Upgrading Phenom II x4 840

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lessthanflawles

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Right now I have a little extra money and am thinking about upgrading my cpu. I currently have an am3 mobo with a phenom II x4 840 running at 3.7 GHz.

I was wondering if it would be worth getting the Phenom II x4 970 BE for $130 or Phenom II x4 975 BE for $145 (both on sale for the weekend).

I have the ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler, and will be overclocking, so I was thinking the Black Edition cpus would be a nice fit. I mostly use the pc for gaming but I don't really run any new games and my video card can handle everything I play on maxed out settings.

Should I go ahead and make the upgrade or will I not see a performance increase even with overclocking?
 
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I agree upgrade the GPU 1st and if you upgrade the CPU in the near future (and most likely distant) then Intel is the best option. If you just want a small CPU upgrade a 955BE or 960T overclocked to 4GHz+ may give you a bit of a boost if thats all you want but 300MHz & L3 cache will only give you around 10-15% boost.

sardonicjester

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Hahaha. +1 ^

EDIT: I'm sorry, I will make a more meaningful post now. I agree fully with DirtyFerret. There is no need for you to "upgrade" cpu right now. Realistically, the i5 2500k WOULD be a good increase in performance, but not enough of an increase to waste money yet.

Your system handles everything you throw at it? Well then that is a good system.

Don't "fix" what's not broken.
 

lessthanflawles

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already have an ssd and i figured id upgrade my mobo when i get a new cpu, monitors are fine. Graphics card and cpu are the two places im gonna look for an upgrade but i decided i'll be fine for at least a few more months and I'll see the new stuff thats out then!
 
I agree upgrade the GPU 1st and if you upgrade the CPU in the near future (and most likely distant) then Intel is the best option. If you just want a small CPU upgrade a 955BE or 960T overclocked to 4GHz+ may give you a bit of a boost if thats all you want but 300MHz & L3 cache will only give you around 10-15% boost.
 
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lessthanflawles

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thanks for the advice! I'm trying to figure out my budget right now still but for a video card I'm thinking $300 max. My monitor can only do 1680 x 1050, so a 2gb card would be overkill right? Right now the radeon hd 6950 looks nice as does the 560 ti - is the 560 ti 448 cores worth the extra ~$60 over the regular 560 ti?

Would it be a worthwhile upgrade to go to any of these or should i just wait for the 7000 series to come out and see if prices drop on the other cards and/or save up for something better?
 
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