Multiple hardware questions

[666moe666]

I thought i'd make a thread as i have a few questions to ask

Firstly, I am thinking of going Quadcore, and i think my mobo supports quadcore but can't check yet cause the asus support site is down. The question is i play quite a few games so would a Q6600 make a noticeable difference to my current E6600? I am thinking if it does i will put my E6600 in my girlfriends pc that i'm going to build and order me a new CPU. Cheap places to buy a Q6600 will also be welcome.

Secondly, I've only just noticed that you can put DDR3 graphics cards into DDR2 boards. Yes, I haven't really been paying much attention to the world of technology until recently. So can anyone recommend me a GPU that will be better than my current XFX 8800GTS 640mb that will be around the £100 mark? Hopefully this will be smaller in profile aswell as the 8800GTS is quite a beast in size and be compatible with my mobo.

Lastly, if i go ahead and get a Q6600 can anyone recommend me a decent air cooler? I'm too much of a noob to use water, but i want to get a small overclock out of the Q6600. Probably around the 3.2Ghz mark will do me nicely.

Thanks
Moe

[dave87]

I'd possibly look at sticking with the E6600 and overclocking it a bit further. As I think I mentioned in another thread, very few (if any) games can deal with 4 cores at the moment, and as such you'd be better off going for a higher clock speed out of your current processor.

On the cooler front, when I was building my new PC (See my specs) I went for the Xigmatek S1283, which I am mightily impressed with. My PC running at the speeds you see on the left is whisper quiet, and that is with the included fan on the heatsink.

With regards graphics cards, I'm not 100% sure where the 8800GTS falls. What resolution do you game at? If it is lower than say 1280x1024, then you probably won't notice much of an improvement. Otherwise, look at the 4850, 4870 or 4830 XFire (if your board supports it).

Had you set yourself a budget for the changes?

[sleepyhead]

The question is i play quite a few games so would a Q6600 make a noticeable difference to my current E6600?

Not too sure but I'd personally stick with the E6600 and tweak it up.

So can anyone recommend me a GPU that will be better than my current XFX 8800GTS 640mb that will be around the £100 mark?

HD4850 will wipe the floor with the old G80 8800GTS.

Lastly, if i go ahead and get a Q6600 can anyone recommend me a decent air cooler?

What kind of price range are you looking at? If it was still around the £20 mark, you can't go wrong with the Xigmatek S.1283. Can also check out the TRUE but it depends on the size of your case and how well ventalited it is.

[shaithis]

The question is i play quite a few games so would a Q6600 make a noticeable difference to my current E6600?

There are a small handful of games where you would notice the difference....on the whole though, no you wouldn't.

can anyone recommend me a GPU that will be better than my current XFX 8800GTS 640mb that will be around the £100 mark? Hopefully this will be smaller in profile aswell as the 8800GTS is quite a beast in size and be compatible with my mobo.[/B]

You could probably pick up a 4850 for around 100quid if you shop around a bit and/or wait for a special offer.

Lastly, if i go ahead and get a Q6600 can anyone recommend me a decent air cooler?[/B]

There are a ton of good coolers out there at the moment, it's really hard to recommend one. I personally liked the new Arctic Freezer unit I installed for my mother recently, its the new quiet one. Xigamech and ThermalRight both have really good coolers in the same pricerange though.

[666moe666]

I just upped the speed of the E6600 by putting it on 'crazy' overclock which tweaks it automatically up to 3.15Ghz. the airflow in the case if ok, and the cooling i have on the CPU is a ThermalTake Blue Orb II i believe.

As for the GPU, nVidia would be preferred to ATI as i know my board definately supports nVidia cards.


EDIT: not set myself a budget, just want to get the parts at best price i could.

[dave87]

Your board will suport either ATi or nVidia, just wasn't sure whether your SLi board would allow XFire.

If you are sticking with a single card (ala 4850) then you will be fine

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would use 25 iterations of IntelBurnTest to test the stability of the overclock. Get your E6600 upto 3ghz at least and you will be fine for the rest of the year or hopefully longer!! Run OCCT Blend to test for CPU and RAM stability!

I would get an HD4870 512mb as an upgrade to your 8800GTS:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s....html?SAP-4870

If you want to stay with Nvidia there is the slower GTX260 192 shader version for £10 less:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/36184...896mb-gddr3-t/

These will be both significantly faster then your 8800gts 640mb. However both are longer and bigger cards than your 8800GTS 640mb.

Remember you can get 3% cashback from Quidco with Novatech and free postage.

There is also the faster HD4870 1gb and GTX260 216 shader version for £160+ though.

Here is a GTX260 216 shader version with free copies of FarCry 2 and Mirrors Edge for £161:

https://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/...jsp?XFX-GTX265

HD4870 1gb:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...html?SAP-48701

If you can wait the HD4890 and GTX275 are being released in April meaning that prices of the HD4870 and GTX260 may drop in price!!

[666moe666]

Thanks people.

Thanks for the info Dave87.
I was hoping CTF turned up as he is most helpful aswell

[Zak33]

Quad core DOES have a use in games.... it's good for running two games at the same time

So if you have an online game that requires permanent connection (ie Lineage2) and you also want to play some other games at same time, AND have voice comms running, and all the other garbage that a modern PC does, then a Quad DOES have it uses.

