upgrading CPU older 775 board

[fng01]

My current build:
Asus P5n32-e SLI plus
E6600 2.4 Ghz model
2x GTS 450 in SLI
4x 1gig corsair mem sticks
XP pro 32
700 watt supply

I have played around with the bios over clocking. But found I can only get it to run stable at 2.6 Ghz. 10% setting. My CPU has always seem to run hot with the crappy stock fan. It easly reached into the 80C range when under load. I have gotten it to run at 15% but its hot. 20% is a crash into windows startup. Tried adjusting voltages, but I have no real clue as what I am doing and always seem to get blue screens. I have updated my bios and experimented with the different revisions. I am using 1003 currently.

Not having a lot of money and I hate to say pulling the trigger too fast before doing enough research, I bought an E8500 CPU from Ebay. I also bought a coolmaster H212 heat sink to use with it. Should be all delivered by the holiday...hopefully.

Do you guys think I will see any kind of imprvement in game play with this E8500 paired with my 2 graphics cards?

I am hoping I will be able to over clock the E8500 with this new cooler substatially higher than I have gotten out of my E6600. I mostly play BC2 at medium settings with 24 or fewer players. 32 players and I have to set to low.

I realize now...too late..I should have got a quad core, but I didn't want to pay more than the $85 I got the E8500 for. Already went over budget by buying the cooler at $25. Just wanted to breath some new life into my 5 yr old build. Would like to try the new Call of Duty game, but I know I'll have to wait to build an I7 platform with windows 7.

Don't hold back, let me have it...did I blow $100 for no gain? Oh and what can I use to benchmark my current build before installing the new CPU. Can I do some testing before and after to see some real results in my upgrade for gamming?

 

[dpk33]

A dual core is still very capable for today's games, with the exception of some. You might want to get a P45 or x48 chipset for overclocking that e8500, but I'm not sure if they support SLI. Another one is the 780i, which definitely supports SLI. With a Hyper 212+, you're able to get it to 4.0 ghz or more.

 

[Arkaign]

Giant improvement! Not as good as a quad but I think you did well.

 

[Ratman6161]

My current build:
Asus P5n32-e SLI plus
E6600 2.4 Ghz model
2x GTS 450 in SLI
4x 1gig corsair mem sticks
XP pro 32
700 watt supply

I have played around with the bios over clocking. But found I can only get it to run stable at 2.6 Ghz. 10% setting. ...

Do you guys think I will see any kind of imprvement in game play with this E8500 paired with my 2 graphics cards?...

Don't hold back, let me have it...did I blow $100 for no gain?

If you had asked before you actually purchased anything, I probably would have said don't sink more money into the old platform...just save your pennies for a motherboard/CPU/memory refresh. But given that you already bought the E8500, I suspect you will be happy with it. Out of the box you should see a noticeable improvement over the E6600 and you should be able to get an OK overclock out of it too. The Hyper 212+ (assume thats what you mean) should work pretty well for you. That's what I use with my i7 2600K and running that at 4.4 Ghz I never go over about 70c.

 

[fng01]

oh man, thanks guys. that makes me feel better. I checked with the Asus CPU page for my board and the e8600 was the highest core 2 I could go with, but it is still expensive. There are also some quads but they were all still too much cash for me.

Yes the heat sink is a hyper 212+ I bought that new from Amazon.

Thanks for the time you guys gave up to respond. Makes me feel better about my upgrade. Most of everything I have been reading is old info and seemed E6600 to E8500 wasn't very recommended. My hopes is the cooler will give me the big push over the top for overclocking the chip to 4ghz, or close.

 

[Plimogz]

I would imagine that the very poor oc you had with the 6600 was down to using an auto-overclock (e.g 10%, 15% etc) and it pushing more voltage than necessary and thus hitting the thermal ceiling of your setup faster than would otherwise have been the case.

If this is indeed the case, I think you'd do well to hand tweak your next chip to get the most clockspeed you can out of that 8500. Wolfdales do 3.6GHz in their sleep, and routinely top 4GHz. Your board should have no issues hitting the FSB speeds necessary to make this happen. At those speeds it'll start feeling like a nice upgrade. Get it to 4GHz (up from your 6600's 2.6) and then you'll be smiling.

The value of this upgrade will be largely dependant on how much you clock the 8500. Don't leave it up to some automatic overclocking feature; check out some guides and do it right!

 

[Arkaign]

Ah yes, that's a very important note. And earlier mobos can often overvolt the 45nm chips badly if you leave them in auto mode. Stock volts and a FSB bump should take you where you need to be, or a tiny tiny tiny bump if need be.

 

[happy medium]

Just a note, there seems to be a hole in the fsb for your motherboard, from 400 to 420 fsb.
If you cant get it to boot at 401,403,403,404 bus, jump to 420.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=615676

 

[fng01]

Thnks Happy,
Great web site. I signed up and will be enjoying it. I was able to look at your link and the attachment from that guys rig. I will try his settings. Really great stuff here.

Thanks again to you all for your time in posting to my thread. I can't wait now to get my new stuff and start to really learn how to over clock.

I tried messing around with my current E6600 for some fun, but with the stock fan I just can't do much. I had it on auto again to 20% and was able to start up and get bc2 to run, but the pc shut down, figure because of heat.

When I get the new CPU and fan, I'll have to remove the mother board to mount the heat sync. When I start my over clocking I'll be sure to use manual settings instead of the auto OC that the bias has that I have been using.

 

[RavenSEAL]

You need a new gen CPU, as simple as that.

 

[fng01]

yes Raven an I7 2600K will be in the future. But I will build something like that from the ground up. So I am just trying to push what I have to the edge and have some fun with it. I have only spent $110 so not the end of the world for some fun and learning how to OC.

 

[tweakboy]

Do the full on upgrade. Your going to have to RE OS and put in your data.

I mean you can get a i3 it has 2 HT cores so its kinda like a quad core and get a cheap motherboard.

Or else you buy quality parts and it will cost you more then 700 dollars to do a Sandy Bridge upgrade with quality parts. gl

 

[Arkaign]

If OP can find a buyer for all of his stuff, there's also the Dell XPS 8300 i5 SB Quads for around $500. Have to go single-GPU with that though, so the 450SLI would need to be replaced with something like a 560ti or 6950 or so, which would probably offer more even performance than 450SLI anyway.

But yeah, an E8xxx @ ~4ghz is no slouch, there aren't too many games out that won't run well even if some settings have to go down a little. Some that perform vastly better on Quads still aren't that bad, you might see ~50fps instead of 110+ that you'd get on a good 2500k build, but that's hardly the end of the world. The real challenge is in finding settings that net you at least what you consider a smooth experience for the title. This varies obviously by game and by the user. For example I don't mind ~30fps in Skyrim, but I want a constant 60 in BF3, so I adjust settings accordingly. For my 6950-2GB/8GB/2500k/4.5ghz rig, this means turning some things down such as the AA to get there.

 

[Ketchup]

If that e6600 was anything like my e6300, Intel really bundled it with a small heatsink. The classified these as "ccol" chips, and bundled accordingly. I was really surprised when I saw how much bigger the heatsink that came with my q6600 was.

Everything I have seen indicates you should have a pretty good overclocker on your hands, as long as you have a decent quality PS. A few things to remember:

1. Pay attention to your memory speed, I can't remember if the 680i has a lock feature or not.
2. As mentioned before, overclock manually, don't use auto.
3. Make sure your bios is up to date.
4. Look at temps to verify you have mounted your heatsink properly.

Have fun!