I7 950 upgrade from q6600?

[LoopyChicken]

I'm running the P5N32-E SLI mobo. Was thinking of upgrading my processor from the q6600 to the i7 950. Not exactly sure what I need to be looking for to consider with the upgrade.

Can I just take the computer apart and swap these processors out? Or is there anything else I need to think about?

Thanks.

 

[horendus]

Ull need a new motherboard to go with it. And currently I7 boards are EXPENSIVE

I currently have a q6600 however i have no intension of upgrading until something comes out that requeires the extra horsepower (eg a game a Q6600@3.6 just cant cope with)

Ill be upgrading my video card before my CPU..once again...the 8800GT seems to handle ll i throw at it still...

If you have the upgrade bug, ud see more gains looking towards your video card.....




Im thinking titles such as Operation Flashpoint 2 may warrent an upgrade finnally.

 

[LoopyChicken]

Thanks, almost bought without knowing I'd need a new board.

I have a gtx 295, but I think my q6600 is gimping it.

 

[xc0mmiex]

I have a gtx 295, but I think my q6600 is gimping it.

ya... big time... no worries about not using the word bottleneck here... please don't tell me you didn't overclock the q6600

/facepalm.... how hard is it to spend an hour doing the some research to find which vidcard is at the same level as ur CPU

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Q6600 OCed to 3.0GHz takes care of the GTX295 easily.

 

[LoopyChicken]

/facepalm.... how hard is it to spend an hour doing the some research to find which vidcard is at the same level as ur CPU

Already had the video card that was at the same level as the q6600.. now I have a card that exceeds it, and need a chip to match it... and hence the reason for the post.

 

[sabot00]

Video card at same lvl as the Q6600?? Anyways you need a new mobo & RAM if you want a i7 CPU - but as long as you OC the Q6600 to 2.8GHz+ you shouldn't have much problems.

 

[Snowbum]

^Yes

Oc the q6600 and spend your cash money on a bigger, better video card.

 

[jimishtar]

now its the worst time to buy new hardware. arround september there are lot of new thing commin out ( i3, i5, 1156 socket, p55 chipset board, 890 amd chipset, 44nm GPUs...), these will drop prices on the older models. unfortunately, the i7 price will probably stay the same.

 

[h0devil]

^^^^^^^^^
40nm GPUs not 44nm

 

[shubham1401]

I will also suggest the same. There is really no need to upgrade from one quad to another quad.

You won't need a CPU upgrade for at least 1 year.

And any i7 above i7 920 is a waste of money.

 

[Reynod]

OC the Q6600 to 3Ghz (1066FSB / 333) - should be ok on stock voltage. Pushing it behond 3.4Ghz usually means a better cooler when gaming for a while as you have to push more voltage into the cpu ... consider it though.

Make sure you have 4Gb of RAM in it - even tho XP32 only uses 3.2Gig of RAM you might be using Vista or XP64.

Ensure the case has good airflow - otherwise you risk smoking up the 295 under load past a decent short gaming session.

A single GTX295 should be more than enough - in checking the value of putting a second 295 into essentially quad SLI I couldn't see much to gain on older games.

The money might be better spend on an i7 mobo and a 920 (overclocked) but you will also need 3 sticks or 2Gb DDR3 ... so the cost is something to grumble at there.

In summary, I would get a water kit like a cheap Corsair / Gigabyte (but not Thermaltake rubbish), and overclock the CPU to the max stable you can achieve under gaming, and top up the RAM to 4Gb.

If I were spending a few more dollars I'd get a second matching HDD and stripe (RAID0) the drives to double the I/O in that regard.

Might be the cheapest alternative to a mobo, ram, and cpu transplant.

The ol Q6600 can still keep up providing you can cool it.

The mobo you have can handle it too.

Good luck.

 

[sabot00]

Vista only handles ~3.2Gigs of RAM as it is also 32bit. Only the 64bit version's of vista can do more than 3.2-4gigs.