Intel q9400 vs Intel e5800

[Evan10800]

Hi, i have a fairly old mobo and i'm limited to LGA 775 socket and currently have a Pentium dual core e5800. I was wondering if getting an Intel core 2 quad q9400 would be a noticeable upgrade for gaming. Thanks for your time in advance =)
I was also wondering if my pentium e5800 would bottleneck a gtx 650? And if so, would it be noticeable

 

[Deleted member 217926]

It really depends on the game and if you can overclock or not. The Q9400 is a 2.66Ghz chip while the E5800 is 3.2Ghz. So in most games you will lose performance due to the loss of clockspeed. Only a few games will perform better on a lower clocked quad than a higher clocked dual.

With a good motherboard and an aftermarket CPU cooler the Q9400 should overclock to ~3.5Ghz making it a better chip than a stock E5800. That being said an E5800 should hit ~4Ghz easily with the same board and cooler.

Honestly I would not spend money on a platform that old. Save the money for a full upgrade. The games that really need a quad core CPU need a powerful one for the most part.

 

[Evan10800]

Thank you! How would i go about overclocking the e5800?

 

[Evan10800]

Best answer selected by Evan10800.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

What motherboard do you have? And CPU cooler?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Here is a very good guide. The first thing you need is aftermarket cooling.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/259899-29-core-overclocking-guide

 

[Evan10800]

Im not sure what mobo i have. It was what came with my PC. Its a lenovo ideacentre k300. And the cpu cooler is just a stock fan.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

If you have a motherboard from an OEM like Lenovo you are not going to be able to overclock. They lock the BIOS to prevent it. They want you to buy a new computer not get more performance out of the one you have. It also prevents people from overclocking with stock cooling and killing their CPUs. Sorry.

 

[Evan10800]

Dang that's unfortunate. Do you think that my system would bottleneck a GTX 650 seeing as i'm not able to OC my processor...

 

[Deleted member 217926]

No, I think a GTX 650 would be fine. You will encounter some games that just do better with a quad core CPU but that's different from a bottleneck. Most of your FPS type games really need a fast quad. Games like the Battlefield and Call of Duty series.