New CPU, what would you suggest.

Just to add my own "fly in the ointment" I would personally like to agree with both of the larger posts above.

When upgrading a system I would suggest that the motherboard and the processor should be matched for the best possible upgrade in all cases other that the replacement of a failed component. I would even go as far as to include memory in this.

The motherboard and processor market both move so quickly that it is never good policy to not change both at the same time

It may mean that you have to put off the actual upgrade until sufficient funds are available but will hopefully prevent the next upgrade cycle from being needed quite as soon.

other more peripheral items may be re-used but I do believe that the Core components, ( pun unintentional :) ), should be treated as a single item when considering an upgrade.

H2SO4 said:

- While the performance difference between any two motherboards is at best difficult to quantify, having double the number of processor cores is an ENORMOUS advantage. Everything else being equal, a quad-core in a $100 mobo will easily outperform a dual-core plugged into $300-worth of motherboard electronics, in all but the most contrived of benchmarks.

The issue with that statement, is that not many apps will use all 4 cores, so unless you are running many apps at the same time, you will have cores sitting idle.

ADVISE: I would go with a name brand mobo, (I prefer ASUS) look at the features the board gives you (ie. the amount of ram it supports, the speed of the ram, if it has onboard RAID, 1 or 2 onboard NIC's etc.) The most I have ever spent on a mobo is $200, and that was because it supported 4 x16 PCI-e cards.

Daran said:

Hi all

I hope that admin will allow this to run for a while. I love Windows 7 and have just sold my motherboard, CPU and RAM last night, so today is upgrade day. The situation is that I would like some advice on what to upgrade to. I currently have an extra Intel D965LT motherboard at home but I am unsure if I should use it and go for a higher end Core 2 Duo CPU or if I should buy an entry level Core 2 Duo, but then buy a motherboard that supports Quad Processors. Also, I am unsure how the Intel board will support W7 as looking at their Bios updates it is not showing anything for Vista or W7.

All suggestions will be noted.

Thanks All

Don't overlook the i5 750. You can get a $100 motherboard and I think beat any 775 socket CPU for performance. This would be something to think about.

Barman58 said:

Just to add my own "fly in the ointment" I would personally like to agree with both of the larger posts above.

When upgrading a system I would suggest that the motherboard and the processor should be matched for the best possible upgrade in all cases other that the replacement of a failed component. I would even go as far as to include memory in this.

The motherboard and processor market both move so quickly that it is never good policy to not change both at the same time

It may mean that you have to put off the actual upgrade until sufficient funds are available but will hopefully prevent the next upgrade cycle from being needed quite as soon.

other more peripheral items may be re-used but I do believe that the Core components, ( pun unintentional :) ), should be treated as a single item when considering an upgrade.

+1
My thoughts exactly. This will enable the best function between all of the most important pieces of your computer.

I also tend to buy the middle priced stuff. This means it is not obsolete for a while, but I stay away from the exponential price curve of 'the best' hardware.

~Lordbob

Pretty good choices...

One thing I see though: Your RAM, is that DDR2?

~Lordbob

I like DDR2 better, as it is about the same, but reasonably priced.

Just wanted to make sure that it was not DDR.

~Lordbob