SEMI-NEW RIg.......input needed

[umgill45]

Hey everyone.
Been out of the loop for a bit.

I'm upgrading my rig (see sig.). Just changing the cpu and motherboard and keeping everything else the way it is.

Thing is I don't want to spend more than $350 CDN or $US310 in total on the upgrade.

Motherboard options are:
Gigabyte P45 UD3P or UD3R. or ud3-L
I also am considering the P5Q-pro.

For the cpu I have the following choices:

q8200, q8300
q9300, q9400 (9 series puts me over budget)

also considering the E8400 for a high 4.0+ GHZ o'clock.

Overclocking is a high priority. Want quad that is a 80% guarantee to hit 3.6ghz + or a dual thats 4.0Ghz+
My usage:
1. Gaming
2. Folding @ home
3. Some v.encoding (like twice or thrice a month)
4. Browsing email, listening to songs (here is where the audio of onboard should be taken into consideration)
5. Using tversity to stream to my PS3 (needs decoding I believe)

There you have it guys that pretty much what I do on my rig.

Also can you comment if the upgrade is even worth it?
Will I see a a marked difference between my present rig?

Should I wait for the Core i7 to go down in price?
Please keep in mind that I will have to change my RAM if that happens and at the moment X58 chipsets are really expensive.

I hope my upgrade choices are good ones. Please comment if they're not.

 

[PC_User]

If you're not looking to spend more than $310 USD, then you can't really go i7.

I'd go with the Gigabyte EP45-UD3R for the motherboard.

As for the CPU, if you're doing encoding, you'd want a quad-core. Keep in mind that the Q8200 is the lowest end quad CPU. If you don't consider encoding, go with the E8400 and aim for a high overclock. If encoding performance is of concern, go with the Q8200 (or 8300 if your budget permits).

 

[umgill45]

Yeh the UD3P is $17 more expensive than the UD3R for me .

But from what I can tell I'm going with either of these two. Depends on how much I can save on the cpu.

For the cpu I am able to get my hands on an OEM new q9550 C1 stepping for abt $US250 or $CDN305.

I can also get a retail brand new q6600 for $CDN180. So that's my dilemma.
I'm able to get a retail q9550 E0(guaranteed) for abt $CDN350.

Any inputs?
Thanks in adavance

 

[theman7233]

i vote for e8400 for most games GHz are whats important