Upgrade Advice for a non OC'er

[rickshobbies]

Greetings,

After a year and a half, I have the itch to upgrade my system. I'm admittedly overclock averse and prefer to keep systems at stock speeds. I've always had good luck with systems built around Intel motherboards, so I prefer to stick with them.

Anyway, I am looking for an upgrade and I wanted to ask the group here what kind of speed increase I'd see. Right now, my current rig gets 10400 on 3DMark06.

My current Vista 64 rig is as follows:

E6700
Intel D975XBX BadAxe 1
4GB Corsair Value DDR2 667 RAM
eVGA 8800GTX
X-fi Gamer
CoolerMaster 750 Watt PS

I am considering the following upgrades:

Q9450 or Q9550 (or QX9650 if the performance is worth the cost)
Intel DX48BT2 (or DX38BT if I won't gain anything from DX48)
4GB DDR3 1333 9-9-9

Would I see a noticable performance gain in games like Crysis, LotRo, etc with these updades? If so, what should I expect? I know the quad core will help with my video and photo editing work, but I'm not sure about the gaming gains. From the reviews I've read, the new Yorkfield Quads are faster clock to clock than Conroes, so a direct clock speed comparison doesn't sound like a good way to compare.

I am also curious if it would make sense to just buy 1600 speed DDR3 RAM now to prevent having to switch it out in a future upgrade, as the DX48BT2 will handle that if a CPU upgrade comes along in the future. Of course if I opt for the DX38BT, there is no point in getting anything other than 1333 DDR3.

Anyway, that's what I am considering. Any input would be great!

Regards,

R

 

[MarcVenice]

I doubt you'll see much gains at all. DDR3 is useless right now and doesn't give the extra performance you'd expect it to give, considering it's so much more expensive. Perhaps a quadcore will help in Crysis, but I doubt you will get playable framerates if you didn't have those allready. I simply wouldn't upgrade hehe, your 2.66ghz e6700 is plenty fast.

In Lotro you won't see any performance gains at all, because you're allready maxed out in that game. You'd have to wait for Nehalem to get a REAL upgrade. If for some reason you MUST have a quadcore, buy a q6600 and stop being averse against overclocking, and do a small overclock from 2.4 to 3.0ghz. That will give 'roughly' the same performance as a 1000$ QX9650. For about 1/7th the cost if you also have to buy 4gb of ddr3 and a new mobo.

 

[DSF]

As Marc said, the gaming benefit is likely to be very minimal. Not worth the cost of the upgrade for sure.

 

[imported_wired247]

If I were you I'd wait to upgrade for at least another 6mos- 1 year or so with your specs. That is a decent machine you've got there. Since your video card is still powerful, if you're going to bother upgrading at least look at a 9800GX2 video card, or possibly e8400 for more CPU power, although if not overclocked you are not going to see much improvement with going to 45nm. If you're not overclocking then you don't even need DDR2-800 ram let alone DDR3.

 

[Denithor]

Just OC your cpu slightly to 3GHz.

Don't upgrade the video card, that one already outperforms nearly everything on the market (only the 8800 Ultra and 9800GX2 are faster). Wait until later in the year for the 9900 series to launch, those will hopefully be a real step forward in GPU power.

 

[imported_boe]

I think you'll see a HUGE increas in performance by upgrading to Windows XP. Get a spare hard drive - install XP and any other apps you use on a regular basis and find out how much faster your system can be - you already have a pretty nice system and this upgrade costs next to nothing.

If you don't notice the speed improvement - you really haven't lost anything since EVERYONE can use a spare hard drive - even for backup if nothing else. Everyone who has asked me to upgrade their PC from Vista to XP is extremely happy with the performance improvement.

 

[EndGame]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Just OC your cpu slightly to 3GHz.

Don't upgrade the video card, that one already outperforms nearly everything on the market (only the 8800 Ultra and 9800GX2 are faster). Wait until later in the year for the 9900 series to launch, those will hopefully be a real step forward in GPU power.

Doubtfull at best. He mentions no problem with 64 bit Vista and honestly, after having dual booted XP/Vista for nearly a year, I wiped XP. Just never used it anymore. X64 Vista Ult. is very fast, very stable and very compatable for me and I se no reason to look back.

 

[TemjinGold]

Originally posted by: EndGame

Originally posted by: Denithor
Just OC your cpu slightly to 3GHz.

Don't upgrade the video card, that one already outperforms nearly everything on the market (only the 8800 Ultra and 9800GX2 are faster). Wait until later in the year for the 9900 series to launch, those will hopefully be a real step forward in GPU power.

Doubtfull at best. He mentions no problem with 64 bit Vista and honestly, after having dual booted XP/Vista for nearly a year, I wiped XP. Just never used it anymore. X64 Vista Ult. is very fast, very stable and very compatable for me and I se no reason to look back.

Though I think you quoted the wrong post, let me second what you said. Vista 64 and 32 seem worlds apart to me now that I've made the switch. Things seem SO much faster in 64 if you have the ram for it (at least 4 gb.)

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: boe
I think you'll see a HUGE increas in performance by upgrading to Windows XP. Get a spare hard drive - install XP and any other apps you use on a regular basis and find out how much faster your system can be - you already have a pretty nice system and this upgrade costs next to nothing.

If you don't notice the speed improvement - you really haven't lost anything since EVERYONE can use a spare hard drive - even for backup if nothing else. Everyone who has asked me to upgrade their PC from Vista to XP is extremely happy with the performance improvement.

Vista -> XP is not an upgrade. It is a downgrade. Reverting to an older version is at best a stopgap solution for problems that should be otherwise solved. Vista is more secure than XP and will be supported for a longer time than XP. Installing XP instead of Vista is the opposite of future-proofing.