Need Upgrade Advice

[Rumple]

Ok here is the deal. My current rig is:

Epox 9NPA+ Ultra SKT 939
AMD FX-55
2 gigs of Corsair Value Select DDR 400

I have the option to sell it right now. With the cash i get from it and the few bucks i have squirreled away i cant quite afford the Core2Duo system that i want. I have enough to purchase the following:

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Allendale or the E4400
Corsair XMS 2GB DDR2 800

I will also be keeping my hard drive and dvd burner from my current PC as well as the case and gfx card (EVGA 8800GTS 640mb).

Will i see an improvement? Will it be the same performance? 99% of my time on the PC is spent gaming. I havent upgraded in a LONG time and i have only ever used AMD in the past. I have been out of the loop as far as the new tech since i built this PC over a year ago. Please give me some advice as my window to sell my current PC closes next Tuesday.

Basically i would like to get to the C2Duo platform as everything i have been reading says its the way to go and i could start with the entry level CPU and maybe OC it for now (as i have done some reading and realize the OC potential of this chip) and buy a better CPU later. This will just give me the opportunity to get rid of my dated hardware and step up to the latest platform. The other question i have is will the Core2 sockets be changing or will i be ok for a couple years with this motherboard and ram?

My wife will only let me upgrade about once every 2 years or so and this would put me one HUGE step ahead of the game since i will only be spending about 100 bucks out of my pocket to go to the C2D platform.

PLEASE PLEASE give me your opinions guys as i have done reading but havent really been able to tell if i will take a performance hit going from an fx55 to the e4300.

Thanks in advance for any replys!

 

[jkresh]

the fx55 will be faster for certain things (though if you overclock the core 2 it should be abl e to reach as fast or faster then the fx55), for anything that works with dual cores (or any multitasking) the core 2 will be faster at stock and quite a bit faster with a good oc. Most games dont take advantage of dual cores at the moment so don't expect a large improvement in the majority of games (unless you run taks in the background (like bit torrent, or virus scan...) while you game in which case it will make a difference).

 

[Sinn707]

Hello, here's my input on this:

You should get a GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R board instead, it costs about the same but has a faster chipset. If you manage to overclock the E4300 (which btw you should buy) to around 3.0ghz, you should see quite a noticeable improvement in speed over the FX-55. However, please keep in mind that in order to achieve these speeds safely and have a stable overclock you need an aftermarket CPU cooler.

I'm guessing the budget is pretty tight, so you should go with the $34.99 Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, in fact it is a perfect pick for this cpu. Oh and almost forgot, do not use a low quality thermal compound which comes with it and buy $5.99 Arctic Silver 5 paste. Noticable decrease in tempreture over stuff which comes with the cooler.

Good luck!

EDIT: I just read some feedback, 3.0Ghz overclock should be very easy to get with Freezer 7 pro and E4300. Good stuff.