If your motherboard supports 45nm CPUs, these are vastly superior to the Q6600. They run cooler (95W TDP), have larger L2 caches, feature SSE4.1 instruction support, and offer much better clock-for-clock performance.
Intel 945G or 945P: Highly restricted. These older chipsets generally do not support 45nm processors or Core 2 Quads.
Max out the board to 4GB (usually 2 x 2GB sticks) or 8GB if the chipset supports it. intel pentium dual cpu e2160 upgrade
While your E2160 is still installed, boot the computer and go to the manufacturer's website.
If your motherboard chipset supports them, these are the best performance-per-dollar drop-in replacements available on the used market. If your motherboard supports 45nm CPUs, these are
These server-grade chips are incredibly cheap second-hand.
These are 45nm dual-core chips clocking in at 3.00 GHz to 3.33 GHz. They have 6MB of cache and provide a massive jump in single-core performance. These older chipsets generally do not support 45nm
Essential if you want to run multiple apps or modern Windows versions smoothly. These run hotter; you may need a better CPU cooler. 3. The "Modder" Choice: Intel Xeon E5450 (LGA 771 to 775) Server-grade power for pennies.