LGA 775 Upgrade vs. New Components

[turbinetester]

I have an EVGA 7800i SLI motherbaord with Core 2 Duo E6550 at 2.33 GHz with 8GB of RAM and an EVGA 9800 GTX+ 1GB GPU. Though i used to play WOW i never really game anymore. The PC is our main home office PC which sees heavy use. Frequently it get's laggy in the desktop environment because of the amount of tabs open in Chrome (for me) and Firefox (for my wife). Websites stutter, mouse stutters. Frequently i see the CPU at 100% usage. My thinking is that i can get an LGA775 Core 2 Quad processor for $75-$150 on ebay. It's a drop in upgrade with no OS reinstalls and i can keep all other hardware in place. In our environment, i think i can get at least another 2+ years out of the desktop before having to upgrade the core components. I'm just looking for opinions on whether this is money well spent. Thank you for any responses and help provided!

Chris

 

[Vitric9]

If you have the money and you want a better experience than you should consider upgrading. If you replaced the your CPU with a Core 2 Quad (for example Core 2 Q6600) you might not even notice a big difference. Chrome does use a lot of RAM and 8GB is enough, even DDR2 Memory. If your just using your PC for Browsing, Media, Some work applications like MIcrosoft office or something you will not really see a big difference unless your using a Application or Game that makes use of More cores. I would recommend an SSD and a Reinstall of Windows before buying a new PC if you do not need one. Finding an LGA 775 CPU that will give you a noticeable improvement may be a feat in itself.
If you do upgrade and want that Fast Performance I would recommend going with an i3 3220(LGA1155) or i3 4130(LGA1150) Both are available and a decent price and have great single threaded performance

 

[Obnoxious]

It depends on which Core 2 Quad processor you purchase. If you purchase even the Q6600, it will provide a major boost in performance over your current CPU. Core 2 Quad processors are still viable; the best being the Q9905, which performs similar to an Ivy Bridge i3-3240.

If you simply use your computer for web browsing, office documents and so on with no gaming, you should be more than fine with the Q6600. As for your other components, there is a possibility your hard drive is slowing performance down. You could consider a SSD, but they are still expensive and will cost you more in upgrades.

The best you can do to your desktop is a C2Q and a SSD; but if you don't want to spend too much, a C2Q should be good enough on it's own.

All the best.

 

[turbinetester]

I forgot to mention that i have 120GB SSD. Sounds like hardware is not really my problem.

 

[bmacsys]

I have an EVGA 7800i SLI motherbaord with Core 2 Duo E6550 at 2.33 GHz with 8GB of RAM and an EVGA 9800 GTX+ 1GB GPU. Though i used to play WOW i never really game anymore. The PC is our main home office PC which sees heavy use. Frequently it get's laggy in the desktop environment because of the amount of tabs open in Chrome (for me) and Firefox (for my wife). Websites stutter, mouse stutters. Frequently i see the CPU at 100% usage. My thinking is that i can get an LGA775 Core 2 Quad processor for $75-$150 on ebay. It's a drop in upgrade with no OS reinstalls and i can keep all other hardware in place. In our environment, i think i can get at least another 2+ years out of the desktop before having to upgrade the core components. I'm just looking for opinions on whether this is money well spent. Thank you for any responses and help provided!
Chris

Every once in a while you can snatch a Q6600 on eBay for $50 or less. I have routinely overclocked these to 3.0 GHz with great stability upping the bus speed if you watch your ram multiplier. The four cores vs two plus a 600 MHz overclock would be a good kick in the pants for $50. Or maybe your mobo supports a Q8400 you could pick one up cheaply also.

 

[Vitric9]

I have an EVGA 7800i SLI motherbaord with Core 2 Duo E6550 at 2.33 GHz with 8GB of RAM and an EVGA 9800 GTX+ 1GB GPU. Though i used to play WOW i never really game anymore. The PC is our main home office PC which sees heavy use. Frequently it get's laggy in the desktop environment because of the amount of tabs open in Chrome (for me) and Firefox (for my wife). Websites stutter, mouse stutters. Frequently i see the CPU at 100% usage. My thinking is that i can get an LGA775 Core 2 Quad processor for $75-$150 on ebay. It's a drop in upgrade with no OS reinstalls and i can keep all other hardware in place. In our environment, i think i can get at least another 2+ years out of the desktop before having to upgrade the core components. I'm just looking for opinions on whether this is money well spent. Thank you for any responses and help provided!

Chris

other than Browsing online with Chrome what other applications do you use on this PC?

 

[turbinetester]

Firefox is my wife's browser, we use separate to prevent login issues with Facebook and Gmail, and we use several business software applications and do a lot of document scanning to pdf. I occasionally recreate with RealFlight G5.5 (an RC FLight Simulator) and Virtual RC( RC Car simulator) both of which can tax a systems resources and capabilities.

 

[Vitric9]

I could not really find to many siste that give the recommended Specs to run those games. As far as I can tell your PC should be able to Run both of those quiet well. ....From what I read in original post It sounds like Your System is being overloaded with too many processes at one time, And your CPU is being overloaded as well as Memory usage being an issue.IF your Using 3d applications such as Flight sims or games and trying to browse Chrome That would eat up CPU/RAM... Even now 4Gb or RAM is enough for most games. I recommend Cleaning up your PC, Virus Scan Disable any running applications or processes that you don't need...ect ..Also....., It could not hurt to get a 120Gb SSD ( 64Gb Minimum) and reinstall Windows on it... That way in the meantime you can at least have a better time until you do upgrade your PC...BTW what OS are you running?

 

[Zircoben]

I have an EVGA 7800i SLI motherbaord with Core 2 Duo E6550 at 2.33 GHz with 8GB of RAM and an EVGA 9800 GTX+ 1GB GPU. Though i used to play WOW i never really game anymore. The PC is our main home office PC which sees heavy use. Frequently it get's laggy in the desktop environment because of the amount of tabs open in Chrome (for me) and Firefox (for my wife). Websites stutter, mouse stutters. Frequently i see the CPU at 100% usage. My thinking is that i can get an LGA775 Core 2 Quad processor for $75-$150 on ebay. It's a drop in upgrade with no OS reinstalls and i can keep all other hardware in place. In our environment, i think i can get at least another 2+ years out of the desktop before having to upgrade the core components. I'm just looking for opinions on whether this is money well spent. Thank you for any responses and help provided!

Chris

Probably the best thing you can do is:

1. Reinstall Windows
2. Get an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400

The E8400 uses a newer architecture than the Q6600, and it gets far better single-thread performance, and it costs not much more at all. Just a quick search on eBay, it costs about $50.

Doing both those things will make your computer significantly faster, and it will breeze through your tasks.

Hope that helps!