E6700 Upgrade Advice Please

[rixhobbies]

Hello,

I have an E6700 system on an Intel D975XBX with 4Gb of DDR2 RAM (Kingston Value Ram). I just upgraded my video card to an EVGA 280 GTX. I use the system mostly to play games but also to do mpeg4 HD video editing and photo edititing with Photoshop Elements.

I have not upgraded anything in my system beyond the video card now for nearly 2 years. I was thinking about moving to Q9450 and Intel DX48BT2 with 4Gb of DDR3 RAM and I wanted to check the boards here to see if I would see a good performance boost in games.

Right now, the games I playing are: Bioshock, Crysis, Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan. Crysis and Age of Conan look to need the most help.

I monitor my temps using Everest on my G15 and I noticed that in areas where I hit my minimum fame rates, my CPU temp rise and my GPU temps fall quite a bit. In areas where I get my max frame rates, my GPU temp rises and my CPU temp falls. This leads me to believe that in the areas of low frame rates, my GPU is waiting on my CPU. So, I figure an upgrade may be in order.

Now I will also add that I don't overclock. I have always run my systems at stock speeds on Intel motherboards and I have enjoyed quiet, cool running and highly stable systems so I am going to continue to go with what I know despite the fact that I know that the OCers are getting some great performance.

Having said all of that, what are your feelings on this upgrade? I am assuming quad core is best for the next year or so before another upgrade, but also it seems that the higher freq E8500 might be better for gaming.

Any advice here?

 

[pcgamer12]

Stay with your set up. It's plenty fast, and the money you want to spend on that is better spent later when new CPU's are released or a SLi board for SLi.

 

[gamecrazychris]

You could get a new Motherboard but DON'T bother with DDR3, unless you find a really good deal on it, its not worth it.

 

[shoota]

well first off i can't believe that you have that evidence staring at you that your gpu is waiting on your cpu and you have an intel chip that can be oc'ed SOOOOO easily. Intel boards are nice but honestly any other board from gigabyte or asus or something are going to be just as stable and allow for easy overclocking. And i'm talking easy, free performance here. anyway disbelief aside a fast quad will serve you well. it's just that it's a crime to spend so much more on a fast quad when you could get the same performance out of a cheaper one so easily. I think alot of people here will agree with me but if you're comfortable then that's cool. I'm guessing you should at least consider it. later bro

 

[aevm]

I'm voting for the E8500. The games you mentioned don't really benefit from quads, so the higher frequency would help more than 2 more cores.

 

[invisik]

i agree with pcgamer12.