Where do I go from here?

[angry hampster]

I'm currently running an E6420 on a P35-DS3L board. I can't get it above 3.00GHz stable, and was curious what kind of gains I'd see by upgrading.


My options: E6750 + overclocking will hopefully get me to 3.6-3.8GHz. Should only cost me about $30-40.
E8400 + overclocking should get me to 3.8-4.0GHz (depending on how my RAM holds up). Would cost me ~$100.
Q6600 + overclocking to hopefully get 3.4-3.6GHz. Would cost me about $100.



Would any of these upgrades be noticeable? I play 3D FPS games regularly, watch HD movies, and browse the internet..quite often all at once.

 

[TC91]

q6600

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Your current computer is insufficient in what way?

 

[octopus41092]

E8400, since you play games most and HD videos really shouldn't take more than waht you have right now. As for gains, it really depends on if your games are really all that CPU dependant. I know for HD movies you probably won't see much of a difference as you already have a pretty fast processor. Also, with browsing the web you probably see no difference at all... maybe your pages will load .01s faster.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: LokutusofBorg
Your current computer is insufficient in what way?

Yep.

If everything's running fine right now, there's no point to upgrading your CPU. Although, getting a (predicted) CPU performance increase of 20% + for $30-40 does make the E6750 a tasty-looking proposition.

At some point, maybe upgrade to a quad. Games are (finally) coming out that make use of 4 cores, so there will be some benefit.

 

[angry hampster]

Yeah I think I've decided dump more money into restoring my motorcycle instead of uselessly modding my computer. Thanks guys!

 

[zodder]

Smart man. I need to do the same thing before riding season starts. 🙂