Is it worth the upgrade?

[carpenter20m]

Hi all,
I am in a little dilemma (I've been in one for months, I even asked questions here, but anyway)

My current system is starting to not be enough for games.
I have:

Core2Duo E6400 2.13 GHz overclocked at 2.56 GHz
Asus P5B (P965 chipset 1066 FSB)
2GB Transcend PC2-5300 (667 MHz)
ATi 4850 512MB
Corsair 450W
WD HDD 250GB
CPU cooler: Xigmatek 1283

Now, I am interested in upgrading my CPU, since that seems to be the bottleneck. I am looking at the E7500, which will have worse performance than a E8400, but will give me a lot of room to overclock (since I already know my MB and RAM can take it to at least up to 320 MHz FSB easily).

I want this to last for about a year or so, until things are clear with i7, Phenom II and DDR3.

So, what do you think? Is it worth it? Or should I keep it as it is, until I buy a new PC. Note that I play all my games at 1440x900 and I like Medium-High Settings. I don't care about Ultra High or Low settings. I am happy with what I can get and afford.

 

[Xenonvector927]

Hi all,
I am in a little dilemma (I've been in one for months, I even asked questions here, but anyway)

My current system is starting to not be enough for games.
I have:

Core2Duo E6400 2.13 GHz overclocked at 2.56 GHz
Asus P5B (P965 chipset 1066 FSB)
2GB Transcend PC2-5300 (667 MHz)
ATi 4850 512MB
Corsair 450W
WD HDD 250GB
CPU cooler: Xigmatek 1283

Now, I am interested in upgrading my CPU, since that seems to be the bottleneck. I am looking at the E7500, which will have worse performance than a E8400, but will give me a lot of room to overclock (since I already know my MB and RAM can take it to at least up to 320 MHz FSB easily).

I want this to last for about a year or so, until things are clear with i7, Phenom II and DDR3.

So, what do you think? Is it worth it? Or should I keep it as it is, until I buy a new PC. Note that I play all my games at 1440x900 and I like Medium-High Settings. I don't care about Ultra High or Low settings. I am happy with what I can get and afford.

Yeah, a CPU ugprade would be a good idea if you have money to spare, although if you're going to upgrade to i7 in a year, maybe it would be worth it to overclock the GPU a little - GPUs are very overclockable, you will find, and leave more money to maybe get a better chip when you do get an i7 or Phenom II. And cooling isn't a problem, they can withstand massive temperatures. I don't think that it's the CPU bogging you down - my system (E2200 OCed to 2.6GHz on stock) run games just fine and has a smaller cache than yours, which is meant to be the main limiting factor for games (although that's been somewhat disproven). Even a small OC of the GPU would yield good results. Don't throw away your rig just yet!

 

[carpenter20m]

Thanks for your reply. For some reason, my GPU is too hot already...it idles around 80 degrees Celsius and goes up to a hundred and more if I leave the fan on auto (that's why I manually put it to 70% every time I game).

Another thing I forgot to ask: In the Asus support site it says that my motherboard supports the E7500, a couple of BIOSes now, but it says it's beta. Can that mean that it might actually not work? I'm sure it'll be fine, since the P5B-deluxe has almost every 45nm cpu on beta, but mine has just a few. But still, should I be worried?

 

[fullmetall]

You should be fine with the E7500 if it's ok with your budget on the i7.

 

[macabre215]

It will be worth it, just overclock the hell out of it.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

$140 for the e7500 from Newegg.

For $144, I'd get the combo of an e5300 that easily overclocks to 3.45 GHz (1066 FSB that's faster than a stock e7500) with an open box Asus P5QL PRO.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131329R
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116074

Then by next year when the price of an e8600 is below $150 and the GTX 260 is below a hundred you'll have upgrade options that your current motherboar won't support.

 

[carpenter20m]

Will a stock 5300 be as fast as my OCed 6400? The frequencies are about the same, but mine is Core2Duo while the 5300 is Pentium Dual Core (at least according to the Asus website.

 

[fullmetall]

e5200's multiplier is a 12.5x and can be easily oc'd to 3.5ghz.


now @hundredislandboy, open box is a nono for the most part and also why upgrade to the highest most possible lga 775 socket anyways when lga 775 has stopped making cpu's. All he needs is to get a small upgrade, OC it till you have the money for the i7. E8600 is not worth it.

E7500 will be just fine for your upgrade then OC it.