Motherboard CPU compatibility

[Thorny]

Hello, I have a Dell system that's needing an upgrade and while Intel's website says that the g33/g31 chipset is Quad core capable, Dell's website is showing the max processer to be the E8400. I know Dell's boards are a proprietary design that may or may not support what the chipset does. Is there any way to confirm that this board will support a quad core before purchasing one? The CPU currently in the machine is an E4500 paired with 2GB of DDR2 667 ram. I'm guessing that upgrading the memory to a speed that matches the CPU would also be a good idea even if I just upgrade to the E8400 correct?

This box is used 24/7 at a restaurant for video survailance and doubles as a workstation/server for my point of sale system.

Thanks in advance for the replies!

 

[o1die]

You won't notice that much difference in performance since you can't overclock the q6600 on a dell board. I would get a 2x2gb ram ddr2 kit in either pc5300 or pc6400. I can't tell the difference between the two speeds.

 

[Thorny]

Originally posted by: o1die
You won't notice that much difference in performance since you can't overclock the q6600 on a dell board. I would get a 2x2gb ram ddr2 kit in either pc5300 or pc6400. I can't tell the difference between the two speeds.

I'm interested in getting a higher clocked quad. There are noticeable slow downs on the dual core when a third application starts up, so I believe a quad is a worthwhile investment. At any given time there are 8 video feeds being recorded, database queries and updates from several different workstations, management functions that can be database intensive and an occasional graphics workload. This is a mission critical box running 24/7 in a work environment, overclocking is not an option in this case.

We are getting ready to expand so the server workload is going to increase along with the numbers of cameras running. Both cores currently run around 15% with only 4 cameras recording.