show me that a q6600 is no good now

[MT Alex]

Keep your CPU and get a 1080p monitor, for the love of Pete. I can't fathom still playing at such poor resolutions. Besides that, the new monitor will dictate the areas of your rig you need to improve. Seriously, a new monitor is one of the biggest "wow" upgrades anyone can do to their system.

 

[Easy Rhino]

company of heroes, sorry.

i don't lag in that game?

 

[Mussels]

i don't lag in that game?

challenge accepted.

 

[Shambles1980]

Keep your CPU and get a 1080p monitor, for the love of Pete. I can't fathom still playing at such poor resolutions. Besides that, the new monitor will dictate the areas of your rig you need to improve. Seriously, a new monitor is one of the biggest "wow" upgrades anyone can do to their system.

what makes you think that my monitor can only do those resolutions lol?
its just the resolutions that i chose..

this is a 1080p60 monitor.

 

[Toothless]

what makes you think that my monitor can only do those resolutions lol?
its just the resolutions that i chose..

this is a 1080p60 monitor.

So then why run it at such a low resolution? All I could think of is "GIANT ICONS."

 

[Easy Rhino]

challenge accepted.

i have played with people who lag and it is either because their internet sucks or they have their graphics turned up too high. neither applies to me.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

So then why run it at such a low resolution? All I could think of is "GIANT ICONS."

Yep and resolution that is not even within its monitors aspect ratio. Serious run at your monitors native resolution.

Once you do, might find you do need an upgrade in both cpu and gpu departments.

 

[Toothless]

Yep and resolution that is not even within its monitors aspect ratio. Serious run at your monitors native resolution.

Once you do, might find you do need an upgrade in both cpu and gpu departments.

Maybe, maybe not. Might only have to turn down settings in games. It's really the resolution that gives it the quality. I used to play at 1600x900 highest until I tried 1080p at medium-low, still looked better than 1600x900.

 

[eidairaman1]

IMO, FPS Games that are graphically intense but not cpu intense won't care much if you run a q6600 or phenom II, but strategy games like SC2 would be very different. If OP is happy with it, keep using it. I liked my Phenom II a lot. The Intel 1155 stuff is noticeably faster for everything though, both gaming and general windows use.

My friend now has my Phenom II + AsRock 970 Extreme 3 and a 5870, it is very capable. Other than its inability to run ram over 1333 stock, it competes with AMD's current line up.

edit:

doing one final run with i5 stuck at 3.1 and ram at 1333 to simulate a low end i5 2400.

that motherboard can run 1600MHz Ram, My Bro has a Extreme 4 with a X2 555 unlocked to X4 955/B55

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

...So you want someone to show you the value of an upgrade with synthetic benchmarks. I'm not sure if trolling, or unaware of what reality is.

Yes, the Core processors were excellent. They introduced the idea of decent multi-core processors, were fun to overclock, and can still hang with modern versions assuming some hefty overclock. They also have that pesky need to have a memory controller on the board, are limited to SATA II connections, and reach all the way back to PCI-e 1.0.


If you want to see the need to give up on a q6600 then you need to compare apples to apples. You're comparing an approximately $851 dollar CPU (at launch time) to a sub $150 processor. If you bought a 4960x today I'd expect it to be viable in five years as well. Of course, once you compare numbers of the q6600 to that of the 4960x you'll be a bit disappointed.

If you want a reason to go from a q6600 to an i3 it's because you've got a laptop. If you want a reason why the q6600 is still viable, it's because you invested in the most powerful chip available at the time. This thread is based upon a false premise. By this logic, an average sized man is a giant among midgets. You are starting from a faulty assumption, therefore no conclusion you reach is worth looking at.

 

[Shambles1980]

im a child of the era where role play games just had text on the screen lol. and i still think super mario brothers 3 has great graophics. but when it comes to modern computers anything lower than 1024x768 even by my extra low standards looks like poop. But anything above 1024x768 looks just fine to me lol. honestly cant tell the difference.
(my desktop is at 1080p though)
the only thing i can tell the difference with is 1080p vs 1080i and 720p looks better than 1080i but any way.
I am looking at some board ram and cpu bundles on the internet but i dont seem to see anything thats a good enough improvment for the money that i can then convince the wife i need to spend that much..

Maybe i should just hang back and wait for second gen 14nm cpus to hit the streets and pick up a decent used 22nm setup then.
cant be that far off now i guess.

as for i bought the q6600 when i did..
thats a bit different i upgraded from pentium D which was lga 775, the D was a very low end model. but i bought the best mother board i could at the time. this allowed me to then buy a Q6600 later

 

[Kursah]

With that level of graphics, you'll waste your money unless you want to game with an integrated GPU which an i5 would be great for imho. My kids run on my G/F's i3 + 4GB DDR3 at 1920x1080 using the onboard Intel iGPU HD3000 series for graphics support. Saves quite a bit of power over a dedicated card, more efficient than older onboard (MB-based) onboard solutions. Her i3 has been great, it's a hyperthreading unit, I think the chip + board + 4GB ddr3 was sub-$200 or so.

