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[oafaloaf]

ok So I am still running on my old opteron 165 @ 2.6ghz it runs games "well" and the 8800gt's in SLI help but I think I have reached the limits of this comp now I am just debating on which direction to upgrade? (deneb is not an option, or i7)

 

 

q6600 quad

CPU: or

E8500 duo

 

BIG maybe but phenom 9950?

 

motherboard is the real headache! I don't want to set record's but I would hope for 3ghz-3.4 with the quad and 3.5-3.8 with the duo

I have heard that the 750i sli chipset is terrible for overclocking? any truth to this? should I go intel x38-x48 heard they were stable boards for OC.

Asus Intel Board

 

to be honest ram is a little easier for me to decide what newegg has on sell!!! LOL but needs to be overclockable as well. probably g.skill or ocz 4gb 2x4

 

Crossfire is avalible on a lot of boards standard while just getting a SLI capable board is a pain without a lot of cash im considering selling my two gt's and getting a 4870 512mb ?

any ati\crossfire success or horror stories?

[guzzidom]

The E8500 will likely sit happily at about 3.9 without fussing the voltage (my E8400 goes to 3.7 ish before a minor bump is needed to break 4.3), the question is, do you do a lot of video editing or encoding / rasterizing?, in which case a quad would suit you better (most of the time), if you're a gamer first and foremost I'd suggest the E8500 is the way to go (try to get the latest EO stepping if you can), buy a decentish air cooler and there's no reason why 4ghz wouldn't work with a minor bump to 1.32v,or so as an every day clock speed (avoid anything above 1.4v on air in my experience, and avoid 1.5v even on water 42/58 deg temps approx at 1.32v/4ghz).

Forget the Phenom really, good chip though it is, it doesn't approach an O/clocked E8500 for pumping out gaming framerates unless the game is thoroughly optimized for 4 core.

 

If you do go X-fire capable have a look at the OCC Asus P5Q pro review

 

 

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/asus_p5q_pro/

Edited December 1, 2008 by guzzidom

[kingdingeling]

You'd be best off simply upgrading the processor, mobo and RAM and keeping those 88GTs in SLI! What's the overall budget for this upgrade?

[Krieg1337]

Very overclockable motherboard is the Biostar TPower I45.

If you can find it and want crossfire or just 1 GPU then get that.

[SumGuy]

I would go with the intel E8500, striker 2 nse, and corsair tw3x4g1333c9dhx 2x2gb. You could then overclock from 1333 to 1600 provided you have appropriate cooling. Price at newegg is about $540.

[oafaloaf]

You'd be best off simply upgrading the processor, mobo and RAM and keeping those 88GTs in SLI! What's the overall budget for this upgrade?

 

Thanks for the replies!!!

 

 

 

Around 400-500 motherboard,ram,Cpu

 

About the e8500 although the duo's are better for gaming isn't it fair to say you will only lose say 10% on frame rates vs a q6600? + with the quad you get the benefit of the chip being good for more than just gaming+ down the road when game engines\OS utilize all 4 cores won't the quad performance increase substantially?

 

About 8800gt's in sli:

 

My idea was sell the 8800gt's for around 100 dollars profit each and then take that money and buy a Radeon 4870 512mb or maybe break the bank with the 1gb? are ati drivers reliable\up to date with game releases? always been an Nvidia guy.....not to mention AMD fanboy LOL

[guzzidom]

Thanks for the replies!!!

 

 

 

Around 400-500 motherboard,ram,Cpu

 

About the e8500 although the duo's are better for gaming isn't it fair to say you will only lose say 10% on frame rates vs a q6600? + with the quad you get the benefit of the chip being good for more than just gaming+ down the road when game engines\OS utilize all 4 cores won't the quad performance increase substantially?

 

About 8800gt's in sli:

 

My idea was sell the 8800gt's for around 100 dollars profit each and then take that money and buy a Radeon 4870 512mb or maybe break the bank with the 1gb? are ati drivers reliable\up to date with game releases? always been an Nvidia guy.....not to mention AMD fanboy LOL

 

Have a look at Tom's CPU charts to get a rough idea of the gaming performance of the quads vs the dual cores, a few games will favour the quads under certain circumstances, but (from memory) the higher clock speeds of the E8***'s tend to minimise this and in other games where 4 core utilisation is less integral it whups them good.

 

For example

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop...0x1050,820.html

 

And that margin will only get wider with the 45nm OC potential.

Up to you though, none of them are any better/worse, just different strengths in different applications, work out what's important to you and buy accordingly.

 

OCC review the E8500 in the relevent section and pit it against the E6600 and, frankly the 4 core gets a massive kicking in the majority of the benchmarks, even pipping it in some where you would of thought the extra cores give it some unequivecol advantages.

Edited December 2, 2008 by guzzidom

[oafaloaf]

update: now im thinking about maybe even throwing more cash at this and going gtx 260 core 216!

 

[Jenova69]

Just got my GTX260 core 216 today and i'm loving it i haven't seen it break 65C on 70% fan.............yet

[oafaloaf]

motherboards are giving me a headache!!!!!! LOL

 

p5q pro?

 

16 phase asus?

 

or the sweet looking DFI

 

it's 150 on the egg