upgrade question - 8800GT with e4300

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beklemmung

Weaksauce
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Aug 24, 2009
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I'm currently running an e4300 at 2.92 with an 8800GT and 2 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM. I have a Gigabyte P35-DS3R rev 1.0. I'm still running XP but will be installing Win7 in a couple weeks, and I want to make some cost-effective upgrades. I game at 1680x1050 but will likely be moving to 1900x1200 in the near future.

I'm going to be getting 4gb (2x2gb) of DDR2 1066 RAM (possibly 8gb - see below). I'm thinking that my e4300 speed is limited by my current RAM and hope to get up around 3.5ghz once I install the faster sticks. I have been considering getting an e8400 but after doing some research I don't think that it will make a big difference, and if I spend another ~135 for an e8400 I think I've crossed the line and would be better off spending my money on an i5 system, which I don't want to do. That leaves me with two questions:

1. Do you think that getting an additional 4gb of RAM (for a total of 8gb) would make any appreciable difference in gaming performance?

2. Do you think that an e4300 at 3.5ghz will bottleneck a 5850 at 1900x1200? I know that my GPU is getting old and am looking to upgrade within the next 2-3 months.

Thanks for your input.
 
Hi

To be honest with you adding another 4 GB RAM for a total of 8 GB doesn't make a huge difference. This is mainly a "limitation" of the games though because at the moment only a handful of them are native 64-bit applications. One might argue that that much RAM might still be useful if you plan on doing some more intensive stuff parallel to the gaming. However, I'd say your CPU is undersized for that kind of usage - a high-clocked quad core would be able to handle this.

As for your new GPU I think you shouldn't be too concerned about bottlenecking at that resolution. If you crank up the setting - which I suspect you will - you should be very fine even with that CPU...
 
Thanks for the response. I'll stick with 4 gigs of RAM and my e4300 and see how things work out.

Anyone else have any input about whether an e4300 is likely to bottleneck a 5850?
 
I agree that 4 gigs is plenty for gaming right now and I'm not sure about the bottle neck, but 3.5 may be a stretch for an E4300. I've got a 2.2ghz E2200, one of the cheaper Gigabyte P45 boards, and 2x2 gig sticks of DDR2 1066, which is all comparable to your setup, and I can't get my E2200 stable above 3.1 to save my life. Take a look at the Wolfdale E6300 for a cost effective upgrade if your E4300 doesn't cut it, 3.8-4.0 seems pretty common for them and it has VT which is good for Win 7.
 
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You're right, I think I was dreaming. I had assumed my RAM was holding me back, but I scaled the multiplier way down just to see what I could get the e4300 to, and I can't get it stable above a FSB of 375 (8x multi). That's with +.3V for the FSB (max my motherboard will allow) and a vcore of 1.375. Maybe I'll keep my eyes open for an e6300. Thanks
 
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