To upgrade or not to upgrade, that is the question!

[turtle]

Hi all, I am new here and a bit puzzled as i'm finding it difficult to find any relevant information..

I am considering upgrading to this build:
cpu - i5 3750k
ram - 16-32gb Gskill DDR3 I think is running at 2100mhz possibly 2400
mobo - Gigabyte GA-z77x-ud5h
psu - Thermaltake 800w tough power (Chose the 800 as I will probably buy another 670gtx and run sli in a few years to save buying a new $500 gpu)
gpu - (I already have a GeForce 670gtx Galaxy)

Currently im running:
cpu - q6660 overclocked to 3.1ghz
ram - 4gb ram DDR2 667mhz OC to 760ish MHz
mobo - Gigabyte EP35-DS3
psu - 500w stock psu (lol gg)
gpu - Geforce 670GTX Galaxy

Basically i'm wondering if there is much difference between my 3.1ghz q6660 quad and the 3.3ghz i5 3750k ( besides the obvious 200mhz xD ), well enough difference to warrant an upgrade?

Do you think my 3.1ghz cpu is bottlenecking the gpu? Would the i5 3750k bottleneck a 670gtx?

I was using 32 bit XP pro but recently I upgraded to the beta release preview of Windows 8 because xp was unable to get Direct X 10 and 11.

Lastly would my current pc be able to run a 64 bit OS?

Sorry for all the questions lol, but I have been googling for days now and cant find an answer for the q6660 3.1ghz OC vs 3750k stock debate that is ongoing with me

BTW this is a gaming PC!

Thanks for any help it is much appreciated!

 

[hat]

The 3750k is certainly faster, and would be easy to OC beyond 4GHz. I might stick with the Q6600 if I were you though... depends on how much money you have and if you think your computer is slow. Do you want more performance in games? The 3750k would help, but whether it's worth it is up to you.

 

[DarkOCean]

If you have the money the answer is simple: do it!

 

[adulaamin]

Would you really need 16-32gb of RAM? Since you say it's for gaming, buy 8gb/16gb and use the extra money for a decent cooler so you can OC your 3570k or save it for an SSD if you don't have one yet...

 

[DarkOCean]

yeah what's up with all that ram 16gb will be enough for some years to come.

 

[Naito]

Basically i'm wondering if there is much difference between my 3.1ghz q6660 quad and the 3.3ghz i5 3750k ( besides the obvious 200mhz xD ), well enough difference to warrant an upgrade?

The 3750K will be much faster. Coming from a similar Q9550 myself, I found the biggest limiting factor wasn't so much the CPU, but rather the bottleneck of the Front Side Bus. This only helps to amplify the already low bandwidth of DDR2 (compared to DDR3). Another thing that caused me to upgrade, was the fact that DDR2 was becoming expensive and harder to come by, thus I upgraded to get DDR3 support, among other things.

From my own findings, my memory bandwidth went from ~8GB/s (6GB DDR2 @800MHz) to just under 25GB/s with my 3770 (16GB DDR3 @ 1866MHz). Stats found using WinSAT mem. For timings see my system specs to the left.

As mentioned by hat, the 3750K will overclock much better than the Q6600.

Edit: DDR2 bandwidth may be closer to ~6GB/s. I am going off my memory here.

Do you think my 3.1ghz cpu is bottlenecking the gpu? Would the i5 3750k bottleneck a 670gtx?

Hard to say. I noticed a FPS boost across the board with my GTX 470, but this could be due to many factors, such us DDR3 RAM, etc.

 

[Lionheart]

I would upgrade if I were you but like the others said, you don't need that much RAM, 8GB kit is plentiful TBH but memory is so cheap it temps ppl to buy more (Like me )

 

[Capitan Harlock]

well other the fact about the ram, 8gb is enough , if your pc is for gaming the first thing to see is at what resolution you wanna play,if you have the money upgrade but if you dont wanna oc why go for a k processor? i ask you that why you ask about the difference in ghz ,the q6660 is like my cpu,if you dont have the right ram and the right motherboard is not easy to oc ,if you already have a good cpu cooler and you wanna oc bring all new ad oc ,for me bring a k processor for dont oc is a waste of money,if you think to make it in future is another story xd

 

[phanbuey]

I would upgrade - it is a good time.

 

[hat]

From my own findings, my memory bandwidth went from ~8GB/s (6GB DDR2 @800MHz) to just under 25GB/s with my 3770 (16GB DDR3 @ 1866MHz). Stats found using WinSAT mem. For timings see my system specs to the left.

Ah, a note about the memory bandwidth and the slow FSB:

I used a Crucial DDR3 1333 7-7-7-24 dual channel kit for a while when I had my Phenom II as my main rig. By overclocking the NB and HTT speeds, I got a boost in memory performance. Then, when I switched to the socket 1366 i7 920, using the same RAM at the same speed, I saw another boost in memory performance. It seems AMD's HTT link speed, faster than Intel's old FSB speed can't keep up with even slower DDR3 models... so that slow FSB must really be holding memory performance back a lot.

You can try to curb this a bit by lowering your CPU core speed multiplier and raising the FSB more to achieve the same core speed, yet bumping up your FSB link speed. Watch your memory speed as well, as this will also go up with the FSB.

 

[white phantom]

Basically i'm wondering if there is much difference between my 3.1ghz q6660 quad and the 3.3ghz i5 3750k ( besides the obvious 200mhz xD ), well enough difference to warrant an upgrade?

theres a mahhhooosssiiveee difference in power....i had a q6600 and sold it, replaced it by the 2500k and it blow it out the water, even more so when i hit a 4.4ghz oc into it so i believe the 3750k would be even more power and the extra ram makes a huge difference aswell. i would upgrade if you can affoard it