Best value for q6600

suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Have a q6600 rig (at stock 2.4ghz, didn't over lock well) with 8gb ram. Trying to decide on best 'bang for buck' video card for bf3 at 1920 x 1080 on a 37" tv. Currently using a 9800gtx+, assuming this won't cut it... Is ther a video card you can recommend that won't be bottlenecked by my CPU?

(I'm also deciding if I want the pc or ps3 version but that I suppose belongs in a different discussion)

Thanks!
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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What motherboard do you have? What are your overclocked settings exactly? I've never heard of any Q6600 that couldn't do 3.0ghz.

Right off the bat your Q6600 will bottleneck any modern videocard because BF3 is both a CPU and GPU limited game. It's difficult to say how much of a bottleneck Q6600 will be exactly before we see benchmarks. Normally, I would say an HD6850 or GTX460 is a good fit.

However, I think you can overclock that Q6600 assuming you have an Asus, MSI or Gigabyte board, etc. You probably just aren't using a good heatsink and proper BIOS settings.

I'd probably grab an HD6870 for $140:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131378

$20 off with promo code POC1X21, ends 10/25
$20 MIR
 

WT

Diamond Member
Sep 21, 2000
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What motherboard do you have? What are your overclocked settings exactly? I've never heard of any Q6600 that couldn't do 3.0ghz.

:thumbsup: Seriously, a Q6600 should easily pull 3-3.33 with no effort other than setting the FSB to the proper number, even on stock voltages.
 

suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I have a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L rev 1.0. I could try overclocking again...

And I'm running 64 bit Windows Vista if that makes any difference.
 

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
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honestly i would look for like a 5870... it would be cheap used, and even if you overclock you cpu i dont think youll normally max that video card. i run a 4870 with an i3 and its a close match, but my i3 is o/c to 3.5 too
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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I have a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L rev 1.0. I could try overclocking again...

And I'm running 64 bit Windows Vista if that makes any difference.

Ya, I had a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L rev 1. That board did 415 FSB on a Q6600 without problems.

Before you proceed, flash your board to the latest BIOS. You can use Gigabyte's @ BIOS utility to flash within windows. It's safe. Just download the BIOS, extract the folder and place it somewhere on your desktop. Then just BROWSE for the *.bin file from that folder and you can flash within windows.

This is what you gotta do:

1) Fix PCI Express frequency to 100
2) Disable CPUID spread spectrum
3) Disable all power saving technologies (C1E, C3-C6 states, EIST etc.)
4) Bump FSB termination voltage +0.1
5) Increase MCH voltage +0.2
6) Raise CPU voltage to 1.35-1.38V (make sure you have a good aftermarket cooler).
7) Raise DDR2 voltage to 1.9V (or +0.1 on your board)
8) Relax DDR2 timings to 5-5-5-15
9) Set CPU FSB:RAM ratio to 2.0 (the lowest ram frequency)
10) Fix CPU multiplier at 9x.
11) Enable Vdroop voltage calibration (or w/e that setting is called if you have it)
12) Enable CPU Host Control and set the CPU Host Clock Frequency (FSB) to 333 to start. That gets you to 3.0ghz. Do stress testing with LinX 0.6.4 for 5-6 runs. Then restart. Keep raising FSB until it fails.

Also, tell me what Ram speed do you have?

This giant thread also has tons of info for your board.

Also, download CPU-Z and see what stepping your CPU is - B3 or G0.
 
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WT

Diamond Member
Sep 21, 2000
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Nice post, RS !!! Very thorough and should help our OP get his Q6600 running like God intended it to.
:thumbsup:

I had the Gigabyte G31 board running an e5200 at 3.33 easy, so I'm looking FWD to hearing the results from OP on his newfound increase in speed.
 

suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Thanks RS. You're super helpful! :thumbsup::cool:

Flashed BIOS to F6 no problem using the Windows Flash utility. According to CPU-Z my stepping is B and Revision G0? I think the RAM is DDR2-800MHz. I got a few screen caps so can post them if needed.

Anyway, I'll go through your list and try to OC this sucker... will report back. Thinking BF3 deserves to be played on a PC so may need that new video card soon!
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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G0 is the best Q6600 revision. Mine did 3.4ghz @ 378 FSB at only 1.325V or so on the DS3L board with FSB voltage and MCH voltages at +0.1V. Download EasyTune utility. I believe there is motherboard temperature in there (i.e., the southbridge). On my older P965 DS3 board, I replaced the southbridge with a $7 Zalman heatsink and put Arctic Silver 5 (at the time) on it. It dropped my southbridge temps significantly.

Zalman.jpg


However, on the P35 DS3L, I just removed the original southbridge thermal pad and put Tuniq TX-2 on it, but didn't bother buying an aftermarket southbridge.

Q6600&


In EasyTune (under PC Health), my System (motherboard temperature) was 39*C at 3.4ghz CPU speed. I think it would spike to about 45-46*C with 100% CPU load. So I felt there was no reason replacing the southbridge in that scenario.

FrontPanelOffvsClosed-ThermaltakeSo.jpg


I did upgrade my CPU cooler though ;)

TuniqonDS3L.jpg


Let me know how it goes and if I can help you with anything.
 
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RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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If you get your Q6600 to 3.0-3.2ghz or so, I think you can safely upgrade to a faster GPU.

