an E6600, X1900XT 512mb, 22" Asus LCD to a Q6600, 8800GT 512mb, 24" Dell LCD?

 

[ashmedai]

It's a meaningful upgrade. Whether it's "worth it" depends on you.

Pricing on the E6600 is similar to that of the Q6600 right now. I would find a different Core 2 dual-core chip or go with the quad core chip if you decide to proceed.

 

[lamboman]

I personally wouldn't say that the processor is a good upgrade, but the graphics card and display probably are. Is keeping both displays an option?

 

[Jay_2]

I suppose it is an option, yes.

so you think I should sell the X1900XT, keep the CPU and current LCD and add a 8800GT and a 24" Dell LCD?

Why do you hink its best to keep the E6600?

 

[ashmedai]

An E6600 is fundamentally identical to a Q6600 if you're not doing enough to load the other cores.

 

[RoBo]

so you think I should sell the X1900XT, keep the CPU and current LCD and add a 8800GT and a 24" Dell LCD?

Yes

An E6600 is fundamentally identical to a Q6600 if you're not doing enough to load the other cores.

QFT - A Q6600 is two E6600's on one chip.

Leave task manager running whilst gaming, if the CPU is at 100%, you have found your bottleneck.

 

[Jay_2]

No, most of my games are single threaded only. I mainly play EVE or CS:S to be honest so I agree I may as well keep the e6600

 

[ashmedai]

What's yours clocked at currently? It's not hard to get, say, a 25% boost over the stock clock speeds out of those.

The X1900XT seems to be part of a very limited set of GPUs that are currently usable for distributed computing projects (Folding@home). They're a bit tricky to obtain (due to no longer being current for the gaming they were intended for), so if you have no plans for it you should look into donating or selling it for use in a folding farm.