Hi guys, Here is the thing: I actually own a C2Q Q6600 witch I have have successfully overclocked to 3.2 Ghz on air cooling, its been running like that for the past 2 years 100% STABLE, its mostly my gaming rig and so far I´m a happy camper no biggies here. I recently got my hands on some extra cash and was thinking that it´s MAYBE upgrading season; I begun reading on the new generation of i7 CPUs and the newer Sandy Bridge chipset and what not. What got me thinking by some articles I read is that, APPARENTLY, upgrading my actual rig to the newer generation CPU/MoBO would not yield me THAT MUCH of a benefit. Money is not tight but if I can spare me the cost of upgrading and hold it off for a few more months I´ll hold. So I dont knot where to begin, if I should upgrade or not and to witch or what CPU/Chipset combination to go with. I´ve always been an ASUS fan and have grown fond of the OC capabilities of my Rampage Extreme MoBo so I´ll probably be going ASUS (although they seem to be getting sloppy with the quality control and RMA and DOA are in high numbers lately). I´m looking for something that will keep me "current" (if there is such a thing in computing) and would probably work for my gaming needs for the next 1 1/2 to 2 years sooooo..... I´m all ears, fire away BTW, I´d like to keep it in the USD $500 to $600 range witch doesn´t mean I can´t go higher if the numbers performance/costs are right.
No skip the upgrades, that's a quad core you have there and a good one, just ensure you have a decent video card with it and a good quantity , 4 GB minimum, memory and skip all the new stuff till Broadwell in 2014 -15. That's what I am doing, I have a Q9550 and GTX470 and they run everything perfectly for me and it will for quite a while yet.
With the Asus motherboards they are pretty much like any other brand, you can have a bad run. I believe this run is over, so should be okay now. Internet searches can always be a good thing, but be very wary of people making false claims (on the internet, really? who would have guessed!!!). Remember people who are Gigabyte fans may make false claims about Asus and vice versa. The other consideration is some people who decide to build their own computer are numptys and are klutzes when putting it together, such as not being careful putting in the motherboard, components etc. Damage to the motherboard may not be visible, they come in an anti-static bag for a reason!
Unless you don't know what to do with that extra cash, there is no need for you to upgrade. And although there is no such thing as being 'current' in computing terms, that system should easily keep you running games decently more than the 2 years that you have set your expectations
What do you know? I got a very similar response from another forum and based on what Ive read here and there I think the smartest thing I can do is to replace my aging GTX260 with a GTX570. That and the 4 Gb of 1600 RAM I already have should keep me in the game for awhile. Thanks everybody for the insight and for your time to reply.
If you are looking for a way to boost your existing system, an ssd might do the trick. It takes some tinkering, but can be well worth it. Not all drives are created equal though, and more expensive doesn't exactly mean better. As a whole the technology still seems a bit twitchy, but that's just my opinion based off the customer reviews I've read. I haven't had any issues with mine.
The main thing with SSD's is to not fill them with junk! so many people with SSD's leave their documents on it (since its the main Windows drive), its not as if you need your photo's you won't look at again ever! or at least for several months, on your fast SSD. I also don't believe in putting temp files on the SSD, as this may effect longevity. Pagefile is a little more tricky, due to its nature its probably safer on another drive, as long as its a fast drive and not a eco/green one! or you can leave it on the SSD, but in both scenarios having 8GB of RAM greatly helps with reducing its usage. If you motherboard supports 4GB modules, having 2x4GB should be quite beneficial. If you currently have 2x2GB modules you can flog them off on Ebay or something You're probably fine leaving temp files and pagefiles on an SSD, just personally I don't like the constant read/write cycles that occur with the pagefile and the 'temporary' (hence its classification) nature of temp files on something which isn't suggestively good at longevity through cycling read/writes. On the other hand, your motherboard only supports SATA 2, and although you can get benefit from an SSD, there's no need to get one which does 550MB/s since you can't utilise its full potential. Is your computer software fully up to date, system maintained (files cleaned, defragged etc), bios been updated to the latest, 1301?, drivers up to date? and I don't mean from the Asus website, I mean the actual latest version of the drivers, such as Intel RST v10.6 (assuming you are running in AHCI mode), Marvell (61xx) 1.2.0.7700, (not Marvell 1.2.0.7100), SoundMAX 6.10.01.6620 etc.
Not much to add to whats already been said really. For the money you have to spend , an SSD and a decent GPU is the way to go. Doing a clean install is always a nice way to clean / speed things up.
I´ve been thinking about the SSD but since I´m stuck with SATA-2 speeds cause of my MoBo wouldnt that defeat the purpose of an SSD? I mean, Im still gonna get the same transfers speed of my SATA-2 drives, right?
Obviously using an SSD on SATA 3 would prove more beneficial but the performance boost on SATA 2 is massive .