For your levels of gaming, you could gain some efficiency and build an ITX rig that is almost console sized that could meet or beat your current build, save on power, run cooler and get the job done. Food for thought.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Does it do what you want it to?

Honestly people were playing 1080p games back in the Q6600 day and its still the standard, regardless of what 4k elitists will tell you i-finity and multi monitor gaming setups still dont have nearly the market saturation people claim it does.

I used to be into the whole crazy OC water cooling 2 PSUs down to fan RPM BS then i realized I wanted to pay off my house and in the end I got to say i beat the score of 17yr/o in 3dmark it wasnt worth the money any more and honestly the PC did everything I wanted it to.

I can sit here and tell you to get a 3.6ghz I7 8 core machine with 32gb of ram and SLI titans but it wont do shit for you if all you do is log into AOL desktop 9.7

Pretty much. My days of constant upgrades are over. No game really drags out what I have now.

 

[Shambles1980]

i can still play the games i want to play but there are still those occasional 5fps dips that take me down to less than 60fps. (those are the ones that i have noticed with AB logging the fps as i play some areas could be even worse)
also i do like to play RTS games racing sims and ww2 combat flight simulators. havent gotten to the point where im saying "well i just cant play it like this" but im sure its coming and soon too.
Also i like games like fallout new vegas and always have the view distance maxed out i like to be able to see things i want to shoot before they see me..
and i do occasionaly once in a blue moon go play some multyplayer FPS. but the days where FPS were the best thing in the world have long since past for me, and i much prefer a first person perspective role play game,
morrowind/skyrim/stalker and may end up trying the online version(s) although i think stalker online has been abandoned.

and if we are talking emulation.
the q6600 with this gpu only bearly runs dolphin so games "resident evil" are at acceptable levels. that is a limitation of the software and not the hardware, but more power would fix it.

so yes i think i need more power. i dont think i need that much more power. and would generally prefer to get a slightly better cpu with no on board gpu and use a gfx card.

 

[Kursah]

Most intel CPU's come with onboard gpu's...you can simply disable them though. Even my 4770k has on onboard gpu...it's actually a nice backup to have should your main GPU fail.

It sounds like you want to justify an upgrade but don't at the same time. What's your budget? Let's get some build ideas out there for you and set you free to research about them.

 

[Shambles1980]

Thats the point lol i dont have a budget. I need to find some newer stuff that out preforms my current stuff enough so i can tell the wife look how much better it is, Whilst at the same time costing as little as possible so she dosent kill me lol..
If i can think up an inexpensive board cpu and ram combo that will be noticably better than my current set up using the same gpu, i would sell what i have now on fee bay hope to get a bit of funds up from that then cover the rest.
id say that my cpu and board + ram should be worth about £70 i sold my 5770 the other day sold some ram today so that would take me up to about £140 and then i would need to cover the rest.
and the only things i can find in the £160 range really are not an upgrade. sure its a faster bus speed but theres no way i can convince the wife it was worth all the hassle letalone £20 + the money from what i sold (incidentaly. any thing i sell becomes money, and some how that money then becomes hers, and if i buy her something and she sells it that money is also hers)
Looking at what im looking at It seems i need to spend over £300 to get where i want to get. which means i would have to cover £200 of the cost from my own pocket.

this is why i was asking for benches of lower end i3's and i5's Preferably with the same gpu or similar.
That way i could possibly see some thing i had been over looking and be able to get the build price down.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Its so hard finding benchmarks similar to your rig to compare. I dont think any of us are really going to be able to convince you to upgrade or not, but you are about 5 generations of Intel CPUs behind and about 2 or 3 AMD generations behind.

Not only would you get a good performance jump in FPS alone, but there are improvements in other areas too.

Motherboard chipsets are better, BIOS (UEFI) . SATA 6 gb/s, DDR3, overall lower power consumption, less heat, completely new CPU architectures, PCIe 3.0 support, etc.

Unless you want to overclock you could do a build with an i5 4430 or 4570, good H87 motherboard, and 8GB of DDR3 memory at 1600mhz or higher which would come out to being just below $400 USD.

Or you could jump over to an AMD FX build with a FX6300/8320/8350 and it would be even cheaper than the Intel Platform.

Honestly you are due for an upgrade regardless IMO. But then again you need to be able to make the judgement yourself.

