New CPU, current mobo or upgrade everything?

[Xerical]

Hi,

I play a variety of games, currently Aion and BF:BC2. I get fairly decent FPS in both games until there is either a lot of people/action around or heavy particles like smoke. I upgraded my graphic card to the latest, nVidia GTX 480 1536mb. I thought I would see a HUGE performance increase but instead it seems I still get bogged down. Reading a lot of forums on both of these games they say my CPU is my bottleneck. My current system is listed below. Are there still really good CPUs for my motherboard style or am I looking at upgrading everything entirely?

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.40 (stock)
Nvidia nForce 650i P5N-E SLI
4GB ram DDR2 (G.skill PC2-6400)

Thanks

 

[anonymousdude]

I'd say get a hyper 212+ and OC that proc. You should be able to get to 3.0ghz with ease. That should help alleviate some of the bottleneck you are seeing. If you feel that's not enough then you can always try to find a core 2 quad. Procs like the q9550 and q8x00 are still plenty fast.

 

[mi1ez]

I was about to suggest an OC before upgrading too.

If you do look at getting a new cooler and overclocking, try to get one with universal compatibility so if you go LGA1156, LGA1366 or AM3 you don't need to buy again.

 

[Xerical]

Thanks for the replies guys. I wasn't sure how far out my processor was with all the hype on i7's and the like. I will test out some OC speeds and post result.

 

[Xerical]

Hey Guys, overlocked the CPU a bit... went from the 2.4 to 2812.48 MHz (312.50 x 9.0). I do have a stock fan/heatsink on the CPU so I added replaced the stock paste with some artic silver. Right now I am around 40-45c idle and 50-55 gaming. With Orthos it can get up to the high 50's. Before the artic silver I ran Orthos and it went into the 60s and restarted my machine after a couple hours. All my voltages are on auto and memory set as its base 800 MHz. Should I buy the hyper 212+ and try to get it around 3.1/3.2? Also, should I touch the memory? Right now it auto adjusted from a 5-5-5-15 to a 5-5-5-32 or something.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i have a stock cooler and have that exact same matherboard and cpu running 3ghz with slight vcore increase. I have found above 2.7 ghz you will need to increase voltage to get it stable. 60 degrees is not that hot for that cpu. above 70 degrees is getting too hot though, and mine has never gone over 70 with the stock cooler and AS5. also dont bother ocing the ram, it wont gain you much. get the CPU OC stable before doing anything else. Was also wondering what video card you used to have and what resolution your playing at. That may also give us an idea why your not seeing the performance increase you hoped for with the gtx480. You should at least be able to turn up all details and AA without much of a performance hit with that card though.

 

[Xerical]

Best answer selected by xerical.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey