Upgrade Advice ~ E6600, E6750, or E6850

I am wanting to upgrade my E6400 to either the E6600, the E6750, or the E6850.

One thing I can't seem to figure out is why the E6750 is actually cheaper than the E6600.

It's been about a year now since I've paid much attention to the processors, so I don't exactly understand why the E6750 would be cheaper when it's got got faster Bus speed as well as clock speed.

Some enlightenment/advice would be great. Also should I consider the Q6600 and do the whole quad-core thing?

I am a gamer and also do other things while playing games, so a bit of an upgrade is necesary as the newer games require a bit more resource wise.

One thing to remember, Intel is phasing out the E6300/6400/6600. So you may run into prices that maybe higher since the supply is low. The newer faster (E6550/6750/6850) are their replacements, and perhaps is being pushed to get most people on the rated 1333 FSB.

Right now I'm on an E4400, which is rated 800FSB, but OC to 3ghz @ 1200 FSB.

I'm basically on the same boat, but would consider a Quad later on, when the prices are better, and if software makers provide better support on everyday things.

I would go for the Q6600 myself, just to have a system ready for future software, but then I would OC it as well. Not sure what your preference would be on that.

If you comfortable/mobo alllows itj ust OC your current 6400. I dont see the need to burn money on a new cpu. Only if you dont OC at all it would make sense to get a 6850 at 3ghz i suppose. It doesnt make sense to buy a 6750 and OC it when you can just OC your current cpu as well.

Also the mobo you got when the 6400 was new probally doesnt officially support 1333FSB. You will end up overlclocking the FSB just to get it up **50 deafualt fsb. Which in that case just raise the fsb up on 6400

O/C the 6400. Replacing it with a marginally faster CPU is a waste of $. If you want to upgrade for gaming, get an 8800GT.

As others have said, upgrading from an e6400 to anything less than a Q6600 is not smart. I'm suprised you don't already have it overlocked to 3.0ghz+...

SO, overlock your 6400, sell your 7900gs and buy an 8800GT 512mb.

Either overclock the CPU you have, or get a Q6600. If you do lots of things at the same time then the Q6600 would help.

Your hard disk will bottleneck the CPU very often. You could keep the current CPU, overclock it a bit, then use the cash to buy a fast hard disk with perpendicular recording. For example you can get a WD7500AAKS for the same price as a E6750, and I think it would improve your gaming more.

How about RAM? If you do several things at the same time you would benefit from more RAM. If you don't have 4 GB already buy more.

Edit: another much better use for $200 or $300 is to replace the 7900gs with a HD 3850 512MB or HD 3870 or 8800GT. Your games are limited by the 7900gs before the E6400 reaches 100% usage. What kind of power supply do you have?

Thanks for the advice thus far.

I am not currently OCing my E6400. I've actually never ever overclocked a system, so doing this has me a bit worried of screwing something up.

kyosuke, the move from the E6400 to an E6750/6850 is not a great one, so I assumed you were not an avid over clocker, otherwise you would have said up front, "I've got at E6400 running at 3.2GHz (or whatever)".

The choices here seems to be either over clock, or over clock some more, or get a quad.

For someone who is not interested in over clocking, going from a Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz 2MB L2 CPU to a 2.66/3.0GHz 4MB L2 CPU is a legitimate step, but not huge.

As pointed out by someguy7, if your board is 1066FSB max spec and your not going to over clocking that, any of the E6x50 CPUs are not worth you buying. It becomes academic, to say the least.

So what's your board?
Can it go to 1333 (even with BIOS update)?

If you're not over clocking, and the board is limited to 1066, then your choices become E6700 or Q6600. Not much of a choice, really: go with the Q6600 if your board is 1066FSB max and your not over clocking anything.

@ aevm, "If you don't have 4 GB already buy more." Crikies!

I've read several of the OCing guides. I found one that's really great and has the P5N-E here along with the E6400. I just now did a simple overclock to 1200, to make the processor 2.4ghz. According to the article I read, I could even get it up to 3.5ghz. I think I might be happy though, just moving it up to 2.66 though and then adding a new cooling fan. My temps are running just fine with the overclock from 2.13 to 2.4 on the factory cooling, but I wouldn't want to necesarily chance it anymore.

Any recommendations on a good cooler that doesn't take up and enormous amount of space? I have a decent size case, but I've heard of problems with this motherboard and larger fans before.

I suppose I really want the video upgrade before anything else. Though if I were to upgrade to the Q6600 and/or the GPU as well, I'd sell the used parts on ebay. I can atleast make half my money back on both easily still today.

Unfortunately most good coolers out there are pretty large. These two are about average size in comparison and are both very good for the price. I think they will fit on your motherboard.

ZEROtherm BTF90 92mm

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm

@Angrykirill: I would still get a Q6600. The clock differences between that and the E6750/E6850 won't be as obvious to you as the extra 2 cores, especially in future games and applications. If you're interested in the world's easiest overclock, all you must do is set the motherboard to the 333MHz FSB setting that it natively supports and you're Q6600 is running at 3GHz

Nehalem? No. Penryn's? Yes. If you hold your breath for Nehalem's, you'll likely pass out.

The dual core ones will be out next month which according to web sources can go past 4 Ghz on air cooling. If you wait a couple months (Feb-March) then you could get the Yorkfield Quad Cores which will likely overclock 4Ghz and above on air cooling (The QX9650 had proven to be a worthy overclocker).

On lesser motherboards filling up all of the slots can be detrimental, but on a 650i as long as you aren't going for extreme timings (which you aren't) then I think you should be alright. Don't just take my word for it though; try using the Google on the internet machine.