A worthy upgrade to a q6600 at 3.4?

[VisceralM]

I'm considering upgrading from my workhorse q6600 at 3.4

I've been eyeballing AMD3 because of the price/performance ratio seems to be pretty good. I don't do video encoding, etc, I'm just a gamer. What would be a good upgrade for performance *and* a clear upgrade path for the foreseeable future? I'd be willing to consider i5 as well of the prices were in the same range.

 

[dguy6789]

Your Q6600 at 3.4 is about as fast as AMD's top of the line CPU already. Unless you were planning to overclock your new CPU a ton, you won't get much of an improvement. Socket AM3 may not be a good upgrade path because there's a good chance that current motherboards will not work with Bulldozer, AMD's next generation processor.

 

[LoneNinja]

You'll see little gain going from a Q6600 to a Phenom II X4. I believe Phenom II X4 is still a little slower clock for clock than C2Q, you'll need to jump to an I5/I7 if you want much of a performance increase, and you'll need to overclock.

As far as future upgradeability is concerned, Phenom II X6 is the only confirmed upgrade path on AM3 besides what's already been released. Bulldozer is set to release in 2011 and is rumored to be for an AM3+ socket, and also rumored to be compatible with 800 series chipsets on AM3 which haven't been released yet.

Personally I'd hang on to the Q6600 for now, probably until next year when sandy bridge and bulldozer are released.

 

[kalrith]

I wouldn't upgrade my Q6600 to anything less than i7. IMO it's just not worth it unless there's a specific new feature that you can utilize.

 

[VisceralM]

Good replies. thanks for that. I'll sit tight for a while longer then.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

About the only thing that's better enough is the i7. If you have a newer 775 mobo (I had a 965P-DS3 Rev 1.0, which is one reason why I upgraded) and enough RAM, probably wouldn't make sense to upgrade.

 

[Arkaign]

Yeah, everyone has covered it pretty well. I'd wait for 32nm i7 Socket 1366 as a worthy leap from the trusty Q6600. That is almost certainly the toughest single processor in modern history. It was released over three years ago, and paired with decent supporting hardware it can still do absolutely anything you can throw at it on a desktop platform.

 

[RussianSensation]

Unless you can sell your old parts and upgrade on the cheap, I would probably wait until Sandy Bridge since you also want a "clear" upgrade path which socket 1156 or 1366 won't deliver when Sandy is released next year (hopefully without delays).

 

[soccerballtux]

you could ebay your mobo and cpu, but keep your ram, and get the fry's $180 combo, Ph2 965 and mobo.

You can overclock that to 3.8Ghz. With overclocking the cpu-nb (l3 cache) you would get a ~15-20% performance gain.

To me the main reason would be the motherboard-- you'd be able to run Crossfire if you wanted.

 

[VirtualLarry]

you could ebay your mobo and cpu, but keep your ram, and get the fry's $180 combo, Ph2 965 and mobo.

You can overclock that to 3.8Ghz. With overclocking the cpu-nb (l3 cache) you would get a ~15-20% performance gain.

To me the main reason would be the motherboard-- you'd be able to run Crossfire if you wanted.

But isn't a Q6600 @ 3.4 about equivalent to a Phenom II at 3.8? C2Q has better IPC than PhII.

 

[happy medium]

I'm considering upgrading from my workhorse q6600 at 3.4

I've been eyeballing AMD3 because of the price/performance ratio seems to be pretty good. I don't do video encoding, etc, I'm just a gamer. What would be a good upgrade for performance *and* a clear upgrade path for the foreseeable future? I'd be willing to consider i5 as well of the prices were in the same range.

If your a gamer there is no real upgrade for you yet.
Well anything thats really worth it.

Wait for the Intel 32nm line to mature and for new chipsets to come out.(usb 3.0,sata 6.0, ect. ect.)

 

[RussianSensation]

But isn't a Q6600 @ 3.4 about equivalent to a Phenom II at 3.8? C2Q has better IPC than PhII.

There is no way a Phenom II @ 3.8hz will be 15-20% faster than a Q6600 @ 3.4ghz since Phenom II does not have better IPC. This comes up on the forums once in a while. But C2D/Q was always more efficient than Phenom and it only took Phenom II to catch up, if at all:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/phenom-ii-x4-920-overclocking_7.html#sect1

 

[Tempered81]

I like phenom II @ 3.6-4.0ghz or a core i5-750 or i5-860

I didn't have the clout for a new i7 rig, so I went for a used E8400 E0. W/ 6mb @ 4.2ghz, it's no slouch for single card rigs.

 

[n7]

If you have a really good board & cooler, a Q9550/Q9650 @ 4+ GHz would be a nice little bump.

Otherwise, yeah, i'd go i5/i7.

 

[MrK6]

If you're a gamer with a Q6600, there's really no essential CPU upgrade out there for performance reasons. Going from a 3.6GHz Q6600 G0 to a 4.0GHz i5 750 gave me better performance in only a few games (namely Arma 2 and GTA IV). However, there are other reasons to upgrade, like power savings/efficiency, motherboards (Socket 1156 has some great microATX and mini-ITX boards), etc., which are all something to consider.

 

[BlueWeasel]

I like phenom II @ 3.6-4.0ghz or a core i5-750 or i5-860

I didn't have the clout for a new i7 rig, so I went for a used E8400 E0. W/ 6mb @ 4.2ghz, it's no slouch for single card rigs.

I've got a similar setup as well (E8400 C1 @ 3.9). Looking at upgrading to a P2 X4 @ 3.8 or a i5 @ 4.0. I've got a 4890 and have no interest in running Crossfire.

I'm not sure that either a Phenom or i5 would give me any significant performance increase in games. But I still want to upgrade.

I could sell my current system (E8400, IP-35E, 4GB DDR2) and upgrade to a P2 X4 system for $125 net or a i5 system for $200 net cost.