Would a jump like that even be worth the $120? It does jump me up to 3.2ghz from 2.6 on my current cpu.
My current specs are...
X2 5200+ 2.6hz || 4gig DDR2 PC6400 || evga 9800GTX+ || Seagate 320GB SATA 7200 || Audigy 2
If this isn't worth the money, I'll just wait it out another year or so and get a quad core.
boostud
When the AMD X2 5600+ (2.8MHz) came out, I picked one up and upgraded from my X2 3800+ (which I oc'ed from 1.81 to 2.41 - water cooling; probably could have pushed it higher, but I wasn't comfortable doing so). I needed something that wasn't holding back my 8800GTS 640MB card so much.
I spent about $160 on the new CPU and I saw a considerable improvement on stock clock - my 3DMark06 score jumped from low 8k to mid 10k and I pushed it into the 11k when I oc'ed my CPU to 3.01MHz.
When Crysis came out (before the patches), I could play with everything on medium settings and pull 28-40fps. Once the game was patched to perform better, I moved all my settings to high except for a couple and was getting around the same FPS. This is with the 5600+.
Then I traded in my EVGA 8800GTS 640MB card for the 512MB version that runs quite a bit faster and I got a new 22" monitor and play with a 1680 x 1050 resolution with all settings on high. I get a good solid 30-35fps.
So, in your case, I wouldn't bother with the CPU upgrade unless that is your only option. If you can save up a bit more and pickup a high end duo-core Intel or a decent quad-core and new MB....I'd wait it out and go this route.
Log in to comment