My current gaming PC consists of Biostar T-Power I45 motherboard, 4 gig of ram & Core 2 Duo 6600 - a few years old compared to today's standards. I'm thinking about upgrading but don't want to go to the expense of upgrading the motherboard & CPU & ram. Just thinking about adding more ram & changing the CPU - not all three. anyone advice me on what upgrades I could make and see an increase in performance.
I got a quad core CPU and small SSD drive which has boosted loading times, gaming performace and faster encoding etc etc
a used q6600 would be a great purchase combined with a 560Ti you will have something capable of all games just need to make sure your MB is capable of both forget the SSD at this stage
You could always try bumping the CPU speed up a tad, obviously dont gun for 4ghz but start small say 3ghz. I reckon at stock volts, a fsb of 333 (RAM@667) and a multi of 9 would be an easy start. A faster dual core is better than a slower quad core so they used to say anyways
Not quite any more. A Q6600 D0 would be best, arguably one of the best ones for overclocking, and not impossible to get, unlike the higher-end 'Extreme' ones. The cheapest you can get an LGA1155 CPU + Mobo + Ram bundle works out at £350 odd if you shave corners. £400 if you go for good kit, (2500K, 8GB of Vengeance LP, Mid-high mobo), so it's an expensive step up. Worth it, but still expensive. What are you running in the way of Processor cooling, anyhow? That will affect this a touch, as there's little point recommending a Q6600 if whatever heatsink you have isn't capable of managing it.
Core i3 2100 3.10GHz @ £92.07 Gigabyte GA-Z68P-DS3 Z68 @£72.33 Corsair Vengeance 4GB (2x2GB) @£22.97 Total £187.37 including shipping from Ebuyer All of the above will work well as a basis for gaming pc and with a BIOS update you can drop a quad core ivybridge in at some point in the future. Not sure where .//TuNdRa buys his kit from lol. I still think its worth sqeezing some more speed from your current setup though as i think you will be pleasantly surprised. Ideally you have something better than the reference Intel cooler.
The cooler I've got is an Arctic Freezer Pro - I'd rather just upgrade my existing setup and move the current CPU to my other PC which has currently a Intel Duo Core 5200. Just used for surfing, so I could stick it in there.
What's this D0 stepping? Sure you don't mean G0? I'd say a Q6600 (overclock it) and an SSD. I wouldn't bother upgrading RAM anymore than 4GiB, especially with the price of DDR2. My system copes fine with everything at the moment. I would benefit from a new graphics card, but I can't afford one. SSD is the next thing on my list. I would guess that the E5200 would probably be better than your 6600 (Presume its an E6600). And if its just a general use PC, I would have thought you'd want low power, which the 5200 is better at.
If you just want some speed, I would look for a Core2Quad Q9550 on Ebay, they run about £70 or less, and run about the speed of an older I5 and faster than a new I3. It's about as fast as you will go for a reasonable amount, and about all I would want to spend on 775/DDR2 at this point due to memory prices and 775's limitations (sata2 and high memory costs). Much more and you may as well spend the money on a I5 2500K/board/memory.
