KEeping the old horse running (E6600 upgrade)

Morning,

I'm looking to keep my current desktop running for up to another 2 years; i will be looking to replace it with an i7 system by the end of this year, but when i do so my brother will be using my current system for a while to come. The motherboard has known unresolved stability issues with the Q9000 series CPUs, so with that inmind i am looking at the following upgrade:

CPU: E6600 -> E8400 / Q8400 (~£130)
OS: XP x86 -> 7 Pro x64

Do you think that upgrading the CPU will make a considerable difference to gaming? and if so, should i go for the Dual core or Quad core?

Current specs:

CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600 (stock 2.4 ghz, 1066 FSB, 4MB l2 cache)
Motherboard: Asus Commando (775, P965 http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=wWs3CTw57UtxaaHw)
RAM: 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 800 (4x 1GB)
PSU: Corsair HX 1000w (will be replaced with a 620-750w)
GPU: Geforce GTX 280 1GB
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3 x86

I play every game i own in native res (1920x1200) with 2x AA/AF, and the system is beginning to struggle with newer games such as Metro 2033 and Fallout 3. I think that the dated CPU may be bottlenecking the rest of the system, and hence am looking to upgrade the CPU to up its performance in games as much as possible.

I've been looking at the Q4 2008 Tom's Hardware CPU charts which show the E8400/Q8400 considerably outperforming my E6600, but i am not sure how this would translate to a real life performance increase in my current system.

The other issue is which one of the of the 2 core E8400 (3.0 ghz, 6MB l2 Cache http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=33910) vs the 4 core Q8400 (2.66ghz, 4MB l2 Cache http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=38512) is the superior CPU for gaming.

Thank you very much for your help, i really appreciate it

Cheers

-Dan

E8400 for the short-term gaming, Q8400 for longer term general purpose use.

Though I'd go with the Q8400. You can overclock anytime, you can't add cores though.

Thank you very much for the replies, some good food fro thought.

The third option is to leave the E6600 in the system, but i am concerned about the bottleneck factor.

The E8400 is great I had an E8200 and it OCs beautifully too but any upgrade should atleast go to a quad. Now the E8400 isn't all that bad it can overclock into the mid 3ghz and will have a longer life when it comes down to usability.

Since you'll be mostly gaming, then an overclocked E8400 would be the ideal solution.

You do have to take into account that the Xbox does only have 3 cores, and since most games are console ports, thus the E8400 would still perform well for some time. If they come out with a new Xbox, or if the game you're looking at is specially made for the PC, then those might be the only times you would be concerned with getting a quad-core.

The Q9400 would be better, but I'm not sure if OP can squeeze it into his budget.

If you live near a Micro Center, you could possibly pick up a Q9550 for $169.99.

Will a BIOS update solve that?

I would suggest an Q8400 over the E8400. The Q8200 is known to be a poor overclocker, but the other Q8x00 series overclocks better.

http://hothardware.com/Articles/In [...] S1/?page=2

The Q8400 in this review OCed from 2.6 to 3.9 while staying at Intel's max stock voltage range, at 1.36v.

Hi
As Henry Chinaski said that you must overclock your current cpu. You should wait for a complete system upgrade because an upgrade on the old technology is a waste of money. Core i7 is too fast as compared to the old technology and if you plan to buy a i7 later this year then i suggest you buy a top notch cpu cooler, which will support i7 and other new cpu sockets, and overclock the hell out of this processor. im sure u will see much difference. this is the cheapest way to get performance and you wont be wasting money. hope i helped.