Quad Upgrade

[ashy2k7]

I haven't posted on here for a long time but it seems to be the best place to start, anyway heres my specs and i'm looking to upgrade or even buy a whole new system, money isn't really to much of an object but i'm unwilling to stretch past 1000 as i don't think i'd get finance lol. My current system specs are

Intel Quad E6600
Asus P5N-E SLI
Corsair 4GB XMS2
Seagate Barracuda 500GB
XFX 8800GT 512MB
Corsair TX650
NZXT Lexa Blackline

Basically i just want something new and upto speed with todays stuff i considered just upgrading the graphics card but with the processor and memory i wanted to bring it upto speed to todays stuff so any pointers would be cool.

[dangel]

All pretty solid - aside from a bit of an old graphic card for 2009 - not a gamer I take it?

If you are it's the only big weakness in that setup - i'm keeping my Q6600 as is for the forseeable (aside from a graphic card change as and when). I don't think you'd find much benefit of jumping to i7 etc

[sammorris]

Biggest weakness there is the motherboard for reliability reasons. Ypu're one of very few people who still has a working P5N-E SLI, mine, my two friends who had them and a few other people's I know have all failed by now. The case and PSU are admirable, you can keep those. The RAM isn't even too bad, and the GPU isn't that bad either, but could certainly be upgraded.
Example upgrade route:

Q6600->Q9650
P5N-E SLI ->EP45-UD3
current HDD + WD1001FALS (no need to get rid of the old one)
8800GT -> XFX HD4890
Keep PSU + Case
That's around £540 ish, not including any reductions you may get from selling the old gear.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looking at the support list for your motherboard it seems the latest Q9000 series quads are not supported although 45nm dual cores are.

The cheapest upgrade would be to get a Q6700 and an HD4890 and this will cost you under £300.The other alternative would be a Phenom II X4 955BE,a 790 based DDR2 AM2+ motherboard and an HD4890 for under £375.

If you really want a full system upgrade though I would wait until the Core i5 comes out next month as it should offer better value for money than a Core i7 as the motherboards and the RAM should be cheaper and hopefully the processors too.

[sammorris]

To be honest, I wouldn't bother going from a 6600 to a 6700, it isn't worth the effort.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I went from an E4500 at 3ghz(faster than a stock clocked E6600) to a Q6600 at 2.91ghz and certainly for image editing and encoding it was far faster although YMMV.

Anyway it maybe worth checking out the Core i5 before embarking on any major upgrade.

[sammorris]

because for one, it's a dual core to a quad core, and for two, Core 2 Quad Q6000s have four times the cache of the E4000 dual cores (I went from a 3.15Ghz E4300 to a 3.24Ghz Q6600 and observed similar results). Going from like CPU to like CPU isn't going to net any more than an 11% performance benefit, hardly worth it for the cost.

[Blaineoliver]

My P5N-E SLI is still going strong, somehow! Got it as a replacement for my EVGa 650i when that packed up. The P5N-E doesnt deal with quads that well at all.

[sammorris]

I'm absolutely amazed, the 650i chipset is truly horrendous for reliability. of course the 75ºC+ chipset temperatures don't help...

[Blaineoliver]

I need to sell it, and yes its temperatures are a worry.

[sammorris]

(by the way, 75ºC at the heatsink is 45ºC in the system - nforce chipsets use an offset value to give a false temperature of the northbridge (mainly to hide how badly they overheat). Add around 30ºC to the chipset to find what the real temperature is)

[Blaineoliver]

I used to have a fan blu-tacced onto it to keep the temps down, it worked quite well.

[sammorris]

Lol - surprised you didn't melt the blu-tac

[Blaineoliver]

Im actually so close to buying some new bits, i need talking out of it.

[dangel]

Im actually so close to buying some new bits, i need talking out of it.

Got a wife or girlfriend? Should be no problem if so..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Got a wife or girlfriend? Should be no problem if so..

Not if your wife or girlfriend is a fellow geek though like this lady:

http://www.geekbrief.tv/

There needs to be more female geeks in the world.