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Upgrading a CPU, recommendations?

S

soulesschild

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
Messages
6,176
Well my e6600 is finally bottle necking my GPU's so I figured its high time for an upgrade.

My choices so far,

Q6600
Q9450
Q6700
E8400

My question is, why do people choose the e8400 over a quad core? I'm just curious. I multi-task alot, winamp, WoW, aim, movie watching, all at the same time. (I have three monitors). So I'm thinking a quad is my best choice. Any recommendations on what I should choose to hold me over for say....another year or so? (I probably won't upgrade to nehlaem until it's cheap and boards are cheap and ddr3 isn't holy hell to buy)

And assuming I get the Q9450, can the memory I have in my sig let me push 1600 FSB? Or would I need higher clocked ram?
 
I think most people who take an e8400 over a quad are gamers. The general consensus seems to be quad for photo/video editing and dual for gaming as few games are taking advantage of multiple cores still and pure mhz are still a big factor. For you uses though, it looks like quad is the way to go.
 
Some people seem to think games will perform better on a 4ghz dual versus a 3.4-3.6ghz quad. I haven't seen any evidence that it's true (and quite a bit to the contrary), but the belief remains.

With all the multitasking you do, it's hard to recommend anything but a quad. It's also hard to recommend anything but a Q6600 for value. So, unless you've got a whole lot of money to burn, go the Q6600 route.
 
q9450 (10% better clock for clock over q6600) for multitasking, should get you 3.4 - 3.8GHz, ~1 GHz overclock provided you have good ram. I don't know how far the mushkin will get you but it should reach at least 500FSB, so it should be good enough.
 
Mega666 said:
q9450 (10% better clock for clock over q6600) for multitasking, should get you 3.4 - 3.8GHz, ~1 GHz overclock provided you have good ram. I don't know how far the mushkin will get you but it should reach at least 500FSB, so it should be good enough.
Click to expand...

What would be the best 2 x 2GB kit with decent timings for such an overclock attempt right now?
 
out of curiosity what exactly are you doing with those 4850's that makes you think your cpu is holding you back so much so that you want to spend $200+ on a new cpu?

only reason i ask is that i have 2 hd4850's along with a e6750 @ 3.2ghz and all my games run fine for me.
 
pandora's box said:
out of curiosity what exactly are you doing with those 4850's that makes you think your cpu is holding you back so much so that you want to spend $200+ on a new cpu?

only reason i ask is that i have 2 hd4850's along with a e6750 @ 3.2ghz and all my games run fine for me.
Click to expand...
I'm assuming it's this:
I multi-task alot, winamp, WoW, aim, movie watching, all at the same time. (I have three monitors)
Click to expand...
 
Yea its the multi-tasking thats owning me. Like when I run WoW on my main 30 inch, the when I type stuff on my Trillian window it lags in display -> type time which I would assume is a CPU issue. Plus I've having troubles pushing the e6600 to 3.1+Ghz stable on this new mobo.
 
soulesschild said:
I multi-task alot, winamp, WoW, aim, movie watching, all at the same time. (I have three monitors). So I'm thinking a quad is my best choice.
Click to expand...

with that much multi-tasking going on, I'd say go for a quad.

Your ram is fine. Especially since quads won't OC as high.

Get a q6600 ("cheap") or q9450 if you can afford it.
 
wow + movie can be done easily on an OLD dual core. WoW is a single threaded application.
 
no appreciable difference in upgrade from an E6600.. waste of money.

Spend it elsewhere. Make sure you are not swapping to the hard drive..
 
soulesschild said:
WoW + Movie + Aim + Firefox = lag

WoW + Movie = fine

WoW + Trillian = lag?
Click to expand...

Movie = no network (internet) action = no internet lag

Where the other 2 have internet activity.

Is it network lag or frames per second lag? I'm guessing its network lag.

So you probably need a faster internet connection! ie: the internet activity of trillian and/or surfing is whats messing you up.

Playing games uses a lot of bandwidth, so any interruption for other stuff like Trillian, websurfing, etc.. causes your shit to slow down.

You might want to edit your router settings (QoS) to prioritize the port for Wow. I believe its port 3724. And lower the other ports 80 (web pages = firefox) and
Here are the default ports that Trillian uses:

MSN
Connection: 1863
File Transfer: 6891

ICQ
Connection: 5190
File Transfer: Dynamic unless specified

AIM
Connection: 5190
File Transfer: 5190

Yahoo
Connection: 5050
File Transfer: 80
Webcam: 5100

Jabber:
Connection: 5222
File Transfer: (automatic by default)
Click to expand...
http://vonage.nmhoy.net/wrt54glqos.html

set: port 3724 (WoW) as highest priority and you should be good
you could add the other ports like the list of trillian ports and put them as lower priority to make sure they stay low.
 
Ah let me clarify, it's like on screen lag. Say if I have wow running, I switch to type something into a trillian window, the time from when I'm hitting the keyboard and typing to when it actually shows the text into the entry bar is at least 1-5 seconds. I can even type a whole sentence or two, press enter, and it'll like speed show the text input letter by letter and show it sent, though the sending part after i hit enter is instant, i just don't see it onscreen until a few secs later.

Or does this still not make sense??? :(
 
soulesschild said:
Well my e6600 is finally bottle necking my GPU's so I figured its high time for an upgrade.

My choices so far,

Q6600
Q9450
Q6700
E8400

My question is, why do people choose the e8400 over a quad core? I'm just curious. I multi-task alot, winamp, WoW, aim, movie watching, all at the same time. (I have three monitors). So I'm thinking a quad is my best choice. Any recommendations on what I should choose to hold me over for say....another year or so? (I probably won't upgrade to nehlaem until it's cheap and boards are cheap and ddr3 isn't holy hell to buy)

And assuming I get the Q9450, can the memory I have in my sig let me push 1600 FSB? Or would I need higher clocked ram?
Click to expand...

general rule of thumb is get the most expensive one you can afford at this time without breaking the bank
 
I'm surprised your machine can't do it as is.

