Will this small upgrade help me at all? e6600 -> e8400

[Deleted]

Hey.

I have an old computer. The main specs written below:
Asus PQ5 SE
Intel core 2 duo e6600
nVidia 8800 GTS
4 GB RAM

I've been doing 10 man raids since wrath and my computer have never had any troubles running raids or anything in wow really, although at lower settings obviously.

Not long ago I joined a 25 man raiding guild however and my computer is struggeling, quite a bit on some fights.

My question is if I will get any kind of performance boost out of switching to a core 2 duo E8400 instead. It's very cheap, but if it will give me close to nothing it's not really worth the hassel.

Also I would like to know if upgradeing to a newer graphics card will help me.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

You'd be better off simply saving up for a new PC.

[chazus]

Just had another conversation with another guy who had a E4500, which has almost the same speed as yours. Our suggestion to him was to try overclocking to 3ghz first, before getting a new CPU. But the next suggestion was pretty much that, an E7400-7600 or E8400-8600.

Personally, it seems like a waste of money if you plan to keep playing games any time soon, since money spent now is money wasted later. It may be more worthwhile for you to just save up for a proper upgrade.

[Deleted]

Not going into detail but next to nothing of an improvement. Save some money go all out and build a new system. As for the graphics card it would be pretty pointless to upgrade without upgrading the processor :/

[Deleted]

The CPU would only cost me like 15 dollars. It's a non issue, but if it won't help me I qon't bother spending the time installing the thing.

[stalkerzzzz]

For $15 you might as well do it.

[chazus]

Yeah for $15 I'd say it's worth it. I was looking at ebay prices of like 40-50, which is a different story.

[Faithh]

Just do it for 15$. Going from 65nm to 45nm is a huge step :P

[BicycleMafioso]

Yeah, that will be an upgrade. When you get the new CPU, you would be able to overclock it much further, meaning you would get a bit of a performance increase, again.

Make sure your motherboard accepts the new CPU through a BIOS upgrade.

[rjparker1]

Hey.

I have an old computer. The main specs written below:
Asus PQ5 SE
Intel core 2 duo e6600
nVidia 8800 GTS
4 GB RAM

I've been doing 10 man raids since wrath and my computer have never had any troubles running raids or anything in wow really, although at lower settings obviously.

Not long ago I joined a 25 man raiding guild however and my computer is struggeling, quite a bit on some fights.

My question is if I will get any kind of performance boost out of switching to a core 2 duo E8400 instead. It's very cheap, but if it will give me close to nothing it's not really worth the hassel.

Also I would like to know if upgradeing to a newer graphics card will help me.

I will let you in on a little secret.. you are playing a game, games don't use CPU, they use GPU (video). Watch your process while you are playing if you don't believe me, I doubt if WoW is using more than 30%, which means it's not toping out your CPU, which means CPU is not the problem.

Look at refresh rate in WoW.. you should be at 50FPS minimum.. lower than that, 50 FPS might be good flying around, but when you get 25 people running around with enchants boss damage and spells flying everything it will drop to around 30.. that's when things start to get hairy... not counting your own moving and screen resolution...

---------- Post added 2013-02-15 at 04:08 PM ----------

Just do it for 15$. Going from 65nm to 45nm is a huge step :P

do you know what nm means? It's the size of the die 65 nano meters vs 45 nano meters.. ZERO to do with performance just means they figured out how to make components smaller, so this will not be any type of increase whatsoever.. the main problem is GRAPHICS, not CPU for games anyway..

[kojinshugi]

I will let you in on a little secret.. you are playing a game, games don't use CPU, they use GPU (video). Watch your process while you are playing if you don't believe me, I doubt if WoW is using more than 30%, which means it's not toping out your CPU, which means CPU is not the problem.

I will let you in on a secret as well - you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, and you should stop trying to give terrible advice to people. Games that do a lot of data handling (RTS, MMOs) tax the CPU a lot.

