No money, Old computer, New CPU..?

[MidoBan]

Hi, so thats the case:

My computer is kinda old, and i'm VERY low on budget right now. But i still wanna get better performance for gaming/music production hobby.

My specs:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 650 3.40Ghz
MOBO: Gigabyte G31M-S2C
RAM: 4GB DDR2 800Mhz
Graphics card: Asus Nvidia Geforce 7900GS TOP

Now, the thing is that my mobo supports very good cpus comparing to what i currently have.
I went down on the supported cpu list and got to the 100$+ area. I'm thinking of getting the Intel Core™ 2 Quad Q8200.

The question is if there will be some bottleneck between the hardware?
Will i have to change some other hardware after the cpu upgrade? ram? anything?
What do you guys think?

Thanks.

 

[mosox]

You can sell the video card and the cpu and get a new cpu and video card.

 

[MidoBan]

i would skip the Q8200 and get a fast dual core like the E7xxx or E8xxx. your RAM is fine as is but the graphics card could use an upgrade

really? the end of the dual core series is better then the start of the quad core series?
because according to my budget its the Core™ 2 Duo E7600 vs. the Core™ 2 Quad Q8300. the Dou is better?

 

[mosox]

How about that?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116093

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102855

$152.98

 

[MidoBan]

How about that?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116093

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102855

$152.98

ok but the quad cpu that i gave is way better then this cpu. do you think those two will give me the same performance as a quad cpu?

 

[mosox]

A fast dual core is better than a slow quad. And the huge majority of the applications don't use 4 cores. For the current games your current video card is pretty much useless.

 

[life626]

The core 2 quad Q8300 $149.99 at newegg. And the core 2 E6500 is only $79.99. For the price difference between the Quad core and dual core your not going to see an equal jump in performance on games at least. No the dual core isn't going to be better than the quad core in some things. If you had the dual core it would be good for games because of it's speed. The dual core has enough processing power to render what it needs to and enough speed to keep up with the demand on the mid rang video cards. On the other hand, if you get the quad core(Q8300) it isn't going to be as quick for games, in general, as the faster duo core, but will be faster at doing big tasks that utilize all four cores.(To my knowledge, I don't know of many games out there that actually benefit from four cores, maybe the new ones benefit, but it may not help all that much because of the Q8300 lower clock speed). The four cores would help with the burning of videos and other CPU heavy dependent tasks. If you are into overclocking things to get a little more performance that might change the look a little bit on the Quad core.

In all, if your on a budget but have ~$200 and want to do more coding, burning, etc., and don't want to do as much gaming than the four core could be a good option. If you want to have more gaming potential, than the $150 would get you more gaming performance, because you could also get a better video card around the ~$90 rang. What do you want more, gaming or power for general desk top programs? Also the dual core is still going to be a pretty big increase in power over the single core for coding, burning, and all that, as well. Here's the cpus at Newegg.

-Core 2 Quad Q8300
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115207

-Core 2 Duo E6500
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116093&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3463938&SID=4fqg6ccfqw

If you wanted to get the dual core than you could get a video card the would be 3x-4x as good as your current one. If you want to stay with Nvidia, I would suggest something like a 9800gt or 8800gt they are the same really, I've seen them go down to $60 new from Newegg.com. Or if you want an ATI card, the HD 5670 would be equally good but has Direct x11 and EyeInfinity, more future proof you could say, I've see it on sale for about $60 also.

-Maybe not this one but something like it. ASUS 9800GT 512mb(You need to have I think 26 amps on your 12v rail, or a psu bigger than ~450w)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121352R&cm_re=9800gt-_-14-121-352R-_-Product

-ATI Sapphire HD 5670 512mb(This one doesn't require any extra power from the psu)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102870&cm_re=HD_5670-_-14-102-870-_-Product

Hope this helps


P.s. wow, I started writing this when there where only 5 posts.

