E6600 to E8400 question

I've got the MSI P6N platinum mobo with an oc'd 6600 (see sig).

My dad is wanting a new computer for work and for what he's doing, even the E6600 will be overkill so I'm wondering, why not just put that in and use some of the money he'll give me to put an E8400 into my computer.

I'm wondering how much of a difference in gaming and general computing use would I see from the swap?

I've just now considered this as I didn't know my motherboard was 1333mhz compatible but it is.

I've yet to research overclocking results of the 8400's but I can only assume it's pretty good.

for the same clock its about 10% faster... if you do encoding you will see a big boost with the SSE4 instructions. that is if your encoding program is set to use it.. per clock the SSE4 droped encoding times another 15mins.

I was running my E6600 at 3.4ghz and now have my E8400 at 4ghz. Can't say I've done anything to notice a difference(browsing, gaming, DVD rip/burn), but I really bought it cause I wanted a 4ghz machine.

ahhh.... I see. I know I wasn't expecting a drastic difference like I saw moving from my 3.2C pentium 4 to the 6600 but I was just curious.

So just for grins, I could toss the 6600 in his and 8400 in mine and call it a day... Wouldn't hurt I guess but upgrading the whole mobo/ram wouldn't be worth my time I assume.

People attest to running games faster with the wolfdales, but I haven't really seen any concrete data showing exactly how much and for which games etc.

If your dad will fund the entire cpu upgrade then I say go for it, but if you have to spend too much of your own money I wouldn't.

(Intel is bringing out a brand new socket and architecture at the end 08, beg 09). I'm saving most of my money for those upgrades, but that's just my 2 cents.

no a whole mobo/ram upgrade wouldnt affect the perfomance you have now.. unless you just wanted higher ocing fsb's since 680i doesnt reach like P35 does/can..

tuskenraider said:

I was running my E6600 at 3.4ghz and now have my E8400 at 4ghz. Can't say I've done anything to notice a difference(browsing, gaming, DVD rip/burn), but I really bought it cause I wanted a 4ghz machine.

Click to expand...

Same here except my E6600 was running at 3.6GHz. My E8400 at 4GHz is certainly faster in benchmarks, but I can't tell the difference in day to day tasking. My video encoding has gained a nice boost though.

so the MSI P6N SLI platinum should work with the E8400? i've checked the cpu compatibility list on MSI and the e8400 is still "in testing" but some of the other wolfdales passed, so im guessing it's ok? im scared to do it =(.

im in a similar position as fastredpony, and i bought the e8400 for a decent price of $200 so i'd to make this happen.

all nv600 based boards just need a bios update to support wolfdale aka 45nm duals.