WoW is a CPU/RAM intensive game that barely taxes modern GPUs. Your personal CPU usage is low because of two things:

1. WoW doesn't really use more than 2 cores, and you're looking at the total cores used. You will never go above 50% on a quad core.
2. You have a modern, high-end CPU. Which the e6600 is not.

---------- Post added 2013-02-15 at 09:17 PM ----------

do you know what nm means? It's the size of the die 65 nano meters vs 45 nano meters.. ZERO to do with performance just means they figured out how to make components smaller, so this will not be any type of increase whatsoever.. the main problem is GRAPHICS, not CPU for games anyway..

No, it's not the size of the die. The size of the die is dependent on the socket type. All socket 775 dies are the same size.

The nanometers refers to the size of the transistors. You can fit more 45nm transistors on the same die than you can 65nm transistors.

Seriously, that hole you're using is not for talking.

[Killora]

do you know what nm means? It's the size of the die 65 nano meters vs 45 nano meters.. ZERO to do with performance just means they figured out how to make components smaller, so this will not be any type of increase whatsoever.. the main problem is GRAPHICS, not CPU for games anyway..

To reiterate what was said above me, you don't know what you're talking about.

NM's is the size of the transistors. The smaller the transistor, the more that can fit on the chip.

Aswell as, the smaller the transistor, the more efficient the chip is.

[kojinshugi]

On topic - I actually just recently upgraded to an E8300, and running at the stock 2.8GHz I've had a drastic improvement in FPS in 25-mans. If your motherboard supports 45nm, then go for it.

And you can't go wrong with upgrading your GPU, as it will carry over to a new computer just fine.

I recommend a HD7770. Although if you're running at lower resolutions like 1440x900, a HD5670 or HD7750 will do fine as well.

IMPORTANT: Make sure the cards are GDDR5. There's a lot of budget cards with GDDR3 memory, which sucks balls.

[Drakoes]

Also, nobody here has mentioned that the OP might want to buy some new thermal paste, too. Thermal paste should cost around $10, and I'd recommend this one (Arctic Silver, Shin-Etsu and many others are also good, but it's not like the difference between them will be substantial):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186038

This is assuming the OP doesn't have any spare around to use, which even still, I'd recommend buying a new tube. As your replacing the CPU, you'll of course need to reseat the cooler, and reapply some thermal paste, which is going to be inevitable. Using the leftovers/not cleaning the old ones off wouldn't be a good idea at all, as it will definitely have a huge impact on the temperatures.

Don't think of this is as a big deal though, it shouldn't take very long to reapply the paste and clean off the residue on the base of your CPU cooler.

[Faithh]

No, it's not the size of the die. The size of the die is dependent on the socket type. All socket 775 dies are the same size.

The nanometers refers to the size of the transistors. You can fit more 45nm transistors on the same die than you can 65nm transistors.

Seriously, that hole you're using is not for talking.

Noes the size of the die is just how big the chip is. A GK104 is 293mm² big -> http://i.imgur.com/pnYp6oX.jpg

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 05:27 AM ----------

I will let you in on a little secret.. you are playing a game, games don't use CPU, they use GPU (video). Watch your process while you are playing if you don't believe me, I doubt if WoW is using more than 30%, which means it's not toping out your CPU, which means CPU is not the problem.

Look at refresh rate in WoW.. you should be at 50FPS minimum.. lower than that, 50 FPS might be good flying around, but when you get 25 people running around with enchants boss damage and spells flying everything it will drop to around 30.. that's when things start to get hairy... not counting your own moving and screen resolution...

---------- Post added 2013-02-15 at 04:08 PM ----------

Tbh your little secret is a lie.

do you know what nm means? It's the size of the die 65 nano meters vs 45 nano meters.. ZERO to do with performance just means they figured out how to make components smaller, so this will not be any type of increase whatsoever.. the main problem is GRAPHICS, not CPU for games anyway..

