- Mar 1, 2011
- 89
- 0
- 18,640
Hi,
It's only been a week since I replaced my graphics card (8600 GTS) by a new one (HD Radeon 5770) but now I'm already looking to buy a new CPU! The GPU upgrade has been very successfull: framerates for games have increased dramatically. The 'downside' is that my CPU (E6420) is now noticably bottlenecking the performance on some games. So now I'm looking into a CPU upgrade with the primary goal of increasing those frames a bit...
It's good to mention that I'm not trying to turn the XPS 410 into a gaming machine (nor would the mobo allow for it). I'm using a relatively low 1280x1024 resolution and I'd like to play most games with high settings on that resolution.
I've started digging some information about the CPU'S and it seems that the E6700 and the Q6700 is about the max for my system. Especially the Q6600 looks to be an interesting choice because it is relatively cheap and perform well. I compared it to a reference modern CPU, the i5 670, and the Q6600 was benchmarked only a little bit lower while it's considerably cheaper. In addition, the the XPS 410 was originally configured with the Q6600, so that probably means I can still use my stock psu and heatsink!
Alright, these are just some things I've found out but I wouldn't be making this thread if I was 100% sure of all this. So let me generalize this into a few questions:
- Is it worth upgrading my CPU?
- If so, what CPU (also: dual core or quad core)?
Thanks in advance!
It's only been a week since I replaced my graphics card (8600 GTS) by a new one (HD Radeon 5770) but now I'm already looking to buy a new CPU! The GPU upgrade has been very successfull: framerates for games have increased dramatically. The 'downside' is that my CPU (E6420) is now noticably bottlenecking the performance on some games. So now I'm looking into a CPU upgrade with the primary goal of increasing those frames a bit...
It's good to mention that I'm not trying to turn the XPS 410 into a gaming machine (nor would the mobo allow for it). I'm using a relatively low 1280x1024 resolution and I'd like to play most games with high settings on that resolution.
I've started digging some information about the CPU'S and it seems that the E6700 and the Q6700 is about the max for my system. Especially the Q6600 looks to be an interesting choice because it is relatively cheap and perform well. I compared it to a reference modern CPU, the i5 670, and the Q6600 was benchmarked only a little bit lower while it's considerably cheaper. In addition, the the XPS 410 was originally configured with the Q6600, so that probably means I can still use my stock psu and heatsink!
Alright, these are just some things I've found out but I wouldn't be making this thread if I was 100% sure of all this. So let me generalize this into a few questions:
- Is it worth upgrading my CPU?
- If so, what CPU (also: dual core or quad core)?
Thanks in advance!
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