E2180 @ 3Ghz worth upgrading to E8400?

[wedge22]

So is it worth it, I have not played alot of games recently but plan to buy Fallout 3 and play it alot. Machine spec in sig. Also thinking about upgrading to a 4850 if thats much of an upgrade from my 8800GT??

[crazyfool]

Not sure about the cpu but i doubt that there will be a noticeable difference between an 8800gt and a 4850

[NightshadowUK]

Games at the minute don't gain from beyond 3GHz so unless you're number crunching then there's not really any point in getting a E8400.

And while a HD4850 is quicker than a 8800GT I wouldn't say it was a worthwhile upgrade. Maybe look at the HD4870, what resolution do you game at?

[Webby]

The 8800Gt and 3870 offered similar performance and the 4850 offers plenty more than that it would be a worth while upgrade in my opinion if you are are not happy with your current card, obviously if you can justify the £170+ then the GTX260 or HD4870 will give you more graphics ooph but the 4850 is hard to beat in bang for buck, and if your gaming at 1680*1050 or less then you will need nothing more even at 1920*1200 the 4850 is a worthy card.

[richieuk]

if you can sell your 8800gt and put that toward an upgrade then thats the way to go. It will offer a fair increase, not a massive one but big enough to see the difference. The processor should also give you a boost, but how much more noticable i couldn't say.

[Emirzan]

No doubt that the E8400 is a good chip but personally if I was going dual core I wouldn't bother getting anything better than the E7200 for gaming. You'll benefit quite a bit from the increased cache size (1MB to 3MB) and with a small overclock it's plenty fast enough for modern games if paired with a decent graphics card.

[GSte]

Or get an E5200, and with a reasonable overclock (with an aftermarket cooler of course) you'll be laughing. Bought one on Friday to mess around with and it's sat at 3.8GHz under a cheap Freezer7Pro with load temps of 59C. And it feels like it will go higher too. Boots into windows at 4GHz, just need to get it stable and I'm laughing.

[Mithrandir]

Check out THIS article.

[wedge22]

Would it just be a better idea to upgrade my RAM so I have 4Gb instead of 2Gb?
My resolution is 1680x1050

[cptwhite_uk]

Wedge, what's your budget? Personally if you're 2Gb RAM / 8800GT 512Mb / E2180 @ 3Ghz my priority would be:

Get an 4870 or GTX260 for £170ish
Get an extra 2Gb RAM
Upgrade your processor to a Q6600

For gaming the graphics card will make the biggest difference. I've just upgraded from 8800GT to 4870 and the performance difference was noticeable but not mind blowing. It's worth the upgrade.

The extra 2Gb RAM was also noticeable for games using lots (like Supreme Commander) but only in the move back to desktop, the game performance wasn't affected. This upgrade is also dirt cheap.

Processor at 3Ghz, you're sorted for a while yet - but an upgrade would see a marginal increase in performance. Probably more so than RAM increase, but this upgrade is way more of an investment.

[wedge22]

I purchased another 2Gb of RAM from ebay last night, it was only $66 delivered.