 

[MidoBan]

The core 2 quad Q8300 $149.99 at newegg. And the core 2 E6500 is only $79.99. For the price difference between the Quad core and dual core your not going to see an equal jump in performance on games at least. No the dual core isn't going to be better than the quad core in some things. If you had the dual core it would be good for games because of it's speed. The dual core has enough processing power to render what it needs to and enough speed to keep up with the demand on the mid rang video cards. On the other hand, if you get the quad core(Q8300) it isn't going to be as quick for games, in general, as the faster duo core, but will be faster at doing big tasks that utilize all four cores.(To my knowledge, I don't know of many games out there that actually benefit from four cores, maybe the new ones benefit, but it may not help all that much because of the Q8300 lower clock speed). The four cores would help with the burning of videos and other CPU heavy dependent tasks. If you are into overclocking things to get a little more performance that might change the look a little bit on the Quad core.

In all, if your on a budget but have ~$200 and want to do more coding, burning, etc., and don't want to do as much gaming than the four core could be a good option. If you want to have more gaming potential, than the $150 would get you more gaming performance, because you could also get a better video card around the ~$90 rang. What do you want more, gaming or power for general desk top programs? Also the dual core is still going to be a pretty big increase in power over the single core for coding, burning, and all that, as well. Here's the cpus at Newegg.

-Core 2 Quad Q8300
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115207

-Core 2 Duo E6500
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116093&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3463938&SID=4fqg6ccfqw

If you wanted to get the dual core than you could get a video card the would be 3x-4x as good as your current one. If you want to stay with Nvidia, I would suggest something like a 9800gt or 8800gt they are the same really, I've seen them go down to $60 new from Newegg.com. Or if you want an ATI card, the HD 5670 would be equally good but has Direct x11 and EyeInfinity, more future proof you could say, I've see it on sale for about $60 also.

-Maybe not this one but something like it. ASUS 9800GT 512mb(You need to have I think 26 amps on your 12v rail, or a psu bigger than ~450w)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121352R&cm_re=9800gt-_-14-121-352R-_-Product

-ATI Sapphire HD 5670 512mb(This one doesn't require any extra power from the psu)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102870&cm_re=HD_5670-_-14-102-870-_-Product

Hope this helps


P.s. wow, I started writing this when there where only 5 posts.

Thanks! it helped me a lot.
i have some thinking material now..

 

[mosox]

The dual core is basically faster in many applications and slower only on some multicore stuff like video encoding. The new video card will give you a huge increase in gaming and the dual core + the new video card is much better in any game than the quad + your old video card.

You can easily OC that dual core to 3.5GHz.

 

[jmwpom3]

just about any game not named GTA IV really only uses two cores. Some games like BFBC2 may be multi-core optimized but they still run just fine with a dual core.

Yeah, I'm at the point where I've finally hit my cpu ceiling on my 939 system with BFBC2. I just can't push it past medium settings because of the opteron bottleneck. My first cpu bottleneck since I got this system in 2004. (this A64 setup has served me well for a long time) But, sadly and uless I'm greatly mistaken, they aren't making 939 proc's anymore and certainly not any 4 core for it.

Speaking of which, if you will allow me to hijack the thread ever so slightly, anyone have an opinion on what platform out there right now will allow for the longest shelf life/upgradeability over the next few years? It seems like intel is switching sockets every 6 months. Is bulldozer going to be backwards compatible for a phenom II am3 setup if I got that now? Or, better to wait out the new platform?

I'll move this to a new thread if this is too far off the OP's topic. (being lazy right now, I know. The GTA/BFBC2 comment brought it out of me)

Thanks,
Corwin

 

[popatim]

AMD AM3 probably has a longer shelf life than Intel but even AMD is currently a dead end as BullDozer is now confirmed to be on the AM3+ socket and won't be backwards compatible with am3. Personally I would recommend anyone to hold out for am3+ boards to arrive which will also run AM3 processors.

 

[jmwpom3]

Thanks for the input. I'm just soooo damn impatient, though.
Maybe I'll get an AM3 setup and then move it over to an am3+ down the road. I'm just bitter cuz I have to lower the specs on my rig for BFBC2 because of the cpu bottleneck.
This is the first time I haven't been able to play something at max settings since I had to upgrade to 2gb of ram for BF2.