Hello, if you change your E6400 to E8500, processor will be about upto 60% faster. 8500 have 48% higher frequirency and you get three times more L2 cache memory and higher FSB, which also gives you about 10-15%. E8500 will work as fast as it works on all high end boards, such as X38/48 with DDR2 and even something more, because i975 is the fastest chipset for Core2 and DDR2. You asking will you feel one extra GHz? It depends of what you do at computer, also video will be converting upto 60% faster and you can get upto 60% higher FPS in games, but only if your video card allow it, because in all new games with high video settings all new videocards can't make nice FPS, they, but not CPU, depends of perfomance. Also you can buy cheeper E7200, it's multiplier is 9,5, the same as E8500 has, and if you set FSB333 in BIOS, it becomes as E8500 but only with 3MB cache (it's slower only for 3-5% if compare to original E8500, then they both work at 3.16GHz). Also there are E7300 and E7400 at market with even higher multiplier. However your E6400 is also can be overclocked, if you set FSB400, you can get 3.2GHz CPU speed, so your old CPU will be only a bit slower (~10%) then E8500 at nominal 65nm CPU to work at 3.2GHz usually need some voltage increase, about 1.4-1.45V to work stable. In spring I had 65 nm CPU too, E6750 with overclock to 3.2GHZ, higher 3.4GHz was only with 1.55V+, and I change to E8500 only as I wanted to reach ~4GHz. Change from 3.2GHz/4MB L2 to 4.0GHz/6MB gives me about 25% higher FPS in World of Warcraft. About memory, it's also depends from your programs, but only a few programs will give you a big perfomance boost, 15-20%, as example WinRAR with it's built-in test benchmark. Other programs will be usually only 5-7% faster, new CPUs have very large L2 cache, and they not so affected to memory speed now. i975 chipset was released long ago, so there isn't "normal" multipliers for all memory if you use FSB333 (nominal for E8500), you can choose only 500, 667 and 834MHz. So PC2-6400 modules can work with downclock at 667 or with small overclock to 834. I think stay with your old modules, you willn't see any true difference and also you can try to overclock them to 834MHz. Your 4 modules will be only a wall to overclock CPU to ~FSB366-400+ and memory ~700+ MHz, but you didn't want to do it, as you write, and also even with ~FSB400 overclock, you can use them at lower speed, about ~600MHz. Difference between normal PC2-6400 with 5-5-5-12(18) and lower latency 4-4-4-12 only about 1-2%. In overclocked mode, with FSB400, our board usually can't give you to set latency and set them on all modules to 5-6-6-18.
Yolanda - i was thinking if it would be ok to disturb you with a question or two? it seems like the setup you are using are the closest to what i am aiming for. i am thinking of changing my 4*512mb ram sticks (of the old PC2-5300 type), to 2*1gb DDR2-800 (Latency 4-4-4-12-2). So going from 4 sticks to two, and from the 5300 type to the DDR2-800 type. I will not get more mem, just faster/newer. But the question is - will i actually FEEL a difference? or is it just fancy numbers that looks better? And if i will feel a difference (like when i play games/convert videos etc) - how much will it approx be? like 1-2% faster? or 5%? or even more? I am also thinking of changing my old E6400 2.13GHz 2MB for a E8500 3.16GHz 6MB (as far as i can see in your signature, this is exactly the one you use). The same question actually - will the approx one extra GHz "feel" a lot faster? am i stupid to think it will be almost 40-50% faster? (going from 2GHz to 3GHz SHOULD be around there). I know i got a 1.02 version of our P5W board (yeah, i was hoping for a 1.04), but since i do not plan to overclock or anything - my most important question would be...... if i manage to update my bios, i should be able to take full advantage of the e8500, without it "slows down", or drop my new mem from 800 to 5300.... or? Again - sorry to bother you with this, but it seems like you are the one that would be able to help me the best - Thanks for the help. Kris
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