E4400 to Q6600?

[CaineR]

Hi all,

I used to frequent these forums when UT2004 was fairly new but my account seems to have been deleted. Anyways, a question...

I specced up a machine to run UT3 before it came out. I ended up with an E4400 @ 2.9ghz, 4GB DDR2 pc2-6400. XFX 8800GTS 640MB, Abit IP35-E, Seagate SATA2 320GB. I get silky smooth framerates with this setup. The gfx card is on stock clocks. I've also been playing Crysis and although it plays very nicely with everything High, I was wondering if going quad core would improve both games? I've seen them for less than £170 inc delivery which is making it very tempting. Question is, would it be worth it?

PS, I doubt I'll be getting the one of the new Penryns when they come out as they will be more pricey.

Cheers

[tqz]

The Penryns will not be pricier.
http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/...evealed-2.jpeg
But if everything runs great, what kind of improvement do you expect?
A C2D @ 2,9 GHz should be fast enough for now.

[CaineR]

But if everything runs great, what kind of improvement do you expect?

I was hoping someone could tell me that. See if it's worth it. Afterall, even though my E4400 is clocked to 2.9, its a budget C2D. I've looked around but can't find any real world comparisons of the two chips in games like UT3, Crysis, COD4, etc.

[tqz]

The E4400 may be a budget CPU, but in your case it performs similar to the much more expensive E6850.
I don't think you'll see much improvement by getting a quad.
If you play Crysis, getting a faster video card (GTS 512 or 3870 X2) will probably have more effect, but it depends what resolution you play at. But then again, your current card is quite decent, so I don't think there's much point in upgrading at all right now.