my current system is an AMD X2 3800+, so needless to say this is pretty lousy for current and horrible for future games. (this topic is for gaming, not any kind of fancy graphic applications or what not). i went to the store to buy a monitor and me and the salesman started talking and eventually he suggested that i purchase a Core 2 Quad Q6600 for my upgrade. with the motherboard , cpu, and memory included, the price tag came up to about $CAD 500. now to me that sounded like a really good deal, since two years ago the system that i have now cost me more than a grande.

now i've been reading up on this wonderful site, and i came across the Dual-Core E2160, which is supposed to be able to be overclocked to incredible speeds, and yet costs only pennies! i was planning to save up for the Q6600 for a month or two, but this E2160 i can practically buy tomorrow.

so now i am wondering: should i buy the E2160 instead? it sits on the same socket as the Q6600, so i can upgrade it later on, but how well does an overclocked CPU perform for gaming?

firstly, is overclocking something hard to get into and requires a lot of constant tinkering (i've only ever overclocked my CPU by like 5% using some little program i found, so i don't know much about overclocking).

secondly, will overclocking the E2160 be damaging to the CPU? is there a high chance it will "blow out" if i keep using it for long periods of time?

and thirdly, how does the overclocked E2160 compare to the other CPUS on the market? comparing the 2007 CPU charts from this site, the top CPU has an FPS of ~121 in the prey timedemo. the overclocked E2160 has practically the same fps in it's time demo of prey. i understand that the 2007 CPU charts are not overclocked, and that if they were, they'd score a much greater score, but compare those CPUs cost a lot more than the E2160 and i don't have the budget for that.

so to sum it all up, should i purchase the E2160 now or shell out 500 bucks for the Q6600 which i will keep saving for for about 2 or so months. and also, i read in this thread about the new processors that will be out by the end of this year. what socket are they going to be on? if its going to be the 775 socket that the E2160 and Q6600 are sitting on, perhaps i should just forget about the Q6600, but the E2160 and then when the new ones launch buy one of them?

I would get the E2160 now.

For Gaming, it should do you just fine.
However, what is your current Graphics Card.
This is the most important part of a Gaming System.

This should be upgraded 1st and only then address the CPU.

If your current system only supprots AGP and not PCIE, then I could
see a wholesale upgrade.

go with the e2160. most applications are not quad core optimized so getting a quad core system would not do you a whole lot of good. it could be a long time games are fully quad core optimized. most games are at least dual core optimized and will work great. especially if you overclock to maybe 2. 7 or 2.8ghz. if you wanted you could push the e2160 well past 3 ghz but that could really shorten its life. and as stated above you might want to buy a faster graphics card (depending on what you already have). if you have agp then definitely go to pci express. my suggestion for a gpu would be something with 320mb memory or more. also, tell us all of your current system specs please. those usually help a lot.

What's your current build? Maybe there is life still in it?

for gaming... if youre considering a hardware change, you might be better off looking at your gpu and memory amount, as theyll have a far more substantial impact of game performance than a cpu will, usually. in fact, your current cpu is about as fast as the fastest cpus from intel, when it comes to gaming, when you bump up graphical settings anyhow, because games are usually heavily gpu dependant. if you only had a single core cpu still however, this would be a more cost effective change to consider, as many games now are able to take advantage of a second cpu core, compared to 2 years ago.

i would suggest however, if youre looking to get a boost in cpu performance (not necessarily gaming performance so much), to just OC your current X2, you should be able to get to around 2.4 with no voltage increase, or additional expenses even.

if youre looking for improved gaming performance, consider a faster gpu, and more memory if you dont have enough. (for the amount of money youre considering spending, a top gpu from nvidia or amd may be the way to go, over what you have currently, assuming youre on pci-e, and not agp)

this situation may change again in a few years, when more and more games start taking advantage of quad cores... then a dual core wont be able to cut it. but currently thats not the case, and your cpu is still fast enough.

