CPU Upgrade - E7500

[Frostea23]

To cut down on text, I want to upgrade my old gaming desktop's CPU, which is a Core 2 Duo E7500 inside. To be frank, after I purchased my Dell XPS 17 laptop--it has an i7-2670QM--I was utterly spoiled by its raw computational speed.

After I started playing SWTOR, first thing I noticed is my laptop played it much better than my desktop; checked task manager, and noticed my Desktop's two cores were staying at 80-90%+; sighed to myself because this meant my processor was significantly bottle-necking the game.

So, I would like to upgrade my CPU, but I'm limited by the fact the E7500 uses the LGA775 slot. Anyone have any particular suggestions about CPU upgrades?

P.S. If I had the money, I would much rather just build myself a new machine, but as a college student money is hard to come by.

[noteworthynerd]

For the price that it would cost to upgrade just your CPU, there's really no point. The only 775 socket CPUs that I can find that would be an upgrade are the E8600, Q9550 and the QX9650, all of which have been discontinued, but you can still buy on Amazon for $209 (used), $300 and $1200 respectively... For a little over $300, you can buy a brand new i5 2500k and a brand new ASRock z68 Extreme3 Gen3 Mobo, which is widely considered to be the best "bang for your buck" gaming CPU/MoBo combo on the market. Edit: You'd also need new RAM, but you can pick up 8GB of G.Skill memory for ~$50 - still a much better option that attempting to upgrade just your CPU.

I gotta ask: Why don't you just hook your XPS up to a monitor and use it to play SWTOR? o.O Even if you upgrade your CPU/Mobo, the GPU in your PC will just become the new bottleneck (assuming it is the same GPU that originally came with the system).

[Deleted]

You wont improve on the E7500 that much for less than $250 which is just silly when as mentioned above by noteworthynerd you can get a new gen CPU/Mobo for around $300.

[Riaya]

Just note it would be around 400$ though cause you will have to buy new RAM as well. It in the end is still a much better bargain than trying to upgrade a 775 socket. I should know cause I am still running a 775 socked Core 2 Quad 6600. Even though it is Over Clocked it is starting to get strained and I plan on upgrading soon as well lol.

[Asera]

The current Sandy Bridge Core i3 line has the same TDP as an E7500, if you want to keep costs down while replacing your backbone. There's really no way to effectively upgrade an LGA775 system anymore, especially not a Wolfdale chip like that one. The only available options aren't much better than what you have.

[Frostea23]

Yeah, I worried about that; the wolfdale chips are just too old.

Honestly, if I'm going to replace the Mobo and CPU, I'd rather just build a whole new machine. This desktop is still relatively decent for it's age, it can play WoW at Ultra settings and Skyrim on High to Ultra since they are both well optimized games and aren't too hard on the CPU. (Swtor is a completely different matter, very poor asset infrastructure causing high CPU utilization).

I think what I'm getting out of this thread is, it'd honestly just be easier to build a new machine when and if the money for it materializes. Thanks guys for the input.

[Frostea23]

Thanks all for the input. What I got out of this is it'll just be better to try to save on cash and build a new machine.

This desktop has a perfectly good motherboard and CPU, and if I upgrade the CPU + Motherboard + Memory, may as well upgrade the GPU too, by that point, most of the primary components have been replaced.

[Deleted]

Yeah, I worried about that; the wolfdale chips are just too old.

Honestly, if I'm going to replace the Mobo and CPU, I'd rather just build a whole new machine. This desktop is still relatively decent for it's age, it can play WoW at Ultra settings and Skyrim on High to Ultra since they are both well optimized games and aren't too hard on the CPU. (Swtor is a completely different matter, very poor asset infrastructure causing high CPU utilization).

I think what I'm getting out of this thread is, it'd honestly just be easier to build a new machine when and if the money for it materializes. Thanks guys for the input.

Actually WoW is basically one of the most CPU taxing games ever.. When you go into 25 man raiding.
Hope the 64 client is a success.

You wont play 25 man raids on Ultra with that CPU at all though. Cause a Phenom II x4 955 drops to 20 fps on most encounters.
This is on High settings (vs ultra) on 1680x1050

[noteworthynerd]

Actually WoW is basically one of the most CPU taxing games ever.

While true, this doesn't mean much when comparing WoW to SWTOR - WoW is extremely well optimized, SWTOR, on the other hand, is a complete mess.

Of course, WoW is also a 7 year old game, it doesn't demand nearly as much as a 7 month old game does.

[Asera]

While true, this doesn't mean much when comparing WoW to SWTOR - WoW is extremely well optimized, SWTOR, on the other hand, is a complete mess.

Of course, WoW is also a 7 year old game, it doesn't demand nearly as much as a 7 month old game does.

I wouldn't say WoW is extremely well optimized unless you tack on 'for a decade old engine' afterwards.