CPU Upgrade....Worth It?

[phantom404]

I recently pulled the trigger on a AMD 1090T x6 for ~$150. I'm coming from AMD x3 720 unlocked to 4 cores and OC to about 3.5 GHz. How much of a performance increase should I see if any at all? The rest of my system is 6950 2GB, 8GB DDr3, 700 Watt Power Supply. I'll be playing games like WoW, Old Republic and then BF3 when it comes out. Was it worth it?

 

[Zap]

I moved your thread to the CPU forum.

IMO it was not worth it, unless you can get higher clocks. WoW won't need the extra cores. IDK about Old Republic. BF3 may benefit from a second 6950 in Crossfire instead of the CPU upgrade.

 

[Arkaign]

Your upgrade will be modest, honestly. But considering you already had an AM3 mobo and system running, it's not a terrible move, and not that costly once you recoup some bucks on the old X3. There are a lot more games that get a boost from 2 cores to 4 than from 4 to 6/8 cores.

There's the possibility that games in the 2-3 year upcoming time frame may change this, but I sort of doubt it, considering the business perspective. A ton of potential game buyers are still on dual-cores (some even on single cores!!), so the most movement these days is people getting into quad-core systems. It'll be a few years yet before the average system is 6-8 cores.

 

[jhansman]

I made the same move, but came from an X4 @ 2.6GHz. I was also running DDR2 800, so my upgrade included new RAM, mobo, and an SSD boot drive; I could have dropped the X6 into my old mobo, but I figured I'd just be moving the bottleneck around by staying with lastgen RAM and a spindle boot drive. Things are definitely happening faster, and once I get a serious GPU, this rig is going to have to hold me for several years. Next upgrade will be a brain chip implant!