Still with the e8400...

[skool h8r]

Hey all,
Been a while, been busy trying to get my life on track still (even after 2 years of unemployment). Money is tight, and i'm hoping to upgrade my system to make it last another few years at least. I'm still with the e8400 system i built years ago. It's holding out fairly strong, but when i get into rendering, even though it seems to do well, you know how it is when you feel that you could get more from it. It's got 4gb OCZ + 2GB Corsair in it, and a GTX460. I even bought it a 40GB Intel SSD a few months ago purely to put games core files on.

What i was originally looking at was an i7 with 6GB DDR3 Triple-channel and upgrading to 12Gb later. That proved much too expensive (Hyperthreading is so appealing too). Then, i considered an AMD 6-core with 4GB DDR3. That, currently, is around 4 more weeks of saving with very little freedom and comes out just under budget.

Then, i considered the X4 Phenom with 4GB DDR3. That proved to be within budget... but only by £11 or so, but i could get it now (although i'd rather not be going cheap on a motherboard which seems to be what i'd have to do).

Now, i'm considering upgrading the CPU to a Q8400, and getting rid of the Corsair 2GB and replacing it with 4GB OCZ to try and get a little more performance out when rendering video intro's or such. In essence, i'll have 8GB of RAM that i can utilise pretty well, and 4 Cores that again, i can make good use of.

This is well under budget, but i'm not sure if it's a worthy upgrade or not. I could do with more than 2 cores as some sort of futureproofing, and damn, if it was up to me, i'd have been on an i7 980x a long time ago. I'm not too big on overclocking currently and don't generally push this e8400 beyond 3.6Ghz. However, due to the memory differences, i've got to run it all at 800Mhz.

Is it worth waiting to get the 6-core AMD and DDR3 support (which was my original intent), or should i go with the Q8400 route, saving me time and money as i've no need to change the Motherboard or RAM type? I'd gain RAM capacity, not gain any RAM speed (unless i can get this all running at 1066Mhz), gain 2 CPU cores but potentially lose core speed, but save myself £100-150 in the process. Being out of work is not only frustrating (and downright depressing at times), but it leaves you with so little cash for those "Major treats" you decide to get for yourself and/or friends/family.

[MUff1N]

Personally I don't think you're going to see much rendering gain with the Q8400 because it only runs at 2.66GHz & only has 4mbs of L2...

I think you'd get more rendering speed out of an E8400 with 6mbs L2 @ 4GHz...though I could be wrong on this.
So I'd wait & save up for a better HW combo.

[skool h8r]

Actually, i suppose i could go with the X2 AM3 chip, gain some speed, some cache, DDR3 support, and then upgrade later if it becomes really needed. At least AM3 will still be here in a few months.

EDIT: Done! Phenom II x2 955, 4GB OCZ 1333Mhz low voltage, Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3.
Guess this is gonna be the base for future upgrades for the next few years

[cloasters]

I think you'll see a decent improvement in performance for your hard earned Sterling!