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[GBH]

Specs are in sig.

Best bang for buck for 775 platform?

 

[nzaneb]

What are the primary uses for the computer? (Gaming, editing, CAD, etc...)

 

[GT3mich]

Go to the Orange county Microcenter and get a Q9550 for $169 +tax. Well worth it.

 

[GBH]

What are the primary uses for the computer? (Gaming, editing, CAD, etc...)

Gaming and some video encoding

Go to the Orange county Microcenter and get a Q9550 for $169 +tax. Well worth it.

A drive to OC is just too far.

 

[EarthDog]

e8400 or Q9550. The e8400 you will see 4Ghz+, and b/c of the chipset/board, you will likely only see about 3.6-3.8Ghz on that quad. But its a quad and you do some encoding so you should decide if that is worth it or not.

 

[GBH]

Does my 6550 bottleneck the 260?

 

[EarthDog]

Overclocking it more would probably help. But its not too bad Im sure. I take it your res is 1680x1050?

 

[freeagent]

The P5K Deluxe is a good board, I was able to run my first Q6600 at 475x8

You would probably get more grins from the quad rather then the dual

 

[EarthDog]

That bad boy hit that high FSB with a quad? Nice!!!!!!!! I take it back, GET A Q9550 or Q9400!!

 

[GBH]

Its 1920*1080

Id have to do my reading on OC'ing again since this was my first and only OC from more than a year ago.

I think Id have to unlink my RAM. I had to downclock the speed because I was getting BSOD's and Memtest errors.

 

[EarthDog]

at that res, its your card doing most of the work...I wouldnt worry to much about it personally unless you have money to burn for the new cpu.

 

[GBH]

Was just thinking ahead for when I get some money after christmas. Looks like OC'ing a bit more ( investing in a better HSF maybe ) would be more beneficial then spending $200

 

[freeagent]

That bad boy hit that high FSB with a quad? Nice!!!!!!!! I take it back, GET A Q9550 or Q9400!!

Aww dont be surprised, its really a good board! Tho I have not tried for max with my current Q66. It still does 500fsb+ with my E8600

Almost as good as a Rampage, but not quite

Edit:

Ok no where near a Rampage, but its still pretty good lol

 

[fire2havoc]

Try OCing it and see if that improves performance. If you still feel that the performance is not up to par, consider dropping in a Q9550.

 

[doublejack]

Considering your primary uses and native res, I don't recommend a CPU upgrade. Going to an E8400, even at 4GHz, won't be worth the money IMO. Your games are far more GPU limited at 1920x1080, so I don't think you'd actually notice much improvement in that area. Encoding would be faster, but not worth $150-200 faster.

If you opted for a quad instead (Q9550 or Q9400 for example), the video encoding would definitely be faster. However, unless you do a lot of that it probably wouldn't be worth while. And as with the E8400, you wouldn't notice much / anything in the way of gaming improvements (except for the few games that actually benefit from a quad).

I also don't think you're going to get much more out of your E6550. 3.4GHz is a very respectable OC for a 65nm C2D. If you pushed it another 100 or 200MHz I think that's about the max based on a safe vcore.

My advice is if you want more fps for gaming, go with a GPU upgrade instead. Other than a GPU, the next logical upgrade for you is going to be to i5/i7... and that's not a $200 upgrade.