Well, there goes that idea.

[imported_browsing]

I was going to toss in the latest and greatest Core 2 into my P5W DH Deluxe, but I realized that the support for the 45nm is spotty at best. Nevermind that my boards, I have two P5Ws, are also the earlier G02 revisions that will not play well with the newer quad cores. Currently they both have e6600s in them that tend to run hot and I just don't know where to go from here.

I'm not particularly fond of the idea of becoming an early adopter of the new i7 for the same reason I'm getting messed up by my mobos now, but I'd like to take advantage of the low holiday/economic prices to improve my systems. I also had in mind a HTPC build, but I don't know where this stuff fits anymore.

As it stands I've got two very similar setups with the same three components:

P5W DH Deluxe
2x1GB Gskill 6400 DDR
e6600

Should I shell out for a new CPU? Will I see that much of a difference if I upgrade these to the latest friendly cpus, which seems to be the q6600? Or should I just fiddle with these, try to turn one into a HTPC and then junk the rest?

Would the performance increase be justifiable in switching to a q9450, assuming I have to also buy a mobo to match it? Any suggestions on this combination? Or should I wait a few months and let the i7s seep in more? Will a q9450 system set me for another year or so?

If you had these laying around, what would you do with them? Which direction would you go?

 

[Concillian]

What do you plan to do with them that will benefit from quad core?

e6600s are no slouch if OCed. There's not much reason to upgrade unless you're going quad and will benefit from quad.

Sounds to me like you just want to upgrade because "it's time" Without any specific need, you'd probably just be throwing money away. Unless you have a very specific need, I think I'd just sit tight.

 

[imported_browsing]

I've always tried to find an excuse to throw money away. I've got a newish 42" lcd that I wanted to game on. Originally I was going to use one of the P5Ws for it, but I don't know now. Would the e6600 be a bottleneck for single or crossfired 4850s?

 

[Noya]

Originally posted by: browsing
I've always tried to find an excuse to throw money away. I've got a newish 42" lcd that I wanted to game on. Originally I was going to use one of the P5Ws for it, but I don't know now. Would the e6600 be a bottleneck for single or crossfired 4850s?

At it's stock 2.4ghz I'd imagine it would bottleneck crossfired 4850's, but not a single.

 

[imported_browsing]

Thanks. Any idea what sort of OC would be required to not lose too much with the crossfire solution? Or would the bottleneck not be significant enough to worry about in the first place?

 

[imported_browsing]

Ah, also, would a q6600 still bottleneck HD 4850 x2 or would that be adequate?

 

[n7]

Sure, some more CPU-intensive games would benefit from a quad or a higher clocked E6600, but most will run just fine on an E6600.
I'm sure you can still OC your E6600 to 3 GHz as long as you have a half decent cooler, no?

You're planning to run @ 1920x1080 i assume, which means most of the time, the bottleneck, if you want to call it that, tends to lean on the GPU anyway, unless you're using a terrible CPU, & an E6600 is not terrible.

I wouldn't suggest Crossfire or the X2 cards personally, as there are more drawbacks than i think is worth it.

I'd look at an HD 4870 1 GB or GTX 260/GTX 260 216 for your setup, of if you really don't mind spending money, get a GTX 280.

 

[boomhower]

A non-OC'd quad will also bottleneck. As n7 said either processor needs to be OC'd to around 3-3.2 to even things out a bit, obviously higher is better. I also would suggest putting your money into a video card, simply more performance/$.