To upgrade or not

[tinners]

Hi all, realise this is probably a "yawn, same old" question but have not been keeping very up to speed with everything to do with CPUs/mobos etc. recently

Looking for some advice around timing for a new upgrade and what to upgrade to.

I am currently running
E6400 @ 3.0 GHz
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 rev 1.0
OCZ OCZ2P800R21G - 2Gb & Corsair TwinX 800mhz - 2Gb
Palit 8800GTS 640Mb
Corsair 620w
Dell 2407WFP (A04)

I bought most of this setup ~ early 2006 so it's done pretty well. But I notice the speed now as I am doing a lot of video encoding ATM to move my vids from DVD or AVI to AppleTV format.

I also game on it although not as much as I used to due to family and work commitments. Mainly BF2, TF2 and COD4 recently, all of which run OK on my setup.

So my question is, when should I look to upgrade and what would give me the best lifespan like my current setup has ? Should I just buy a Q6600 and leave it at that for another few months ? I dont want to spend masses due to the lack of stress I am giving it most of the time.

Thanks for your help

[shaithis]

If your doing a lot of encoding, a Q6700 should be a nice boost.

After that it's going to be the video card for gaming, it probably won't be too long before the 8800 cards will start to struggle with new games on a 24" screen.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

As long as the software you are using supports quad cores the Q6700 will be a good upgrade for £150:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Intel...Multiplier-OEM

A RAM upgrade to 4gb maybe useful too and the price of RAM has plummeted too!!

Some of the newer hard drives are also much faster than the old ones like the Samsung F1.
You can clone the hard drive using software like Paragon Partition Manager 8.5 Special Edition which is free:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloa...isk-manager-se

I would only upgrade the graphics cards when games you are playing start to struggle.

[tinners]

Cheers for the advice. Im already running a Raptor 10K & 4Gb so dont think I'll get much better there will I ?

Looking around, is the Q6700 better than the Q6600 ?
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/overclocked_cpus.html

Theyre the same price now and actually on todayonly at Scan

What is the REAL performance difference ? I will be overclocking but for day to day like my e6400 not extrreeeeme

[shaithis]

The Q6700 is just clocked higher and is the replacement for Q6600.

Higher multiplier for the same price is always good for overclocking possibilities

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Cheers for the advice. Im already running a Raptor 10K & 4Gb so dont think I'll get much better there will I ?

Looking around, is the Q6700 better than the Q6600 ?
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/overclocked_cpus.html

Theyre the same price now and actually on todayonly at Scan

What is the REAL performance difference ? I will be overclocking but for day to day like my e6400 not extrreeeeme

The Q6700 has a higher multiplier so you do not need as high an FSB to overclock with !!
I would look at upgrading your RAM to 4gb. I think that hard drives will be fast enough too!!!

[tinners]

There we go there's £140 spent on a Q6700...

.....anyone need an E6400 ? One careful owner.............coming soon to classifieds near you......

[tinners]

So have gone with the Q6700 for £130.

In terms of next things to do, if I bought one of these for £200 would that do me for upgrades for a while, giving me ability to play most new games at 1900*1200 ?

Would be then:
Q6700 @ 3.2
DS4 (965 chipset)
4Gb DDR2 @ 800
HD 4890 1GB GDDR5
Raptor 74Gb

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So have gone with the Q6700 for £130.

In terms of next things to do, if I bought one of these for £200 would that do me for upgrades for a while, giving me ability to play most new games at 1900*1200 ?

Would be then:
Q6700 @ 3.2
DS4 (965 chipset)
4Gb DDR2 @ 800
HD 4890 1GB GDDR5
Raptor 74Gb

The HD4890 would do the job nicely. However I suspect the price will start dropping a bit more TBH in the next few weeks though.