GX620 true best upgrade path?

[escanthon]

I've got an old optiplex gx620 (the fat one), and I'd like to get a little more out of it. I had an hp slimline 5xxx that I sold recently (no pci-e slot) with an amd athlon II x2 processor and 4gb ddr3 ram that could do ANYTHING faster than my optiplex, with the exception of gaming. I want to achieve that speed without spending a fortune.

Here's what I've got.
Intel Pentium D 820 Cpu 2.8ghz, dual core, LGA 775 socket
305 watt power supply
Stock cooling
Nvidia Geforce 9600 GS 768mb
4gb pc2-6400
Mother board: 0HH807
Bios: A11

I was looking at this processor.

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That's a pentium D 945 3.4ghz dual core

Other than getting this, is there anything else at all I can do? Or is that the end of my GX620's upgrade life? Since money matters, I can't sink more than an additional $120 into this machine. Minus the $50 or so for the above mentioned processor.

 

[aatje92]

Well you could try to find a second hand Q6600 cpu that would be a decent upgrade but that GPU also needs an upgrade bad and the Q6600 is lacking for todays games so it will be obsolete soon. In my opinion you'd be better off to save some money and buy a completely new system when you can.

 

[escanthon]

Well you could try to find a second hand Q6600 cpu that would be a decent upgrade but that GPU also needs an upgrade bad and the Q6600 is lacking for todays games so it will be obsolete soon. In my opinion you'd be better off to save some money and buy a completely new system when you can.

The q6600 looks ok, but I worry about losing some raw power there. I tried upgrading the graphics before, to an AMD radeon HD 6450, but the performance, no matter what driver I used, was so much worse than the 9600gs that I had to return it. Thank you for the quick reply, but playing games up to crysis 2, me3, and battlefield 3 without hardly any lag is ok with me for now.

 

[aatje92]

Well you wont be losing raw power with the q6600, as most applications are mutlithreaded nowadays and the q6600 has more cores.

 

[escanthon]

Well you wont be losing raw power with the q6600, as most applications are mutlithreaded nowadays and the q6600 has more cores.

I'll do some research and wait for some more replies before I make a decision. If I can get it cheap, the q6600 looks pretty great. As for my gpu, what would you reccommend for my wattage, cooling, mobo, and budget?

 

[escanthon]

I ended up getting the D 945, because it requires 35 watts less power. I was a little worried, but it gave me a phenomenal performance boost. I can now play all my games with less lag on higher resolutions

 

[escanthon]

Well you wont be losing raw power with the q6600, as most applications are mutlithreaded nowadays and the q6600 has more cores.

Holy crap was I an idiot about this one.. The Pentium D's are terrible. A 2.8ghz C2D outperformed that D 945. The q6600 would have SHAMED it. Thought I'd throw my (4 year late) reply up here