am in a bit of dilemma so i thought i woudl turn to you lot for some advice. at the mo i have the following ABit ip35 Q6600 @ 3.2ghz 4x1gb ram ATI 4870 512mb crucial 60gb SSD corsair hx620w psu i've just bought the 16gb DDR3 Ram kit that was on offer from OCUK, so i have an itchy upgrade finger. my first option is to upgrade to a DDR3, S775 board, but new ones are m-atx and fairly basic boards, second hand they seem to be pretty rare. this is the cheapest way for me, esp as my abit board seems to get a bit flaky every now and then. the second option is to go for a second hand core i5 setup (something like a core i5 750/760 and a decent board) its way more hassle, but i cant really figure out if i am going to see that much of an improvement. on a good day i have my Q660 running at 3.6 which seems plenty fast enough, although i think the GPU is stopping from from adding AA to what i see. which would you do, its mainly playing wow and trackmania, while they dont use huge amounts of grunt, there are times when both feel like their struggling. thanks
Yeah, don't get a "better" S775 board... if you upgrade, get a new platform. I'd advise skipping the P55 altogether and getting a P67 / 2500K system, which should last you a long time. You'll notice a big improvement over the Q6600 (astronomical, in fact) because you should easily be able to overclock it to 4.5GHz. So all you need to do is budget for a P67 board and an i5 2500K - could be reasonably cheap if you get it second hand. That would be my recommendation.
gonna revisit this, i really wanted to do this on the cheap, but as all the core2duo boards i can find are limited to 8gb of DDR3 it looks like an update is needed. whats the best bang to buck, i really dont fancy buying new, so looking at second hand. 1st gen core i5 (something like an i5 750/760) 1st gen core i7, some nice boards in the for sale forums, but unsure of CPU prices 2nd gen core i5. also, i've modded my coolermaster wavemaster case so it has 2 80mm out fans, and a pair of 92mm inlet fans, as my cooling on my q6600 is a bit marginal at times (70 degrees fully loaded) is it gonna struggle with a newer platform?
If it's just wow and trackmania then it might be worth holding onto the system for a bit. What res are you playing at?
its a 20" widescreen, so 1650 x 1080 or similar i think. at the mo i play with details up, but no AA etc turned on, would be nice to get them going and have some spare frame rate for bigger fights in wow, or busier racers in TM
Are you sure the chip is the bottle neck? Maybe a new gfx would help. Or even something second hand like a 5870, 470GTX
possibly, but as my PC goes flaky every so often (wont post properly etc) and i have 16gb of DDR3 lying around, i fancy an upgrade. i've asked before if my 4870 512mb card is a limiting factor, but couldnt really get an answer
If you get the older S1156 platform, you're buying into something that's going nowhere...Lynnfield is dead. On Scan, the i5-760 and the i5-2500K are at the same price (pretty much). If funds are tight, launch into the S1155 platform with a cheaper chip. The i3-2100 is less than £100 and is a solid CPU for a budget build.
