Who's struggling to justify upgrading their CPU?

[weaselhat]

Great thread , I was kind of getting the upgrade bug for the past couple months, but the more I started researching, the more I realized my almost 3 year old system is still pretty darn good . I did upgrade to a gtx 560 ti sc, but with my e8500 oc to 3.8ghz I really haven't haven't had any reason to go to a i5/i7. I thought I was going to need to upgrade for Crysis 2, nope, then I thought the Witcher 2 was going to kill my pc, no again, so I may upgrade next year, but as of now I really can't justify it.

 

[skipsneeky2]

yup between the old 478,775 and the 1366,i believe the 775 is the most celebrated socket even still to this day actually for its time i think it was well ahead of its time,i remember people calling me crazy for buying that q6600 when it dropped to $300,saying you dont need a quad core now for gaming,im thinking yeah wait and see buddy and that same friend still has his e6600 and bc2 for him is always giving him issues lol

 

[skipsneeky2]

yeah weasel whats funny was i was thinking of upgrading a while back from my q9650 and my asus rog mobo then as i kept thinking about it a powersupply i had in my system crapped out taking the mobo and cpu with it,guess what?had to go 1366
i miss that asus mobo something about 775 was so badass motherboards in copper looked like pieces of art something asus and the mobo makers took pride in,heck look at the msi mobos,those roller coaster heatsinks lol pretty good times for the pc world,now we wait for software and games to catch up and some people still want that 8 core to come out,and just sit and do very little of anything besides look cool in task manager lol

 

[Minjin]

I just upgraded from E2180 @2.5ghz to a 2500k at stock 3.3ghz. I am extremely happy with the upgrade. Everything is noticeably smoother and quicker. To top it off, I'm using almost exactly the same power (~85w for entire system with low load), possibly a few watts less. I did some benchmarks before and after and the new system can calculate digits of Pi in a little over 1/3rd the time, only running one core. Crazy.

I don't typically OC in the summer so I can't wait till it gets colder and I start cranking it up.

 

[goobernoodles]

I was. I was holding onto my e6750 @ 3.4 for the longest time.

Moved to an i5 2500k and BC2, along with ARMA 2 were taken to another level.

 

[severus]

I don't really have any reason to upgrade my computer until I upgrade my desk. My workspace only allows for a 19" monitor, and until I get a new desk, I'm stuck at a lowly 1440x900 resolution. At that res, my e6750 @ 3.4 and gtx260 216 are more than enough to get any game running great on high. If I can't run it on my setup, I just switch to my fathers pc. He's got the x2 550 unlocked with a 4870. I'm patiently waiting for more information on bulldozer so I can do a real upgrade. It's strange having the same setup for almost 4 years, with the only change being the graphics card.

 

[Gikaseixas]

waiting for BD and 2011 to see if they're worth it, great topic btw

 

[Uhtrinity]

Finally upgraded from my q6600 @ 3 GHZ to an open box 1055t from Newegg. Cost was $125 for the CPU and another $100 for an Asus motherboard.

Running at 3.5Ghz / 4.1Ghz turbo. With the value of the Q6600 holding that almost pays for the newer cpu. The system is used as a media center, gaming, and video encoding.

Did a direct transfer of Windows 7 from the Intel platform to the AMD platform by using a third party SATA card. Worked flawlessly after the drivers were installed and the Windows reactivation.

 

[Necc]

Well im too struggling to justify upgrading my 2500K to the 2600K for hyperthreding and extra 2MB cache ithink its not worth the extra 100$ sincs idont do video decoding/encoding :hmm:

 

[Barfo]

Well im too struggling to justify upgrading my 2500K to the 2600K for hyperthreding and extra 2MB cache ithink its not worth the extra 100$ sincs idont do video decoding/encoding :hmm:

2500K? Anyone worth their salt is packing at least a Xeon E7-8870

 

[skipsneeky2]

goober i used to have one of those e6750 cpus it was a solid cpu till i purchased the game ut3 and i read up on how the game benefits from quad cores so i picked up a q6600 and even at stock i picked up smoother menu loading map loading tad bit better frame rate with the gtx280 i had,but if i didnt play ut3 i doubt i would have ever boughten that q6600 and the next game i would have boughten that would have taken advantage of a quad would have been bc2 3 years later,so chances are i would have kept my e6750 right till bc2 came out besdies from gaming that old cpu of yours is still more then capable of light gaming and anything else so its still got tons of life any 775 does besides the pentium 4 and d,god what awful chips

 

[slaughter111]

Other than when i'm running VMware Workstation or StarCraft 2, my Core i7 920 is overkill by a large margin

 

[Necc]

2500K? Anyone worth their salt is packing at least a Xeon E7-8870

Holy crap is that chip really 4.6K$?

 

[skipsneeky2]

lol necc that could build a gamer probaly with a sr-2 motherboard and dual xeons dont know anyone in their right mind who would spend $4.6k on a processor kinda money can go towards a good downpayment on a car from the kinda money people have in here they can make some good car payments or send me $2k share the wealth lol but the most ive spent on a pc to date has been $1,800 which is less then even half that cpu,so it blows my mind

 

[Vic Vega]

I just bumped my X4 965 up to 4.1GHz today from 4.0GHz... I think it may be out of gas though. Unless Bulldozer is somehow amazing I'll probably have my 965 for three-four more years. It's complete overkill for most tasks.