I am just one of the few that tries to have the best most recent stuff each year even if I dont need it. Im at the point where being behind just a single generation bothers me. Especially on GPUs. I just have a big obsession with hardware is all haha.

 

[Kursah]

Your wife won't care about benches. Be straight up, if you want to upgrade fine, if not then don't.

I hope you can get the funds to upgrade if that's what you feel you need to do. I think that Q6600 is still a damn good chip for an older Core2. Sure an i3 or i5 will be better, even noticeably so...but where they really ring in is the power savings imho. That you can justify to the wife. Lower power consumption, lower heat output, etc.

No offense, but it sounds like you need to take your balls out of her purse on this one!

Sounds like you deserve a new machine without major hassle! I hope you can do it, but seeking benchmarks isn't the answer imho. Those are very subjective and won't correlate into an average gaming experience...the best way would be to get it, build it, do an A|B if you care to or sell your old stuff. You won't find direct comparisons. You can google CPU comparisons at sites like CPU BOSS and there are GPU comparison sites too. But really it's all a mixed bag.

New hardware = more powerful + more efficient + both are noticeable ==

 

[eidairaman1]

are you trying to prove to yourself you dont need an upgrade or do you???

 

[Shambles1980]

trying to prove that i do lol.

its just this has been so very different to the past.
286 had to be upgraded to play anything at all really.
skip forward and then amd 333mhz with 3d now! easy decision.
then they went and smashed it all with the 1st 1ghz cpu.. Again easy to argue it was needed.
then skip forward a bit and im on a pentium 4 486, the future was coming so i traded over to a Pentium D making sure i got a LGA 775 board with the higest fsb i could find.
then came the Q6600 at 1066 native fsb and 9x multiple, even then there were boards that could do 1333 native and 1600.. it was a very easy choice to make.
4 cores. and them being actual cores using a proper architecture and not just 2 pentium 4 cores glued together. The Q6600 was probably the easiest choice in upgrades any one ever had to make.

And now here we are 6 years later? 2-3 mother boards changed. 4-5 gpu upgrades. and still the same cpu. thing has been ran like a mule for all this time and still keeps on kicking. And i just cant seem to justify the costs of upgrading, every other upgrade i ever did was easy. it was a simple matter of If i want to do this. then i need that..

the truth is I Want to upgrade. but i need it to be a realistic upgrade. i dont want to pay and get the same or only slightly better performance. and it seems like if i dont pay a lot then that is what i will end up with. And i dont want to pay £300 (probably $570) on the parts i would want to consider it an actuall upgrade.

I think my problem is my last update came when intel finally said. "ok amd. you have had your fun now this is what we can do"
And i keep expecting that sort of step up for the money.

maybe i should try and hold out for 14nm and see if i can then get a 2nd gen i5 for the money i want to spend. but if i do that then what i have will be worth even less so its probably going to end up equating to the same costs.

Any way that allong with a wife is my problem.

p.s

looking at everything an I5-2500k with a decent board and 8-16gb of ram is what id be looking at as something thats actually an upgrade..
which is where im getting the £360 ish price tag from.
The lowest end systems i could muster together would range from £180 ish, but i dont see any of them as an upgrade.

 

[Kursah]

trying to prove that i do lol.

Get a new monitor that runs 1920x1080...now your games don't run right. Also power consumption is higher than that of a new build with an 80+ PSU, lower voltage DDR3, smaller fab'd and lower voltage CPU's that also run cooler and more efficiently, with a newer mainboard with improved efficiencies in chipsets too, and haswell-based boards no longer need expensive and power consuming CPU VR circuits, just some more basic filtering of overall input voltage, but Haswell CPU's have internal VRM control for the CPU cores, which is more efficient too.

What you need to do is research what you want or think you can afford...and list all the positive aspects. Find some pro reviews that rate them well...find some good reviews from users on forums...post link after link for her to see...and say you're getting it for all the right reasons. Gaming at 1080p and lower power consumption/higher efficiency = win.

 

[Jetster]

The Q6600's go for $50. There is a reason for this. But if your happy with what you have then play on

 

[Toothless]

High grade i3 / low grade i5 for Intel // Athlon 760 / A6 APU from AMD
4GB DDR3 1333mhz RAM
Decent mini-atx board, or go smaller.
Low-power PSU
Small little case

Honestly, a little rig for an upgrade will be overall cheaper than what you got that Q6600 for.

 

[Toothless]

Or this.. Sadly I can only get U.S prices.

If anyone has a better list, by all means please edit this. I'm still a student in the hardware school.

 

[MT Alex]

what makes you think that my monitor can only do those resolutions lol?
its just the resolutions that i chose..

this is a 1080p60 monitor.

Then you probably don't need to upgrade at all, because you aren't doing it right.