I can play WoW, watch a movie, chat, etc all on my E4300 OC'd up to 2.8 and my 8800 GTS 640, nothing even close to your rig.

I'd question whether or not it is a software issue and I don't think a new processor will help you THAT much, though it will likely help you some. Two videocards tends to be hard on the processor.
 
Volcanon said:
I'm surprised your machine can't do it as is.

I can play WoW, watch a movie, chat, etc all on my E4300 OC'd up to 2.8 and my 8800 GTS 640, nothing even close to your rig.

I'd question whether or not it is a software issue and I don't think a new processor will help you THAT much, though it will likely help you some. Two videocards tends to be hard on the processor.
Click to expand...

That I figured. I'm more worried that my OC to 3.4 is bottlenecking my GPUs. =/
 
I was thinking its a driver (crossfire), software (trillian, etc) issue too.

But throwing a quad in there would hopefully "fix" (ie: be fast enough where you don't notice) the poorly coded driver, app, etc.
 
I certainly don't think that putting a quad-core in would hurt, but I don't think it would have huge performance gains in this instance.

Is your CPU actually being maxed out? Run task manager on one of the monitors when you're multitasking like that and note the activity. The stutters that you're describing definitely sound processor related, but it could be a lack of RAM, like mentioned earlier. Are you using a 64-bit OS to utilize all 4 gigs? How many processes are open? How much physical RAM does task manager indicate you're using when multitasking?

I can't even imagine WoW using 3.1GHz of one of the cores (I don't think it's a multithreaded app), so you should AT LEAST have an entire core open to the other things, which shouldn't be problematic unless you're watching Blu-Ray movies or something difficult to decode.

That being said, if you're intent on upgrading, I'd definitely go with a quad core. There's absolutely no reason to get an E8400 if you've got an E6600. Get a Q9450 if you can afford it, a Q6600 if you can't. Your RAM should be fine; you don't need to have it match clock-for-clock with your FSB. (Plus, you can't really reach 1333Mhz with DDR2 if you go Q9450, and the performance gains with DDR2-1066 over DDR2-800 are marginal at best). You're better off performance-wise keeping the 4-4-4-12 latencies than OC'ing, since you have to loosen your timings.
 
soulesschild said:
My question is, why do people choose the e8400 over a quad core? I'm just curious. I multi-task alot, winamp, WoW, aim, movie watching, all at the same time. (I have three monitors). So I'm thinking a quad is my best choice.
Click to expand...
You may be doing all that but is the work being divided up among all 4 cores? Keep an eye on your performance tab under task manager, and do your normal task. If your 3rd and 4th core are not doing much (anything below 10-20% is pretty much idle), then you're best bet is to upgrade to a faster dual core because it's cheaper and your not using your 3rd and 4th core. Generally speaking, the only applications that use multiple cores are those threaded for them, like decoding/encoding and computer graphics software (movies etc).
 
mellojoe said:
E8400 at $190
vs.
Q6600 at $199.

I'd probably go quad in this instance.
Click to expand...
I guarantee that 90%, if not more, of the applications you use will run faster on the e8400.

There are limited situations where a quad core actually gets used to it's full potential and if all you do is play video games, watch movies, listen to music and browse the web (not necessarily at the same time), a quad core is 2 cores to much, money is better invested into a faster dual core. Not that you don't already know that, so why you would suggest a slower quad is beyond my obvious ignorance.
 
aamsel said:
What would be the best 2 x 2GB kit with decent timings for such an overclock attempt right now?
Click to expand...

I went gonzo with the crucial ballistix ddr3-2000. You'll never get to the 2000 speed (500mhz) unless you're exotic cooled (not air). Good ddr3-1800 should be fine. If you're going ddr2 on an intel board, ddr-1066 might be a good option. I'm not doing ddr2, so I can't really say.
 
Mega666 said:
I went gonzo with the crucial ballistix ddr3-2000. You'll never get to the 2000 speed (500mhz) unless you're exotic cooled (not air). Good ddr3-1800 should be fine. If you're going ddr2 on an intel board, ddr-1066 might be a good option. I'm not doing ddr2, so I can't really say.
Click to expand...

shoulda waited for the DDR3 tracers for a sweet rave party in your case!
 
Are you saying that the E6600 is bottlenecking your video card? (4850) I find that hard to believe. I bet you it just poor threaded apps on how they were written. When you are playing games..I am willing to bet most of the time games aren't made to be bounced back to desktop during play. Are you Alt-tab during games then switch to trillian? Why not fix your firewall/router to be optimal for the trillian messager. I believe when you use network software sometimes they hold up to wait to get network packets. When running games the computer is focused on that big app and it consumes most of the resources. I am sure you can adjust some apps to have CPU priority.

I am not claiming to be an expert here but calling E6600 a bottleneck might be going to far? I have been on a D820 for almost 3 years and about to switch to E6600. Personally if you have money to burn then go ahead and upgrade otherwise I would wait for the next platform CPU/Socket/DDR3. I think you will be disappointed if you upgrade now.
 
I don't know about the latest trillian, I changed a couple of years ago... but it used to be quite badly coded.

Perhaps try miranda im or some other multiprotocol client. Miranda looks pretty ugly compared to some of the trillian skins but it's very low resource and "just works" :D

Also for the stuff you have going on at the same time I'd guess more ram and turning off disk cache might do wonders.
 
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