Zero? A smaller transistor will have less capacitance which just means the transistors can switch faster. Main problem is graphics. Seriously....... My cpu is just a simple 2600k or 2700k whatever, during 25m raids my cpu never exceeds 25% for Wow.exe but my gpu owyeah it's chilling with a gpu load 30-34% (can't exactly remember the load anymore).

If I put an overclock it's just giving me a lower gpu load with the same performance. This is just because the gpu isn't getting enough resources from the cpu.

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 05:29 AM ----------

Also, nobody here has mentioned that the OP might want to buy some new thermal paste, too. Thermal paste should cost around $10, and I'd recommend this one (Arctic Silver, Shin-Etsu and many others are also good, but it's not like the difference between them will be substantial):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186038

This is assuming the OP doesn't have any spare around to use, which even still, I'd recommend buying a new tube. As your replacing the CPU, you'll of course need to reseat the cooler, and reapply some thermal paste, which is going to be inevitable. Using the leftovers/not cleaning the old ones off wouldn't be a good idea at all, as it will definitely have a huge impact on the temperatures.

Don't think of this is as a big deal though, it shouldn't take very long to reapply the paste and clean off the residue on the base of your CPU cooler.

I hated Arctic Silver but after being experienced it's a great thing but I prefer to use the noctua nt-h1 because it isn't conductive while AS is slightly conductive.

[Deleted]

Also, nobody here has mentioned that the OP might want to buy some new thermal paste, too. Thermal paste should cost around $10, and I'd recommend this one (Arctic Silver, Shin-Etsu and many others are also good, but it's not like the difference between them will be substantial):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186038

This is assuming the OP doesn't have any spare around to use, which even still, I'd recommend buying a new tube. As your replacing the CPU, you'll of course need to reseat the cooler, and reapply some thermal paste, which is going to be inevitable. Using the leftovers/not cleaning the old ones off wouldn't be a good idea at all, as it will definitely have a huge impact on the temperatures.

Don't think of this is as a big deal though, it shouldn't take very long to reapply the paste and clean off the residue on the base of your CPU cooler.

Yes, I will indeed new some new paste. I build the computer like 5-6-7 years ago at this point so in truth, I would probably need some new paste anyway.

For CPU coolers i'm running with this thing:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106061

It was good when I installed it years back.

[Faithh]

Yes, I will indeed new some new paste. I build the computer like 5-6-7 years ago at this point so in truth, I would probably need some new paste anyway.

For CPU coolers i'm running with this thing:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106061

It was good when I installed it years back.

I would go for the noctua nt-h1 and nothing else. The reason why I'd recommend this is just this is not conductive at all and you can't do anything wrong with it and it's just too easy to use. Some paste are conductive and happened quite a bit that people got their motherboard screwed..

[Deleted]

OK.
I never overclocked before, but just figured I would try it.

So far I've brought my E6600 to 3.15 GHz and is sitting at 52 degrees celcius (126 degrees fahrenheit). I don't know much about overclocking, but I guess this is a decent beginning.

An E8400 Should create less heat as I understand it and the multiplier is the same so there is a decent chance I can push some pretty good speed out of it.

[Majesticii]

I will let you in on a little secret.. you are playing a game, games don't use CPU....etc

This has got the be the most stupid post i've ever read. Srsly wtf.

@topic, isn't it then also necessary that he purchases an 3rd party cooler. Meaning more costs. I'm not sure you'll get the yields associated with the costs. Especially since you can get a CPU/Mobo/Memory upgrade for 100-150dollars these days.

* User was infracted for this post

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

OK.
I never overclocked before, but just figured I would try it.

So far I've brought my E6600 to 3.15 GHz and is sitting at 52 degrees celcius (126 degrees fahrenheit). I don't know much about overclocking, but I guess this is a decent beginning.

An E8400 Should create less heat as I understand it and the multiplier is the same so there is a decent chance I can push some pretty good speed out of it.

You should be able to push an E8400 as far as 4.0 GHz if you are prepared to spend a decent amount of time doing research and testing the stability, as well as getting a decent cooler for the CPU.