I'd actually wait for the e2200 out in December. It will be only $15-$20 more, yet overclock to much higher numbers than the e2160.

my complete system specs are:
AMD X2 3800+ 2.0ghz
2gig ram
NVidia Geforce 7800 GTX with 256mb of memory

so as you see, my memory and graphics card is fine, its just the CPU thats dragging down my system's performance. i was actually thinking before to buy another 7800 and put it in SLI with my current one once the prices are down, but haven't really gotten around to it.

choirbass: i am looking for a gaming performance increase, so overclocking my current CPU won't really do me much good.

3800+X2 is not cutting edge, but I agree with some other posters here that a Graphics card upgrade is more beneficial.

the 7800 is not good enough anymore?

its not... having a 7800GT 256 myself, its barely getting what most would consider to be acceptable framerates anymore with current games, unless you just play RPGs (or reduce your settings and resolution), whichcase ~20fps+ avg is usually okay.

you have enough memory, so no real need to upgrade there... but moving up to an 8800 or x2900 is going to at the very least double your framerates, oftentimes more. now if you 7800GTX had 512MB ram, the difference would be smaller... but with only 256MB, youre in the same situation i am pretty much, for current games anyhow.

thg had an article before that tested an x2 3800+ paired with an 8800GTX, and that outperformed any of the current intel based cpus with lesser gpus... youll get about a ~5fps boost from an upgraded cpu at increasing resolutions, compared to a 200%+ boost from an upgraded gpu at increasing resolutions (assuming you go with a current top range gpu)

an x2 3800 isnt cutting edge anymore, as another post said, but it is still more than capable of handling current games, if your gpu is capable anyhow.

hm, i see. well what if i get another 7800 and SLI it with my current? will that improve my performance better than getting a cpu?

that would help better too actually assuming your gaming resolution makes it worthwhile (if the resolution is too low, youll get very little improvement from going with sli). and it wont be as much of an improvement as going with just a single current generation gpu (8800 or x2900 in particular), but it will provide more of an improvement than upgrading your cpu will. you can expect to see up to a 30% or so boost by going with sli, more or less depending on how well the game can take advantage of it.

going with sli though, youll also still be limited to having only 256MB of total memory. but iirc, going with sli effectively doubles the buffer for each frame rendered (1/2 frame is rendered by each card)... making increasing resolutions able to benefit a lot more than lower resolutions do. gaming at 1280x1024 res and lower for instance, is not high enough to benefit much at all from from sli... if you were to use 1920x1200 or around there however, that would benefit a lot more from sli.

but, if your game performance is suffering, you can bet that its due to your gpu. the 7800 series was really fast in 2005, but its been pushed aside quite a few times since then by faster and faster gpus... i probably wont be upgrading mine until it becomes completely unbearable to play games with, when the next geforce series or the one after that is released (2009 or so)... by then current games may be too demanding on all but the near lowest settings, and even then it might be too much to handle.

as far as where a new cpu will help, that would be if youre running at really low resolutions and settings, making it so the gpu is no longer a performance bottleneck, making the reason for upgrading questionable then too. with lower visual settings, you might see framerates in the hundreds... which is really kinda pointless tbh, since the difference between just under 100fps and way over 200fps simply isnt noticable except on paper... and if you have verticle sync enabled, youll probably be capped at about 60fps or so anyhow (which coincidentally is still enough for pretty smooth gameplay).

a pair of 7800 in sli will not ocmpete with a 8800 GTS / HD2900 series

buy one of those cards + a power supply (if your powersupply isnt good enough)

Then overclock your current cpu a touch and you will be much further ahead then just a cpu upgrade

if your mobo can support it with BIOS update, just get a cheap 3 or 4 core Phenom, but yeah, that GTX isnt going to cut it for much longer

i might be wrong, but it sounds like the OP is running a s939 system, based on the time it was purchased... i dont think sam2 was really around till sometime later in 2006, so a phenom wont work if this is the case.