Upgrade M/B & CPU..

On Christmas I woke to find a shiny new 4830 512MB waiting to be connected to my now aging PC. Long story short the 4830 is excellent my current CPU seems to bottle neck performance quite a bit! I'm thinking about eBaying off some unused parts and getting an upgrade! My budget is set at $250 and I'm trying as best as I can to stick to it!

I currently have:
PentiumD 915 2.8Ghz@4.0Ghz (Very Stable 49c Full Load)
Abit AW8D Intel 975X M/B
2GB DDR800 RAM

I'm thinking of getting this:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
MSI P43 Neo3
4GB DDR800 (2GB on it's way)

I don't need Crossfire support as I know I'll never use it, my current board supports Crossfire but never could find another X1950 (also for sale!) at a decent price in order to take advantage of it. Don't need any big extra e.g. IEEE 1394 as I never use it and it's on my current board.

Any advice on what to get or where to get it would be very welcome. Please keep in mind I'm trying to get the most performance in games as I can while sticking to the budget!!

Thanks!

 

Looks like it's the Core 2 Quad then?... I haven't seen anything better in that price range at least and AMD's offerings don't seem that great.

 

I've got 2 c2q boxes and they both scream I game a lot and these processors are awesome. I had a pd 930 and noticed a definite boost especially in multitasking and video rendering. (for reference my quads are q6600 and q9550)

 

Looks like solid choices to me! The Q6600 is a great performer and extra ram is a must for today's games. As for where to get it, I highly recommend Newegg. I don't shop anywhere else.

 

I agree with OverCooked. (Well except for the NoEgg part :-D) The Q6600 is a solid CPU. With my Nvidia GTX 260 I was getting a little over 15K in 3DMark 06 on my Q6600 system. Unfortunantly, it died, and on my E6600 system the card only gets around 11K on 3D06.

I am just too lazy to pull 2 mobos and swap out the CPU's.

I would recommend aftermarket cooling for the Q6600. The stock Intel is junk made by satan IMHO. Get something that bolts on.

 

As everyone has said the Q6600 is a great choice (i dont use one im still living with an e6750 :-o) but i know a few people who use that cpu

go for it

 

Thanks for the responses. I was thinking the Q6600 was about as good as it’ll get in that price range. I’m sure my Zalman 9700 should keep the new CPU cool.