Upgrade Advice

[dionisk]

Use pc mainly for gaming. At that, it's mainly WoW (a lot of raiding) and sometimes fps such as Crysis, TF2, L4D, Borderlands, etc. I play on a 2048x1152 resolution.

Current system is as follows.

Q6600 at stock with an aftermarket thermaltake cooler (forgot the name). Ive oced it to around 2.8ghz level, but it eventually drops it back down to stock to the point that it got to be a headache.

Gigabyte DS3

6Gigs DDR2

Ati 4850



It's been a while since I've upgraded, and as of late I've been less and less impressed with performance inside of WoW. Ive been debating getting an i3-530 and overclocking it, but going down that route would necessitate getting DDR3 as well. Another option ive been considering is the current deal at Microcenter for a Phenom X2 555 + Mobo for $100 and just overclocking as much as I can out of it(http://www.microcenter.com/specials/...namitedata.com). The later wouldn't require me buying new ram, but it might give me a little bit of wiggle room to save up for a new card. My concern is that the Phenom wouldn't last nearly as long for gaming as an i3/i5/i7, and that i would need to upgrade again in a year.

Current amount of funds I have is around $300, though getting more would take a few weeks time (tight on time, graduate school entrance exams and such).

Let me know of your advice/any other questions.

 

[happy medium]

You should get at least 3.4 from a q6600. You don't need a cpu upgrade, you need a video card upgrade.

Learn to overclock your q6600 properly and buy a hd5850 with your 300$.

 

[JasonCoder]

Learning to OC properly is a pain in the ass. Since knocking my heatsink off the proc when installing a new video card (don't ask, please), I've gone through about four reseats, lapping and reapplication of grease. Now my shit idles in the upper 40s on a good day. Q6600 with a mild OC to 3.0.

dionisk, I know how you feel man. Thinking of a good phenom build myself.

 

[happy medium]

Learning to OC properly is a pain in the ass. Since knocking my heatsink off the proc when installing a new video card (don't ask, please), I've gone through about four reseats, lapping and reapplication of grease. Now my shit idles in the upper 40s on a good day. Q6600 with a mild OC to 3.0.

dionisk, I know how you feel man. Thinking of a good phenom build myself.

q6600 to a Phenom = ?
That makes no sense.

Next step up is a i5 750.

Upper 40's isn't so bad with a fair cooler. Those chips run hot.

 

[JasonCoder]

I hear you. Phenoms are a good quad/six core chip from what I've heard. Been really happy with my Q6600, don't get me wrong. I just wanted to whine about my temps during load (high 60s, low 70s at times). Core 1 is 15 degrees hotter than core 4... argh.

Sorry to jack your thread dionisk.

 

[alyarb]

The DS3 does not have the robust MCH and VRM of a modern UD3P or similar board. I'm not sure how high that quad is going to go on that board. edit: google suggests there are numerous DS3's running this CPU at 3.6.

A Phenom II X2 would be a total downgrade unless you can unlock the extra cores and hit 3.6 GHz (at this speed, it would then be a subtle upgrade but not worth the money). The glaring deficiency of your system is the radeon 4850. It is just too slow for 2048x1152. Furthermore, even on your 965 board, a Q6600 should be able to do 2.9, 3.0 GHz, which is significantly faster than 2.4 GHz (fast enough that you need to pursue this before spending money. focus your budget on your GPU). If you have a P35-based DS3 board, you really should consult some experienced overclockers. The Q6600 has more than enough potential to run modern games. Your 4850, however, doesn't have a chance in hell.

 

[f4phantom2500]

are you guys serious? does a 4850 really run WoW poorly these days? i thought that game had a lot of cpu overhead when raiding (lots of people, etc)...then again i don't play WoW. i'm also pretty sure l4d and tf2 aren't extremely intensive. dunno anything about badlans, and crysis...well you're just out of luck there. i think you should try to maximize your cpu overclock before you mess with your video card. if it still "sucks", then look into a new video card. you can probably get a good $70 or $80 for your 4850 right now, but to be honest if it were me I would just hold off until new cards come around. Sure the current crop of high end cards are notably faster than the 4850, but you're looking at at least a Radeon 5850 for something that'll be an appreciable step up, which is like $300. Beyond that, I can't say for sure but I think your cpu would bottleneck a 5850.

in any case, overclock (TO T3H M4X!11!) first, then go from there. read some guides (like on this forum), talk to some people, you'll be good.

 

[JasonCoder]

Not sure about the 4850 but I have a 4890 that runs every game I can throw at it. Is there really that much of a difference between the 50 and 90?

Wow is CPU intensive during raids. Just about all MMOs are. A 5xxx series isn't going to do much really for Wow raids.

Back before I jarred it loose, I got 3.0 on my Q6600 on air with a Scythe cooler. And that is a mild overclock from what I hear.

 

[f4phantom2500]

Not sure about the 4850 but I have a 4890 that runs every game I can throw at it. Is there really that much of a difference between the 50 and 90?

Wow is CPU intensive during raids. Just about all MMOs are. A 5xxx series isn't going to do much really for Wow raids.

Back before I jarred it loose, I got 3.0 on my Q6600 on air with a Scythe cooler. And that is a mild overclock from what I hear.

that's what i figured. a 4890 is of course going to be faster than a 4850 but i don't think it's *that* much faster.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-geforce-radeon,2646-7.html

THG puts it as 1 tier above the 4850, which is not very much.

 

[dionisk]

Well, taking your fine forums advice, I began overclocking the q6600 again. Currently the max I can do prime stable is 3.1ghz with 49*C load temp. Anytime i try to push it further, I get a BSOD a minute or so into prime95 saying fltmgr.exe has broken. My guess is that it has to do with my mismatched ram.

2x1024 PC2-5300 Corsair CM2X1024-5400C4
2x2048 PC2-6400 OCZ OCZ2P8002G

I'm going to take a guess and say that the pc5300s are being capped out on how high they can go past the 3.1ghz oc mark. There is no lower mem multiplier on the ds3, so im stuck with 1:1 or higher.

Think it would be worth it to take out the 2gigs (go from 6g to 4g) if it nets me another 200-400mhz oc?

EDIT: Oh, also forgot to mention. I used to have really retarded issues with my q6600s temps. I then manually lapped it to see if that might fix it, applied AS5 and the temps still not dropping much (saw maybe a 5* difference). The previous times I oced to around 3ghz my loads would be around 70*C. 3 months later I can easily do 3ghz and the load temps are 50*C. What gives? Did AS5 really need that much time to settle and settled by that much?

 

[f4phantom2500]

you should definitely take out the 2 gigs and leave the 4 in. worst case scenario it doesn't do anything for your overclock and you put it back in. best case scenario you get a significantly better overclock. honestly 4 gigs should be plenty. i still game with 2 gigs and i can run any game i want fine.