Help with Intel Dual core Processor choice

[thebluemeaner]

Hey everyone, I'm looking to upgrade my processor since I'm still running a pentium 4 and I believe its my worst bottleneck. I use my computer for casual gaming and I play my games at a resolution of 1280*1024 with some filters. I would like to know if a Pentium Dual Core clocked at 2.7 (300*9 multi since I can only choose FSB values of 200-300 in my bios) would be enough for my video card. In the country I live in the Pentium Dual core e2160 is priced at 84$ while the better performing core2duo e4500 is priced at 150$. Since I'm on a very tight budget I would like to know if the pentium Dual Core is more than enough for my current setup (check my specs) or If I really should go for the core2duo for the extra performance. Thanks for any replies.



(P.S At the moment I'm able to play Bioshock with 34-60 frames per second. would the processor upgrade improve my fps?)

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The E2160 would be quite okay, and can be OCed quite nicely as well. The E4500 will be noticeably faster from the get-go though, so it solely rests upon whether or not you are willing to OC. Also, if you're looking to play very demanding games like Crysis and BioShock regularly, get the E4500 instead.

 

[thebluemeaner]

For some reason I have a FSB cap of 300, so that is the limit to which I can overclock the components. I also cannot modify the cpu voltage from within the bios which limits my overclocks even more. With that said, If I get lucky, I can get the E2160 to 2.7 ghz and hopefully the e4500 to 3.0ghz. I might be getting the E2160 since I heard it can be overclocked to quite acceptable levels without increasing the voltage...

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Are you sure that your RAM will handle that kind of an overclock?

 

[thebluemeaner]

My ram is 667 mhz, 667/2= 333, the processors have a FSB of 800, 800/4=200
so theoretically I should have 133 mhz of space to overclock. Why wouldn't it handle the overclock?

 

[thebluemeaner]

I just found out I have to do the bsel mod to overclock decently on my mobo

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

I'm not attempting to say you're wrong or insult your intelligence nor am I saying that you don't currently have headroom, I'm simply making sure that you have everything worked out properly.

To answer your initial question, your FPS should increase at least a bit because you'll have more processing capacity to handle the threads dedicated to the Windows environment etc.

 

[thebluemeaner]

sorry I posted a reply twice, Zenosincks, there was some problem with my internet, thanks for the reply