E7600 or Q8400 or E8400

Hi all

My specs, first of all

C2D E6400 (oc'ed at 2.56)
Asus P5B (P965 chipset)
ATi 4850
2 GB RAM (5300@667 MHz)
Corsair 450 W PSU

I was thinking of making a new i7+5850 system (or some high end AM3 system), but then I decided to wait a bit and save my money, since all I really want to play is Dragon Age. But if I want to enjoy it, I really need to change my cpu.

The one in the poll are within my budget. Let me explain my choices.

E7600: High frequency and with an FSB of 1066 (which is what my mobo supports natively; 1333 is only beta supported)
Q8400: Decent quad in my budget, decent frequency, I think I will be happy with it at the moment
E8400: same price as Q8400 (in Greece at least) and tested quality dual core

The last two may not work with my mobo, even though the ASUS support site says that they are beta supported with the latest BIOS (the E7600 is also beta supported but not for FSB reasons).

The resolution I play games at is 1440x900, and I am already pretty happy with playing games at mostly high (some medium) with 30-60 fps, depending on the game.

So any suggestions and technical info on what problems I may have with my mobo will be greatly appreciated.

Overclock more, or buy a e3200 and overclock it. I have e3200 3.8 on stock cooling.

get the e8400 and oc it.

I have the Xigmatek 1283. It's a brilliant cooler. It's my mobo and my CPU that don't let me overclock any more. My voltage is around 1.4 in BIOS and 1.35 in cpu-z (with vdroop in the play). I don't want to even think about overclocking it any more since with this voltage the pc freezes if I oc it to 2.6.

Doesn't anyone have anything to say about the FSB problem I described in the starting post? How much of a problem will it be having a 1333 FSB cpu in a mobo that only beta supports 1333 MHz?

By the way, you should be fine with anything under 1.5V if your E6400 is B2 Core stepping.

E6400 B2 Core stepping

Really?! What HSF did you use? Don't tell me it was with water cooling......

http://s234.photobucket.com/albums [...] ent=ty.jpg

Kinda small but you can read it if you strain.

I guess my CPU doesn't like me all that much, considering my minimal overclocking. And the ASUS website says that my mobo supports every single socket 775 processor out there, be it 65 or 45 nm.

But I don't think 1.325 is stock voltage. To be honest I thought 1.225 was stock voltage, but we have different processors, so who knows. And I don't feel like searching around google right now to find out (I can easily be wrong about this, to be honest).

zipzoomflyhigh, what kind of mobo did you have? Did it support 1333 FSB?

No my GA-p965-s3 didnt support any 45nm cpu's. So my best upgrade option was a Q6600/6700.

actually I've never heard of the extreme and I cant find it on neweggs website.

Personally I'd recommend a cooler with a 120mm fan not a 92mm fan.

Well 120mm is always going to be better than 92mm....