 

[Deanodarlo]

Well still no Bulldozer news to make me think "that's special" and get the upgrade juices flowing - I still can't justify upgrading my Core2 Quad.

Tried a mates Sandy Bridge setup - it felt just like my PC, gaming felt the same, except in benches it showed to be faster. No WOW/JAW-DROP factor, nothing much new being brought to the table. Not feeling it at the moment!

I remember crapping my pants when I went from a 486DX4 to a P233MMX and all the exciting new 3D games, then from that to a PII 500 - emulation and MP3 music really took off. Thunderbird series blew my mind, and the Athlon 64 really pumped up gaming to a high level. Core2, my first multi-core CPU, got me excited with smooth multitasking (about time it equalled the feel of multitasking on the Amiga Workbench LOL!) then I finally ended up with the overclocked Q9450. 775 just won't leave me! It does everything I do well damn it, four years on!

 

[Vette73]

Yea the CPU does not seem to limit the majority of users. Now SSD is what most will notice I would think.

I am waiting for more SATA 6gb SSDs to come out, that and hopefully push prices down.

 

[jihe]

I love 775, towards the end it was so cheap, got one of those mbd+cpu bundles for $50, overclocked to 4Gh and still more than enough for all my needs. I think I will upgrade to ssd before cpu.

 

[sangyup81]

Well still no Bulldozer news to make me think "that's special" and get the upgrade juices flowing - I still can't justify upgrading my Core2 Quad.

Tried a mates Sandy Bridge setup - it felt just like my PC, gaming felt the same, accept in benches it showed to be faster. No WOW/JAW-DROP factor, nothing much new being brought to the table. Not feeling it at the moment!

I remember crapping my pants when I went from a 486DX4 to a P233MMX and all the exciting new 3D games, then from that to a PII 500 and emulation and MP3 music really took off. Thunderbird series blew my mind, and the Athlon 64 really pumped up gaming to a high level. Core2, my first multi-core CPU, got me excited with smooth multitasking (about time it equalled the feel of multitasking on the Amiga Workbench LOL!) then I finally ended up with the overclocked Q9450. 775 just won't leave me! It does everything I do well damn it, four years on!

You're overclocked aren't you? You're fine waiting. I only recently upgraded from socket 939 because Adobe Flash was starting to get really slow

 

[tommy2q]

i upgraded from 7800gt to 6970 while using opteron 165 and that made a huge difference with 3d games. just upgraded opteron at 2.4 to 2600k stock while going from 2gig to 8gig ram and didnt notice much if any improvements in everday usage. tried re5 and didnt see or feel any big difference either.. maybe i need a reformat?

 

[sangyup81]

i upgraded from 7800gt to 6970 while using opteron 165 and that made a huge difference with 3d games. just upgraded opteron at 2.4 to 2600k stock while going from 2gig to 8gig ram and didnt notice much if any improvements in everday usage. tried re5 and didnt see or feel any big difference either.. maybe i need a reformat?

the biggest gain are in things other than games unless you're talking about Adobe Flash games. those get a huge improvement from opt 165 to a 2500k or 2600k

Flash Benchmark '08

 

[toyota]

i upgraded from 7800gt to 6970 while using opteron 165 and that made a huge difference with 3d games. just upgraded opteron at 2.4 to 2600k stock while going from 2gig to 8gig ram and didnt notice much if any improvements in everday usage. tried re5 and didnt see or feel any big difference either.. maybe i need a reformat?

if you went from an old 2.4 Opteron to a 2600k while using a 6970 and did not notice a difference in gaming then your system is screwed up. a 2.4 Opteron would not even give you half the performance a 6970 is capable of. in more cpu intensive games you would not even get but about 25-33% of what that card can do. heck a 2.4 Opteron cannot even delver playable framerates in some games at settings a 6970 can use.

 

[sm625]

I just upgraded another old athlon X2 4600 65nm to a X2 245 45nm. Power draw at the wall is 90 watts at idle. It used to be 150. It's now 3.2GHz and it used to be 2.5GHz. Cost was $30. There is a lot less heat coming out of the case now. This is not bad for a budget system that is 4 years old with a 80 nm discrete gpu.

 

[tommy2q]

i was talking about re5 which was the only game that i have played so far to check for differences... i am sure the more recent cpu demanding games will benefit.. i was referring to everyday usage and re5 gaming only... i see basically no difference from changing to a much faster cpu so far..

 

[toyota]

i was talking about re5 which was the only game that i have played so far to check for differences... i am sure the more recent cpu demanding games will benefit.. i was referring to everyday usage and re5 gaming only... i see basically no difference from changing to a much faster cpu so far..

if you were happy using a 6970 with your old cpu then you might as well bought a gts450 because that's the most gpu that your 2.4 Opty would have ever been able to fully push and even then not in cpu intensive games. again many games would not even be very playable with a 2.4 Opty at settings a 6970 could run. surely you need to test more than RE 5 to make the conclusion that a 2600k is not massively better.