Worth upgrading from Athlon X2 4800+ to Q6600?

B

Belzebutt

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 5, 2006
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I've had the same Socket 939 board for 2.5 years and currently I have an X2 4800+ with 3Gb or DDR-400 on it.

I'm thinking of getting a Q6600 with 4Gb of DDR2-800, it's a fairly inexpensive, the mobo would cost me about CAN $150, the CPU $200 and the RAM about $90.

I'm just wondering how much of a performance benefit I'll see in games and Media Center type stuff, and just general computing. Also, will this upgrade last another 2 years, and will there be a new Socket 775 CPU to plug into it later on, or is it another dead end? I didn't really like how AMD just stopped making S939 CPUs.

I saw a few benchmarks on Tomshardware but I'd like to see more and subjective opions as well, particularly about how long this upgrade would last.
 
The performance difference will range from good to amazing.
Depending on your graphics card, you will see a small to huge benefit in games.
 
Oh that's the other thing I forgot to mention, I have two 8800GTs in SLI.

And I run Vista 64-bit.

So what about the longevity factor, is DDR2 on its way out? Should I be looking at a DDR3 board? Is Socket 775 going to stick around for a bit? If the performance difference is "huge" then that won't even matter that much to me since I'll be happy with it for a couple of years...
 
BIG performance difference!

DDR3 is mostly too expensive to bother with.
When Nehalem comes out, socket 775 will be phased out as with every other new chipset release.
It should be good for 2 years if you get a 3.6GHz + quad.
 
So should I spend ~$500 on this upgrade to Q6600? How long will it take until I'll be able to upgrade to a Nehalem CPU+mobo for around that price (or a bit more)?
 
For the level of performance that would even allow a upgrade, I would bet close to a year or more. That heavily depends upon AMD putting up enough competition. You will have to buy a new MB, DDR3 ram, and a new cpu. I think the price of that when it first comes out will be close to 700 dollars if not more...
 
The OP can get a DDR2 motherboard and ram without any performance issue.
 
man it is definately worth it

i recently upgraded from
asus mobo
x2 4800+ 939 socket
2gigs of ram

to
q6600
4gb ram
gigabyte ds3l

all on windows vista 64bit
and performance is blaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing fast, everything loads a ton faster its definately worth it and noticable!
 
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