Pixie Upgrade

[Bluepixie]

Hi! I'm thinking of giving my at the time, stop gap machine, a boost.

Alita's current spec

Black Widow Coolermaster Case
MSI i975X Power Up! 2.1 Rev. C0 300MHz FSB
BIOS - 12/07/2006
Intel Core Duo E6300 2.1GHz - Zalman 9700
Geil PC2-6400 2GB[2x1024] (4 - 4 - 4 - 12) (1.8V)
Power Color X1950 Pro 512 (Stock, for now)
X-Fi Fatal1ty Editon
Twin SpinPoint 250GB SATAII
Tagan 480W (TG480-U01)
Plextor PX-716AL
Raptor K1 Pro Gaming Keyboard
Logitech G5 with S&S Steelmat
ViewSonic VX922 19"
VideoLogic DigiTheatre 5.1 (1stEd) - DTS, Dolby Digital, Optical

I have a new BIOS to play with now, which I will get started on right away. Hopefully the instabilities i was suffering at higher FSB's will be sorted out.

However, I think a little more power wouldn't go a miss. The question is CPU or GC and which one? I was thinking a Quad Core Q6600 would be sweet and comes in at about £155. I'm not keen on picking up a 8800 yet because I'd like to see what ATi pull out. Or maybe a memory upgrade would be the trick? I don't know. I've not actually played Crysis or anything yet so this might be a bit premature, but I'm pretty sure I'll want to upgrade after trying them.

What do people think?

[Hex]

IMO your best bet would be to wait. You could OC the CPU a bit, especially if you bought a better cooler...you could also slap more RAM in cheaply. Quad core is a waste of money as games aren't yet optimized to take advantage of it, equally the 8800s (much as they're nice) don't run Crysis at anywhere near full spec so you might be better waiting for the Geforce 9 series/whatever ATi pulls.

[Bluepixie]

Cheers, that's kinda what I was thinking but I've not had the time yet to research everything. The problem is that my MB is a bit of a twat and tends to get unstable when I try to run the CPU and memory at the correct frequencies. Hopefully the new BIOS will sort it out otherwise I'm gonna have to hit the MSI forums, maybe even RMA it. :( Fingers crossed though!

btw, whats wrong with the Zalman 9700!?!?

[Hex]

btw, whats wrong with the Zalman 9700!?!?

Nothing wrong with it per se, just not as efficient as the newer/better coolers. For example my Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme, my CPU idles at 30 C, I could easily clock to 3Ghz if I could be arsed spending the time on it.

[Sid]

If your PC currently does everything you want it to do, there's no real point in upgrading. I was considering a quad-core upgrade, but my Athlon 64 3700+ does everything I need so I can't really justify it at all.

If you're going to buy something, a new 500GB-1TB hard drive is probably the best bet and will serve you well for many years to come.

I would think that your cooler would be fine for overclocking if you wanted to. The stock cooler is certainly good enough for well over 3GHz. If I recall correctly from the SuperPi thread, Stuart has the fastest machine at the club with over 3GHz from an E6300 on stock cooling.

[Bluepixie]

See I don't get the new CPU's. I've not got the option of changing the multiplier in my MB BIOS and I can't seem to push the FSB very far. They must vary a lot during fabrication because I just can't seem to get my CPU past 2.2Ghz.

[Fil2eFly]

may have to do a little OC'n my self, see how far i can push my stock 3GHZ C2D E6850 :)

done a little oc on my card: stock OEM 8800GTX 768: 576mhz/900mhz myn: 632mhz/1030mhz
perhaps see how far i can push it at some point but atm no point

[Sid]

Have any of your C2D users actually found anything that eats up the whole CPU yet, though? I can never manage to use all of my A64/2GB other than when I'm working with High Res (500MB+) photoshop files, which I'd imagine that most of you don't do.

CD/DVD ripping is the other reason I can think of for needing a much faster CPU, but again, I can't see anyone doing *that* much of that to warrant an upgrade.

I feel that modern CPUs are more than powerful enough to do most things, and have been for a while. Cutting-edge graphics and new games seems to be the only reason to upgrade these days.

[Bluepixie]

my stupid fucking MB won't turn off EIST! No matter what I do the blasted fucker just sits at a x6 multiplier (should be x7 for a E6300) It gives the correct readings in the BIOS (i.e. says I'm running at 2.2Ghz for example) but doesn't do it in Windows. I'm running the lastest BIOS (7.7) which I just flashed on recently hence why I'm tinkering with it. I didn't really try OC'ing or fine tuning at all before due to not having enough time. I'm hitting google but I'm not getting any answers, WTF?!