Which $150 socket 775 CPU should I buy?

[Denis54]

My son's birthday is coming soon and I want to buy him a new CPU as a birthday gift.

His system is as follows: ASUS P5B-E, C2D E6300, 2 GB Corsair PC2-6400, new ATI HD 5850 (I hope I have the right number). He runs Win 7 32 bit.

I would say computer use is 50% gaming, 50% applications (he always has several windows open).

I know he does not want a newer i3 or i5. That would mean a new motherboard and he would have to reconfigure all his programs which I know he does not want to do.

He has never had much interest in overcloking so I doubt he will want to overclock his next CPU.

Budget is $150 but I am pretty flexible.

Which socket 775 CPU should I get him?

Short term, I know he wants to sell his 2 GB of RAM and get 4GB

 

[CurseTheSky]

Do you happen to have a Microcenter or Frys near by, or are you strictly ordering online?

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you can squeeze it, a Q9550 from Microcenter for $170 is probably the optimum solution. Barring that, perhaps an E8500 from Newegg.

 

[Arkaign]

If you can't squeeze a quad into the budget, then just get something like an E8400 and an extra 2gb of ram Win7 32-bit won't be able to use the full 4gb, but close enough, and it will help.

 

[happy medium]

A used q6600 or q9450. Try to get him a quad core.

 

[StrangerGuy]

2GB is definitely not enough for gaming on Win 7, you will see a lot of disk thrashing from the page file with recent games. 4GB is the current sweet spot, from my own experience anyway.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

If you can squeeze it, a Q9550 from Microcenter for $170 is probably the optimum solution. Barring that, perhaps an E8500 from Newegg.

9550 from mc is the only rational choice now

 

[soccerballtux]

9550 from mc is the only rational choice now

agree

 

[Shmee]

agree

3rded. If it is a full retail version of win 7, you may want to install the 64 bit version if you can, so you can access all the memory. 4 GB will not all be addressed due to the 5850, I do believe.

 

[heyheybooboo]

An e7500 and a 2Gb stick of RAM would be in the $160 range.

Should get a nice OC even with the reference cooler and Asus mobo.




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[F1N3ST]

Another for 9550.

 

[Insomniator]

Definitely not another dual core. Go for a used quad q6600 or 94/9550. 2 gigs of ram would be good also.

His current e6300 overclocked wouldn't be a whole lot slower than a newer dual core. Not worth it IMO.

 

[Minjin]

How about a Q8300 for $150 -15% at TD right now?

I have an E2180@2.5ghz, MSI P35 Neo2-FR, and 4x1gb sticks of cheap DDR2. I'd like to go up to Core i3 or i5 but everything seems so expensive still. Things run fine on my computer but I was using my GF's Gateway laptop with a Core i5-430m and it is seriously quick. I can't have her cheap laptop be faster than my custom desktop.

 

[God Mode]

ASUS P5B-E LGA 775 Intel P965 < I'm not sure if 45nm cpus would work with that motherboard. Q6600 would be ideal.

 

[tcsenter]

Yep, better check the P5B-E category on ASUS Forums. There are issues with 45nm processors on some of the P5B models (due to immature or beta BIOS support).

 

[Axon]

Yes, I have that board and it would not recognize my E8500. You may be able to flash the bios, but I'm not certain.

 

[RussianSensation]

Budget Option:

E6300 / E6400 were good overclockers. Get a Cooler Master Hyper 212 fan from Newegg for $30 and just manually overclock them to 3.3-3.4ghz. Pick up some more ram. This is what I would do.

Alternatively:

Your system should support 45nm quads according to this:
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASUS/P5B-E.html

However, the price of the Q9550 is now $199 at Microcenter. So I would either get a Q9300 for $150 or a used Q9550 or Q6600.

As a side note, Core i3 530 2.93ghz at Microcenter is only $90. If you are going to invest $ into DDR2 ram and a $150-$200 processor, you may want to just overclock the E6300 and start savings towards 32nm Sandy Bridge in Q1 2011. It just feels wrong buying a $200 CPU socket 775 and another $40 on DDR2 ram.

 

[tcsenter]

Your system should support 45nm quads according to this:
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASUS/P5B-E.html

I don't know why people use this site, its pretty much useless. We've had to contact the site several times about erroneous support information. They basically "guesstimate" CPU support based on the BIOS date, chipset, and the CPU support of similar boards.