CPU Upgrade Advice

[clarkey01]

I have a bit of money at the minute but I am going back to unversity (college for the us) in sept and I would like to upgrade my PC in the summer, because I wont be able to for a good while!


What are my options in July???, what should I be looking at (core name), it will have to be a good enough performance jump from my core 2 @ 2.8 Ghz.

I was thinking in july ;

64-bit Vista

8GB of Ram

CPU upgrade ( Budget for CPU will be £200 ($370)

At xmas I will upgrade to a 9 series Nvidia.

I do alot of in house VM, gaming, CAD work by the way.

Many thanks guys :beer:

 

[Idontcare]

Will you be living in a dorm room?

I did for 2 years and having a heater box of a computer inside the same living space you eat/sleep/watch TV and entertain friends will be a drag.

Consider looking into some nice cool (low power) 45nm chips, dual or quad.

Also in college you will likely enjoy the beer/pizza/relationships more with the extra couple hundred bucks you'd keep in your pocket if you went for a cheap dual-core over a moderately more expensive quad.

But if you have the extra cash, and if your CAD apps use a quad (I don't know, but even if it is isn't CAD compute intensive only during the final rendering step?) and you aren't going to be living in a 12x20ft box for 9 months then I'd say go for a nice Q9450.

Oh and CAD benefits a lot from nice video cards IRCC from other posters, so maybe the dosh should be spent on GPU?

 

[clarkey01]

Well I like my power, i have been a bit out of the loop in the last 6 months, so for a budget of $370 which CPU shoud I'd be getting?

I know what you mean about the rooms, I need t fit in my 42inch TV and PS3 eekkkk

 

[Winterpool]

Oi, Clarkey, 200 quid are worth almost $400 greenbacks these days ($1.98 US appears to be the current exchange rate)! I'm made painfully aware of this whenever I think of ordering a book from Amazon UK or Blackwell (I've got to make do with UK sellers on eBay these days). That said, we all know kit tends to cost a bit more in the UK, so I'm not sure what you can get for 200 quid over there right now.

Are you facing the same 'Wolfdale' (Intel's 45nm 'Penryn' desktop chips) shortages we're all whingeing about on this side of the pond? If you've already a Core 2 Duo at 2.8 GHz, you'll not want to settle for anything less than a Penryn-based cpu (E8000s or Q9000s), maybe quadcore. Though quads do use a lot of power...

Ideally, by the summer, Intel will at least have opened the floodgates on Penryn distribution, so you should be able to get one at much more reasonable prices then. It's hard to predict right now, since prices are currently marked up 25 per cent or more over initial retail for Wolfdales. But things have to get better by July, haven't they? It's all up to Intel, really.

 

[Markfw]

I would say a Q9450 is in your future !

 

[nyker96]

if you doing 2.8Ghz why not get a E8400 which can clock up to 4.2. that's an upgrade you will notice. Or in July consider a low end Q9xxx that's coming out at the same price point as Q6600 now. But you are multiplier challenged so can't be overclocked much past 3.6Ghz. Still an excellent option. Get some decent RAM to go with it though.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: Winterpool
Oi, Clarkey, 200 quid are worth almost $400 greenbacks these days ($1.98 US appears to be the current exchange rate)! I'm made painfully aware of this whenever I think of ordering a book from Amazon UK or Blackwell (I've got to make do with UK sellers on eBay these days). That said, we all know kit tends to cost a bit more in the UK, so I'm not sure what you can get for 200 quid over there right now.

Are you facing the same 'Wolfdale' (Intel's 45nm 'Penryn' desktop chips) shortages we're all whingeing about on this side of the pond? If you've already a Core 2 Duo at 2.8 GHz, you'll not want to settle for anything less than a Penryn-based cpu (E8000s or Q9000s), maybe quadcore. Though quads do use a lot of power...

Ideally, by the summer, Intel will at least have opened the floodgates on Penryn distribution, so you should be able to get one at much more reasonable prices then. It's hard to predict right now, since prices are currently marked up 25 per cent or more over initial retail for Wolfdales. But things have to get better by July, haven't they? It's all up to Intel, really.

Hi Mate, yeah we seem to pay a little bit more for most things, including my education (around $33,000/£24,000), I may go for wolfdale then, I'd really like a quad cos this needs to last me 2 years , I have just done my placement year and I have some money to splash now and I don't want to bother with a car just yet...

Yeah books aren't that cheap, I paid $55 for a cisco CCNA book the other week, it will pay for its self in the long run but for a student its a bit of a kick in the balls..

I do lot of VM testing, setting up domians and playing deployment solution , hence why I need to go 64-bit on the OS side of things, get 8GB of ram and a qaud....Christmas I'll get me a 9800..My MB supports 1333 FSB, will this be a limiting factor in the long run?

Many thanks

 

[clarkey01]

Just been looking at wolfdale 3Ghz....Will there be a similar quad out in the summer, will the same OC potential ?

 

[Winterpool]

If you're going to be running a lot of test VMs, you'll definitely want to give serious consideration to quadcores, and given how much more power they require, you'll probably want a Penryn quadcore ('Yorkfield') cpu. You may want to read X-bit labs' piece on the Q9300, especially its overclocking capabilites. That said, the older Q6600 has also been overlocked to well over 3 GHz by many users.

Of course at present, Yorkfields appear to be even rarer than dualcore Wolfdales, but ideally the situation will be much improved by the summer.

 

[clarkey01]

Would I get more performance from a 3Ghz quad such as yorkfield or more out of a dual core 3.6 Ghz wolfdale?

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Would I get more performance from a 3Ghz quad such as yorkfield or more out of a dual core 3.6 Ghz wolfdale?

Depends on the application. VMs will benefit greatly from the extra 2 cores; As will many other high-end applications; But the vast majority of software remains, at best, dual-core aware. So in these cases the 3.6 Wolfdale will be faster. IMHO, once you hit 3GHz, who's counting? I'd personally take the extra cores over a few hundred extra MHz.

 

[GEOrifle]

Just wait until end of year when USA will switch to YAN.

 

[clarkey01]

Thanks guys , but I've decided to just do a cycle of 2 years instead of upgrades every year ...I built this machine July 2007, I will see what I can get in July 2009 for around £1000 = $1600 ish

 

[clarkey01]

Anyone agree with my way of thinking?

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: GEOrifle
Just wait until end of year when USA will switch to YAN.

wtf is yan...

 

[Winterpool]

Jah, considering what you've already got, you're not missing too much by foregoing the Penryn 'tick' of the Intel cycle. Wait for the 'tock', ie Nehalem in late 2008 - 2009. You'll get a much more appreciable jump in performance from your overclocked E6600.

I on the other hand am still running on an Athlon XP 2500+, 32-bit, singlecore, so you'll understand why I anticipate my Wolfdale system build with rather more urgency. My Xeon E3110 (purchased for $205 US) should arrive on Monday or Tuesday...

That said, if you do engage in a lot of VM testing, you might want to consider a quadcore Penryn (ie 'Yorkfield') when supplies and prices are more approachable. Even the Q6600, decently overclocked, would probably provide a far superior VM experience to the E6600. The X-bit labs review of the Q9300 I mentioned earlier is helpful both for its discussion of possible quadcore overclocking limitations (the low multiplier of the Q9300 is an issue) and comparison to dualcore Penryns ('Wolfdale').

By the way, I'll be thrilled when the dollar returns to $1.60 = 1 pound sterling in 2009.