Question Getting the last life out of my P5WDG2-WS Professional: Which CPU?

[aewhistory]

Okay, so I have a pair of Asus P5WDG2-WS Pro they’ve been awesome for many years and, even now, serve me quite well. Consequently, I’ve decided that it’d be more cost effective to upgrade them to their maximums and get another five years or more out of them. However, I am I now a bit of a conundrum with the CPU. Currently I am running a Q6400, but seeing as all the CPUs that are compatible with this board are available used and fairly cheap, I’m not absolutely sure that a quad core is the best route. These are my options:

1. Q6700 quad core @ 2.66ghz
2. QX6850 quad core @ 3.00 ghz (need to check but this one might be expensive)
3. Pentium Extreme Ed 965 @ 3.73 ghz (also might be prohibitively expensive for such an old system)
4. Pentium D 960 @ 3.6 ghz
5. Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16 ghz

There might be a few others, but these struck me as the next choices. I’m not sure if, at this point, how much it is or isn’t worth sacrificing clock speed for more cores. When I first built this machine many moons ago I wanted a quad core, but I doubt that I have ever really taken advantage of it.

As for my uses: I research a lot for when I write, so it is common for me to have dozens of digital documents, maps, and so on open at once. I use MS Word a lot and Excel some, but nothing that pushes the machine. Even my gaming needs are fairly modest usually, although games like Crusader Kings, Supreme Ruler, and Europa Universalis are starting to demand more resources. Other than that, I like HTPC stuff, but this computer isn’t being built for that use. Hopefully this will give you an idea of where I’m at.

As an aside, I’m thinking of getting an RX570 or 580 to upgrade the video card. I doubt this machine could use anything better anyway, but if anyone has any strong feelings about video cards I am willing to listen.

Much appreciated for any help, Aaron

EDIT: for anyone interested, this is the motherboard I my talking about....

Asus P5WDG2 WS Professional

This should board is quite old now, but it was a fantastic piece of heaven hardware in its day and is still quite useful in my opinion. Not to mention that those PCIX slots are really useful in using some old enterprise hardware.

 

[aewhistory]

No one? I could really use some advice if anyone has any. I would like to squeeze every last bit of performance from this set up that I can within reason. So anything toward that end would be helpful.

Following up on the CPU costs, I did a really quick ebay search and came away with the following numbers:

1. QX6850 $40
2. QX6700 $12
3. Pentium Extreme Ed 965 $???
4. Pentium D 960 $40 or less
5. Core 2 Duo e8500 $6-10

I couldn’t find the Pentium Extreme Edition 965. There are a few other options that could get me over the 3.5ghz mark that didn’t include, but maybe consider if the 965 continues to elude me. Maybe I screwed up my search, I don’t know. As for the others, it basically comes down to which gives me the best bang for my buck? Higher speed and two cores? Or do I settle for a lower clock and get four cores?

 

[GabeBB]

Hi! I'm not too knowledgeable but the QX6850 sounds pretty good. Maybe someone else can tell you if the specific mobo you have can handle it, because mine for example can't handle a CPU over 65W due to power delivery (my old PC) even though it theoretically can take any AM3 CPU.

Not sure how you feel about buying stuff from China but here's that CPU for much cheaper. I'm thinking of buying an Athlon from them and seeing how it works.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/For-Intel-Core-2-Extreme-QX6850-3-00-GHz-8MB-1333MHz-CPU-LGA775-working-100-Free/32687691650.html?