CPU upgrade from i3 530/Asus EVO?

[Maverick2002]

I have this board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-625-_-Product

And a stock i3 530 (2.93Ghz). I may have an opportunity to get a processor upgrade at no cost to me (but within a reasonable i.e. sub $200 price range). I can also overclock my stock CPU.

This is for gaming, in particular D3 when it comes out. I can run SC2 at 1920x1200 with high/ultra settings fairly well, but after extended play my card gets pretty warm and I start seeing flashing on the screen (artifacts?).

I have 8GB of RAM and a Gigabyte (dual fan) GTX460 1GB.

I know this is speculation with regards to D3, but I want to be able to play it smoothly at as high settings as possible given my setup.

I haven't been following the new processor releases much for the past few months so I'm not sure what would be a good upgrade. What's the sweet spot currently?

Should I go for an i5 or a Sandy Bridge? Is SB faster clock-for-clock than i3?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Time to learn how to overclock.

And check your GPU temps while gaming. What kind of PSU do you have? Either temps or power problems could cause artifacts. I have a Gigabyte GTX460 1GB OC (715Mhz core) card in each of my desktop rigs. I don't game (F@H), but I've never had any problems with them. I stopped overclocking them to 820, and even without the overclock, they get to 77C during warm days running F@H. But no errors.

Try running OCCT PSU test (update DX9.0c drivers, if you haven't already), and GPU memory test. Don't do that if you have a cheapo generic PSU though, although if that's what you have, that could be the problem.

 

[tweakboy]

i3 blows goat IMO. Get the Sandy Bridge which is a ton faster. Also you get 8 logical cores, compared to i3 which is 4 no ht.

Get a 2600 Intel sandy or if your into OCing 2600k

If its too expensive for you.
Try i7 core 920 ... thx

 

[Tuna-Fish]

The two previous gentlemen seemed to have neglected to mention that no sandy bridge will fit your board. SNB uses the LGA1155 socket, instead of the LGA1156 socket that you have.

 

[betasub]

^ Larry suggests overclocking his current CPU & trouble-shooting his artifact issue - so sensibly no mention of sockets is necessary. Tweak bizarrely recommends 8 logical cores for a gaming system, and mentions 3 CPUs all incompatible with OP's LGA1156 (an i7-8xx would be required).

Overclocking OP's i3-530 is a good starting point for more processing power. But OP is pretty vague about why he wants a new processor, when his main issue appears to be graphics-related.

 

[Maverick2002]

I want a new processor because I may be able to get an upgrade in the sub-$200 range for free, first and foremost.

The artifact thing is just something I noticed with SC2, but performance in general in gaming may be limited by my CPU and not GPU (at least I assume that was the case with WoW).

And this way I can also have a spare "retired" processor in case something happens to the main one.