What's an upgrade for my C2D E8400 @ 4.0 GHz?

[sofakng]

Here's my current system:

ASUS P5B Deluxe
C2D E8400 @ 4.0 GHz
8 GB DDR2

If I wanted to move up to a quad core i7, would would I need to buy to be an upgrade? (not considering the additional of two more cores since I only have a dual core right now)

Also, what could I expect to get for my system listed above? It looks like eBay would give me about $100 each for the CPU and MOBO but I'm not sure about the RAM and I'm not sure what a "total" upgrade would cost.

 

[Surutcra]

Right now, pretty much the i5 760, i7 870 and i7 950 where the main deciding factors are the need for hyper-threading in i7 chips and pci-e bandwidth from the lga 1366 for sli or a crossfire set up. I'm in the same boat and might just go ahead and wait 4 more months for sandy bridge.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

wait for the next tick. or is it a tock now?

 

[Face2Face]

Wait until Bulldozer and Socket 2011 come into play.

 

[superccs]

Depending on the speed of the DDR2 you can still get decent money, I sold 4Gbs of 1000mhz G.Skill for $90 5 months ago...which may have been more than what I paid for it originally.

Now is not the best time to grab new gear as mentioned, things are going to get crazy when newly released hardware hits later in the year.

 

[happy medium]

Sell your e8400 and buy a q9550.

 

[bryanW1995]

what are you using it for? depending upon your usage you could get an enormous upgrade from going to c2q/i7, or you might get little to no upgrade.

 

[Surutcra]

what are you using it for? depending upon your usage you could get an enormous upgrade from going to c2q/i7, or you might get little to no upgrade.

True. if you're just gaming the e8400 is still plenty for most games and you won't see much of a difference unless its a newer higher threaded title. But if you're video encoding the performance Increase will be huge going to an i7 build. Lastly if you're only interested in gaming but still want a quad core the i5 760 will do really well for higher threaded games and you will save ~$60+ compared to the i7's for not having hyperthreading (which is useless for games).

 

[bunnyfubbles]

wait for the next tick. or is it a tock now?

shrinks/derivatives are ticks, new architectures are tocks

so Intel Sandy Bridge based stuff would be a tock

 

[airdata]

Here's my current system:

ASUS P5B Deluxe
C2D E8400 @ 4.0 GHz
8 GB DDR2

I'm not sure what a "total" upgrade would cost.

You're about right on the prices. There's a p5b+q9300+4gb that sold on ebay for $270. Which is only going to cover a portion of the upgrade cost.

 

[sofakng]

How many newer games actually use up for four cores/threads?

I'm under the impression that most newer games use them and that's why I'm considering the upgrade...

 

[Bman123]

Sell the E8400 for $100 and buy a Q9550

 

[sofakng]

Will I be able to get the Q9550 to 4.0 GHz as easily as I did with the E8400? (I'm using the ThermalrightTRUE air cooler)

Unless I'm very wrong, I thought most games really only use two cores so an E8400 @ 4.0 GHz > Q9550 @ 3.5 GHz?

 

[Caribbean Geek]

Most people is able to overclock the Q9550 between 3.60Ghz and 4.0GHz with no problems, just make sure that you are feeding the CPU with the proper Vcore value, good cooling and good PLL Voltage settings along with loose RAM timings.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I would think spawing two threads on the Q9550 would be faster at 3.5ghz than two threads on the E8400 @ 4.0ghz, due to the 12mb L2 vs 6MB on the E8400. If not just about the same speed. Not just for the cache, but if you have an app using two entire cores, your dual core is also running all kinds of background processes that will inevitably slow it down.

Assuming the P5B is the P45 chipset (or similar) I would think you would need a FSB of 470 to get to 4ghz. That's kind of a stretch. I was able to get my semi-OC friendly DS3L to 475FSB but i couldn't get it stable. 3.6-3.7ghz should be reachable though. I assume running a Q9550 @ 3.6-3.7ghz would be about double the CPU performance you're getting now.

These are all opinions btw. Others can chime in if i'm wrong.

 

[Caribbean Geek]

I would think spawing two threads on the Q9550 would be faster at 3.5ghz than two threads on the E8400 @ 4.0ghz, due to the 12mb L2 vs 6MB on the E8400.

That's not true, a Q9550 is basically two E8x00 processors on a MCM package, which means that in single threaded scenarios, it will still have access to the 6MB of shared cache between the first two cores, the other 6MB of cache are shared between the 3 and 4 core. If there's a thread running on the 2nd core that requires access to the 3rd core cache, means that it must travel from the 2nd core to all the way to the FSB and back to the 3rd core.

Assuming the P5B is the P45 chipset (or similar) I would think you would need a FSB of 470 to get to 4ghz. That's kind of a stretch. I was able to get my semi-OC friendly DS3L to 475FSB but i couldn't get it stable. 3.6-3.7ghz should be reachable though. I assume running a Q9550 @ 3.6-3.7ghz would be about double the CPU performance you're getting now.

These are all opinions btw. Others can chime in if i'm wrong.

Double the performance in multi threaded scenarios.

 

[extra]

Wait for BD and socket 2011. E8400 at 4ghz is a gnarly cpu still.