There is a nice deal going on the Sapphire HD6950 2GB Dirt 3 Edition at Superbiiz:

$250 - $20 MIR - $15 with coupon code: SPOOKY = $215

With this deal, you'll get Dirt 3 and DeusEx videogames. You can probably resell those to bring the value of the card down even more.

Unfortunately, BF3 is a very demanding game. 28nm GPUs can't get here fast enough for BF3 gamers.

A 9800GTX+ is ~ GTS250. Therefore, an HD6950/GTX560Ti/GTX570 will deliver about double the performance.

BF3HardwareGuide-SinglePlayerIntro-High.png


But you'll need something even faster to be able to break 60 fps in multiplayer:
BF3HardwareGuide-CaspianBorder-High.png


As long as you go easy on 4x MSAA+post-AA setting and SSAO lighting, you should net more performance.
 
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suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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ROFL at that heatsink in the last pic! That's... massive!

I did one test (20 passes total?) in Linx and there were no errors so it may be looking okay for 3GHz+.

Just installed BF3 and will give it a few days on low settings to see how my current rig fares. If I do get a new video card, no downsides to getting a 560Ti right, as I can always keep it for the next upgrade of mobo/cpu/ram?

PS. this is the cheapest 560 ti I can get where I live. ~US210. They also have a 'game pack' version that has OC software (!?) for an additional $15.

By the way, my power supply is a Corsair VX550W. Does this limit my video card options? On the Nvidia page it says a minimum of 500W is recommended...
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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ROFL at that heatsink in the last pic! That's... massive!

:p Check out some really large heatsinks in this thread if you got 2-3 min.

I think you can push the CPU farther than 3.0! Play some games over the next couple of days too and see if you experience any instability. If you are going beyond 3.0ghz, you may need to raise your CPU voltage from stock to 1.32-1.33V or so, depends on your chip.

Your PSU is enough to drive any single-GPU videocard. NV posts minimums just in case people have below avg. power supplies, but VX550W is outstanding.

GTX 560Ti is a good card. I personally would save the $15 and overclock it myself. But if you don't want the hassle, or the cheaper GTX560Ti has a worse cooler, or you want a particular game that comes with the gaming bundle, then pay the extra $15.

The only thing is BF3 seems to use more than 1GB of Ram. There have been mixed comments on this. Some say a 1GB card runs the game well. I think BF3 just might load more textures with a card that has more than 1GB of Ram. While others say that you really need a 1.5-2GB card to run it smoothly. Although that doesn't explain how a GTX560Ti plays just as well as an HD6950. Either way a GTX560Ti isn't fast enough to deliver 60 fps on Ultra. But it's going to be good for High settings.

BF3HardwareGuide-PreliminaryOPS.png


^ This is pretty consistent with what HardOCP found in their testing:

"For our multiplayer testing we used an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 graphics card with NVIDIA ForceWare 285.62 WHQL driver. We found our highest playable settings to be 1920x1200 with Antialiasing Post on "High." Antialiasing Deferred "Off," 16X AF, and all other in-game graphics options set to "Ultra." We did turn off Motion Blur because it was conflicting with our ability to spot enemies using our peripherals; we will look more into the motion blur performance impact in our following article. Our test system consists of an Intel Core i7 920 at 3.6GHz on an MSI Eclipse X58 motherboard.

With these settings our framerates were fairly stable around 60 average FPS. The framerates varied from 57 FPS to 63 FPS."


A 950-1000mhz overclocked GTX560Ti ~ GTX570 at stock.
 
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flexy

Diamond Member
Sep 28, 2001
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Most Q6600 G0s should do 3.5Ghz relatively easily, until today i have NOT seen a reason to upgrade my ancient system thanks to the amazing G0. Best CPU i have ever had...and still running and running and running.
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
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kai, if you check in CPU section, I am giving some advice for Q6600 oc's, I recommend you check out the posts in that thread. Feel free to start your own OC thread of course!
 

suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Just got done playing a bit of BF3 Co-op and it was pretty damn fun I must say. I haven't done any multiplayer servers yet, but my Q6600 3.0Ghz overclock seemed to hold up steady (didn't crash at all) and even on low settings it looked good...

As far as 560 Ti's go, are they all pretty much the same or are there some 'gotchas' with certain models? inno3d has this iChill 560 Ti with supposedly better fan blades (scythe blades!?) and a better heatsink. Almost $30 more than the base model. Gimmick, or is it really better?

PS. Just saw in the forum something about a 448 core 560 Ti. Is this supposed to come out soon?
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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PS. Just saw in the forum something about a 448 core 560 Ti. Is this supposed to come out soon?

Yes, it will probably be priced between a GTX560 Ti and a GTX570. It seems both NV and AMD are having issues with 28nm GPU yields. More likely than not we may not see high-end 28nm cards until Q1 or even Q2 2012. NV probably built up quite a bit of inventory with lower yielding GF110 chips. It makes sense for them to sell them instead of throwing them out.
 

suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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So I went out and got a Gigabyte 560Ti card. Took out the 9800GTX+ and put her right in... in single player I am getting this error:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I tried underclocking it to 888MHz and the same error still happens. Any suggestions? I am using the 285.62 drivers.

edit: downclocking it further to the default of 822 seems to have done the trick. stable now. will move up slowly...
 
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