Best bang for buck

[CrudOfCrow]

I'm currently running this motherboard:
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

When i bought my system it was most economical to get a core 2 duo E6600 processor.

I'd like to upgrade the processor and the ram. Currently i have 2Gb Corsair XMS2 Dominator SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel.

Looking for economical upgrade ideas.

 

[DSF]

An E6600 is still a pretty powerful processor, especially if you're willing to overclock.

It's really impossible to give meaningful upgrade advice without knowing what's slowing the computer down though. What apps are you using (and how many of them) when things start to drag?

 

[CrudOfCrow]

Lots of Gaming. Some music creation using Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live. Lots of working from home and having a million remote desktop's open at once.

I tend to have a lot running at any point in time.

I'm not having performance issues sort of speak, basically when i built the box, i was keeping vista and DX10 in mind. Vista is a piece of crap, so now i'm running XP and wanting to get the most out of the machine before it comes time to build an entirely new computer.

 

[DSF]

Have you tried Vista? My experience with it has been positive.

I guess I'm lost as to what the benefit of spending money on upgrades is if you're not having performance issues. As far as gaming goes, what's your graphics card?

 

[scruffypup]

Originally posted by: CrudOfCrow
I'm not having performance issues sort of speak, basically when i built the box, i was keeping vista and DX10 in mind. Vista is a piece of crap, so now i'm running XP and wanting to get the most out of the machine before it comes time to build an entirely new computer.

I wonder why you think Vista is a "piece of crap" since it is a better overall OS. Anyways, are you using a 64 bit version of XP? Do you know what issues you might have to deal with if trying to run 8gb of ram on a 32 bit xp system?

 

[Adam8281]

I have 8 Gigs of the same RAM you have, running with Vista x64 - it's been a great system for the past 5 months

 

[18 Is Number 1]

See here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820145194
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820146731
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820146726
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820145197

 

[bamacre]

For memory...
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=40&threadid=2116041

And get Vista x64.