Question Upgrade for a old gaming rig

wabobthedevil35

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Jul 2, 2016
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Hello everyone,

I'm still in college and I'm gonna use my parents money because I wanna get more frames for my games at 1080p. I will leave my specs and games that I play at the bottom. Now, a friend I know had a 771 Xeon CPU and he did some modding to get it working. He used some microcodes and cut some stuff out of the CPU socket. Now I'm willing to take the risk because I have another CPU and motherboard to back me up. I did maybe a day's worth of research of this and I couldn't research more because of finals next week. I play at 1080p and just want more frames around 70 to 80. I wouldnt care more then that because my montior can only go up too 80. I get around normally 50 to 60 but mainly low 50's. I know my PC is old but I wanna use it a bit more because I'm planning to work during my winter break and drop a ton of money on my new setup. Thanks in advance for help. Also, I don't care about textures, I want more frames over the game looking good.

PC:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40 GHZ (Overclocked 3.60 GHZ with 1.321 Volts)
RAM: Corsair XMS2 800 something
Motherboard: Asus P5KE WiFi AP
GPU: EVGA SC 760 ACX Cooler
Power Supply: Corsair GS800
SSD: OCZ 120GB
HDD: WD Black 2TB
Windows 10 Pro
Case: Antec Lanboy

Games:
Rainbow Six Siege
CSGO
Overwatch
War Thunder
GTA 5
Insurgency Sandstorm
 
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Doesn't matter does it? You will be buying a better machine, so a bottle neck is still not important as you would get better FPS until you get a better machine after the holiday.
But in the mean time, you would get a 20% performance increase for a decent GPU
And when you get your new machine, you would see a greater improvement on games that use CPU and not GPU
 
I mean I just want a better CPU and I have seen people seeing a performace increase
You say you want a better CPU. With that Motherboard and socket, it isn't going to happen. That system is really old and dated. The only reasonable upgrade for performance that I can see is just start from square one with a new Motherboard, and components. I am actually a little surprised that you are getting what your are from that. I have only done two stand alone CPU upgrades. Both times in a prebuilt of the shelf computer. The first time was in an old eMachines with a Pentium D. The one it was running at 2.66 Ghz and I upgraded to one that ran at 3.4 Ghz. The second time was in a Gateway that was running an i7 920 at 2.53 Ghz ( I think ). That was the first Generation Core i7. I moved to one running at 3.2 Ghz. Because of the BiOS, couldn't run a higher chip. Since then, I have been building and ALL of my upgrades have consisted of Motherboard, CPU, and Memory. I have upgraded the GPU but not necessarily at the same time as the rest. PSU is fine as I took care of that on the Initial build.
 

wabobthedevil35

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Jul 2, 2016
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10,530
You say you want a better CPU. With that Motherboard and socket, it isn't going to happen. That system is really old and dated. The only reasonable upgrade for performance that I can see is just start from square one with a new Motherboard, and components. I am actually a little surprised that you are getting what your are from that. I have only done two stand alone CPU upgrades. Both times in a prebuilt of the shelf computer. The first time was in an old eMachines with a Pentium D. The one it was running at 2.66 Ghz and I upgraded to one that ran at 3.4 Ghz. The second time was in a Gateway that was running an i7 920 at 2.53 Ghz ( I think ). That was the first Generation Core i7. I moved to one running at 3.2 Ghz. Because of the BiOS, couldn't run a higher chip. Since then, I have been building and ALL of my upgrades have consisted of Motherboard, CPU, and Memory. I have upgraded the GPU but not necessarily at the same time as the rest. PSU is fine as I took care of that on the Initial build.
I see now that it showed its age to me. Shame I can't save it. I think I'll just maybe increase my budget to 3k cause I need new stuff. I could maybe reuse my power supply and case.
 
3k!?!? That's insane. Your current machine is the modern equivalent to a $350 tower.
I agree with everyone that it's not worth dumping any more money into your current CPU+mobo+RAM platform, but you can get 1080p 70fps for $700.

What country do you live in? It's difficult for us to help you without this info.
 

wabobthedevil35

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Jul 2, 2016
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10,530
3k!?!? That's insane. Your current machine is the modern equivalent to a $350 tower.
I agree with everyone that it's not worth dumping any more money into your current CPU+mobo+RAM platform, but you can get 1080p 70fps for $700.