BUT.. as the other good chaps have said, the speed increase of a fast dual is best for gaming with one game. It'll use less electricity, create less heat... and you already own it

I love my quad. But it's at 2.67, and fact is, your 6600 at 3.2 gig will rip mine apart on frame rate.

Mine will be encoding a home video though, as well as burning a DVD and playing two games at once

[Badbonji]

How about a core i7 at 4.35Ghz lol

[moogle]

Quad core DOES have a use in games.... it's good for running two games at the same time

So if you have an online game that requires permanent connection (ie Lineage2) and you also want to play some other games at same time, AND have voice comms running, and all the other garbage that a modern PC does, then a Quad DOES have it uses.

I could dual box on L2 (sometimes more than 2 clients) and run TS/Vent on my AMD Athlon X2 just fine so that E6600 will have no problem at all doing that stock or overclocked

Just have at least 2GB of ram.

I would use 25 iterations of IntelBurnTest to test the stability of the overclock. Get your E6600 upto 3ghz at least and you will be fine for the rest of the year or hopefully longer!! Run OCCT Blend to test for CPU and RAM stability!

Always try OCCT or Prime95 too. I tried IBT on my overclock and the thing is it passed around 6h of iterations while I was sleeping, however running Prime95 would cause the CPU to fail within the hour. After a bit more tweaking with Prime95 it was fully stable on OCCT, IBT and Prime.

I suppose you can argue you will never have a task that will stress it that much so it doesn't need to be stable on Prime but I'm just letting you know

[666moe666]

I could dual box on L2 (sometimes more than 2 clients) and run TS/Vent on my AMD Athlon X2 just fine so that E6600 will have no problem at all doing that stock or overclocked

Just have at least 2GB of ram.



Always try OCCT or Prime95 too. I tried IBT on my overclock and the thing is it passed around 6h of iterations while I was sleeping, however running Prime95 would cause the CPU to fail within the hour. After a bit more tweaking with Prime95 it was fully stable on OCCT, IBT and Prime.

I suppose you can argue you will never have a task that will stress it that much so it doesn't need to be stable on Prime but I'm just letting you know

On the ram front i'm ok. I have 8Gb

Yeah, i assume my overclock is stable as the board would probably just revert back to regular speed as it is an Asus nVidia 780i Striker Formula II


Am using IntelBurn and OCCT to check though, thanks for the heads up guys.

[666moe666]

Another question guys.

When i update my cpu i don't need to back everything up do i?
I know i probably should but its not vital if i can afford to lose stuff is it?

[moogle]

Another question guys.

When i update my cpu i don't need to back everything up do i?
I know i probably should but its not vital if i can afford to lose stuff is it?

Not really, unless updating the CPU triggers activation (if you got OEM OS but even then you probably dont even need to back up).

[scaryjim]

Remember you can get 3% cashback from Quidco with Novatech and free postage.

Quidco does cash back at novatech? Cool, I know where my new HTPC's coming from then

As to the original question, I'm not sure that too many of the £100 NVidia cards will give you significant improvements, since NVidia have spent the 2 years recycling old GPUs rather than producing anything new! CAT's suggestion of a 192-core GTX260 is probably the best bet, @ around £140 if you shop about. Others will have a better knowledge of which games benefit most from multi-core - I know Far Cry 2 is particularly adept at using 4 cores...

[Robscure]

I thought i'd make a thread as i have a few questions to ask

Firstly, I am thinking of going Quadcore, and i think my mobo supports quadcore but can't check yet cause the asus support site is down. The question is i play quite a few games so would a Q6600 make a noticeable difference to my current E6600? I am thinking if it does i will put my E6600 in my girlfriends pc that i'm going to build and order me a new CPU. Cheap places to buy a Q6600 will also be welcome.

Secondly, I've only just noticed that you can put DDR3 graphics cards into DDR2 boards. Yes, I haven't really been paying much attention to the world of technology until recently. So can anyone recommend me a GPU that will be better than my current XFX 8800GTS 640mb that will be around the £100 mark? Hopefully this will be smaller in profile aswell as the 8800GTS is quite a beast in size and be compatible with my mobo.

Lastly, if i go ahead and get a Q6600 can anyone recommend me a decent air cooler? I'm too much of a noob to use water, but i want to get a small overclock out of the Q6600. Probably around the 3.2Ghz mark will do me nicely.

Thanks
Moe

Take a look at my system specs...

Q6600 overclocked to 3.6ghz... scored high on 3dMark06....

I play games with it and multitask no problems. It's simply wonderful, I love it.

Noctua NH-U12P fan... beautiful, quiet, efficient... after running Prime95 for 7 hours with this level of OC, my cpu never passed 74 degrees celsius, and idles at 30.

The case's fan makes a big difference too... I love my Lian-Li... it not only cools well, but captures dust particles in its grill...

As for GPU... I personally like NVidia, but ATI tend to be slightly cheaper...

Look at the ATI 4850's... they range from £100 - £150

I hope this helps.