What country do you live in? It's difficult for us to help you without this info.
I live in USA, I need a new montior, table, chair, and etc so yea I wanted to drop 3k on a brandnew setup
 
I see now that it showed its age to me. Shame I can't save it. I think I'll just maybe increase my budget to 3k cause I need new stuff. I could maybe reuse my power supply and case.
Actually you can do pretty well for less than 3k. If the case is a Mid Tower, uses an ATX Motherboard and has good airflow, then no real use in changing it, unless you want a fresh new look. As for the PSU, with the new Video cards, the main thing you really have to be concerned about is how many amps you have on the +12v Rail. As far as the Wattage of the PSU goes, only moderately important. With the cards out today, your 9 year old PSU may not be enough. Okay I just went back up there and looked. It is a Corsair ( that is all I have used ) GS800. That thing has 65a on the +12v Rail. That is pretty good.
 
Well your parents are very generous. I hope you genuinely tell them how appreciative you are.

Can you please provide a budget EXCLUDING your furniture though? That stuff can vary widely in price.

AMD is supposedly going to paper-launch their Ryzen 3000 CPUs and RX3000 GPUs in a week, with retail availability around July 7 (7/7 for 7nm). I'd suggest waiting to see what those products look like before making a firm buying decision.
 
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hftvhftv

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Assuming no platform changes, upgrading to a Core 2 Extreme QX 9770 would be your best bet, your CPU is definitely your main bottleneck in this system. To get more FPS at 1080P this would be the best way. But in reality, updating your CPU, motherboard, and RAM to a new 9th gen series Intel CPU or Ryzen 2000 series would be the best way to maximize FPS at 1080P.
 

wabobthedevil35

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Jul 2, 2016
32
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10,530
Actually you can do pretty well for less than 3k. If the case is a Mid Tower, uses an ATX Motherboard and has good airflow, then no real use in changing it, unless you want a fresh new look. As for the PSU, with the new Video cards, the main thing you really have to be concerned about is how many amps you have on the +12v Rail. As far as the Wattage of the PSU goes, only moderately important. With the cards out today, your 9 year old PSU may not be enough. Okay I just went back up there and looked. It is a Corsair ( that is all I have used ) GS800. That thing has 65a on the +12v Rail. That is pretty good.

I got this from my dad so yea.
 
I got this from my dad so yea.
I got this from my dad so yea.
Was just looking over what you have. If you are not particular on your processor, I think I can set you up with something, but would need to know what your budget will be. From what I see, Motherboard, Processor Memory, & GPU should take care of it. The GPU will be the priciest part of the upgrade.
 

wabobthedevil35

Honorable
Jul 2, 2016
32
0
10,530
Was just looking over what you have. If you are not particular on your processor, I think I can set you up with something, but would need to know what your budget will be. From what I see, Motherboard, Processor Memory, & GPU should take care of it. The GPU will be the priciest part of the upgrade.
Yea thats a big rip for me but I really did need a new pc because I had the Core 2 Quad since the day it came out. I love it still but I want higher frames which means I gotta upgrade everything. I'll keep my SSD, HDD, old montior, and the PSU because its really good and I can save a couple $100 and use it for the GPU.
 
Yea thats a big rip for me but I really did need a new pc because I had the Core 2 Quad since the day it came out. I love it still but I want higher frames which means I gotta upgrade everything. I'll keep my SSD, HDD, old montior, and the PSU because its really good and I can save a couple $100 and use it for the GPU.
While you were up in the stratosphere with that Core 2 Quad, I was still playing with a Pentium D @ 3.4Ghz. :D My first quad core was a Core i7 920. I just did two upgrades. One for me and one for a friend. He went way over the top. It was fine and the same thing I was doing, until he added the EVGA RTX 2080 TI GPU. I upgraded my Motherboard, CPU, and Ram. I also added a 1Tb Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 Drive. I already had two 1Tb Samsung 950 EVO SSDs installed. I reformatted one and took it out and put it in one of the laptops I have. I think my upgrade was around $1100, but you can get a good upgrade for a lot less for sure. You really don't need much over all. The GPU will be the costliest.