Is a Core2Quad still relevant nowadays?

[Idontcare]

The first quad processor was in 2007. Soo its not 5 to 6 years.. more like 4 years ... What is it that your current processor cant do, or is doing slow ?

I bought my QX6700 kentsfield quadcore in 2006.

I suspect you are thinking of the Q6600 which wasn't released until Jan 8, 2007.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I don't think many people expected C2Q to have the legs it's had when it was released.
These chips sure have remained relevant for a long while

Mostly I just consider upgrading for the purpose of reducing power usage anymore.
ie: performance/watt and lower idle power usage

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I was gaming just fine at 1680x1050 on a 3.8GHz PII X4 with a 6970 (put the card in one of the folks' systems while visiting).

 

[RussianSensation]

I bought my QX6700 kentsfield quadcore in 2006.

I suspect you are thinking of the Q6600 which wasn't released until Jan 8, 2007.

I bet the QX6700 wasn't $300 though. You paid $999 for one of those?

I remember I waited until August 2007 before I could snatch my first quad (Q6600) for $300 CDN (I was tracking the price fall from $850 --> $530 --> $320 or so). Those were exciting times!! . That would be similar to a 980X falling from $999 to $350-375 in a period of just 8 months!

Here I find myself in August 2011 admiring how much of a beast the Q6600 @ 3.4ghz-3.6ghz still is. My spare rig has a stock (really) E6600 with an SSD and it's plenty fast for email/internet browsing. If the next generation of consoles with 6-8 core CPUs don't launch until 2013-2014, I bet a Q6600/6700 @ 3.4ghz+ can survive another 1-2 GPU upgrades. Not sure if we'll ever encounter a CPU with as much staying power as the venerable Q6600/6700 series. Although I have a feeling those who purchased the i7 920 @ 4.0ghz in 2008 may have something to say about this in 2-3 years from now!

Being able to sell the Q6600/6700 to those "poor souls" who wrongfully bet on the faster clocked E8300-E8600 series back then is just icing on the cake.

 

[toyota]

Being able to sell the Q6600/6700 to those "poor souls" who wrongfully bet on the faster clocked E8300-E8600 series back then is just icing on the cake.

well I chose the E8500 over the Q6600 in 2008 and was glad that I did. in 99% of games the E8500 was as fast or faster and it used less power. by the time the Q6600 started looking as good, we already had new cpus coming out. sure the Q6600 could be overclocked but it was a very power hungry cpu when doing so. and with the E8500 also oced a bit, the typical oced Q6600 still lost nearly all of the time because MOST games just needed 2 really fast cores. there were really only 3 or 4 games that I played in over 2.5 years where a Q6600 would have provided a better experience.

 

[RussianSensation]

well I chose the E8500 over the Q6600 in 2008 and was glad that I did. in 99% of games the E8500 was as fast or faster and it used less power. by the time the Q6600 started looking as good, we already had new cpus coming out. sure the Q6600 could be overclocked but it was a very power hungry cpu when doing so. and with the E8500 also oced a bit, the typical oced Q6600 still lost nearly all of the time because MOST games just needed 2 really fast cores. there were really only 3 or 4 games that I played in over 2.5 years where a Q6600 would have provided a better experience.

Well even at 3.8ghz overclock and say 10% IPC improvement that Wolfdales had, the $299 E8500 @ 3.8ghz would have been only about 16-23% faster over a 3.6-3.4ghz E6600. The problem is E6600 launched at nearly that price almost 2 years prior to that! You have to admit the E8xxx series were not good value, and the performance increase they offered over the E6600 overclocked 20 months later was sub-par by today's standards.

Consider this: It was more than 1.5 years between E6600 and E8500 for a pretty small performance increase (I mean we are talking less than 25% with overclocking on both). Just 8 months after Intel launched the $299 E8500 (2 core) series, they managed to launch the i7 920 (4 core 8 threaded CPU) for $284. In other words, Intel was literally selling a CPU with at least 2.5x the power for less $ than the E8500 in a period of less than 1 year.

Your 2500k won't suffer the same fate that the E8500 did (i.e., Intel launching an 8-core 16 threaded CPU in 1 year from now for $300).

 

[toyota]

yeah but the E8500 was priced at $185 when I bought it plus I had a combo deal with the mobo I was going to buy anyway for another 15 bucks off. the Q6600 would have cost me more and basically required overclocking since most games needed just 2 fast cores. I had never oced anything at that time and when i was researching the Q6600 seem to use a way way more power than an E8500 just to go over 3.0. so really for me the E8500 was the best choice as the Q9550 and Q9650 were out of my budget.

 

[RussianSensation]

yeah but the E8500 was priced at $185 when I bought it plus I had a combo deal with the mobo I was going to buy anyway for another 15 bucks off. the Q6600 would have cost me more and basically required overclocking since most games needed just 2 fast cores. I had never oced anything at that time and when i was researching the Q6600 seem to use a way way more power than an E8500 just to go over 3.0. so really for me the E8500 was the best choice as the Q9550 and Q9650 were out of my budget.

Ya, at that price, that's totally understandable. :thumbsup: When I looked at AT's review, it looks like it launched at $299.

 

[Spikesoldier]

depends on which C2Q you got.

if its one of the 12MB L2 models and you have it at 3.6, thats still a very competent setup even for today. the 8MB and 6MB L2 models less so.

i would not feel bad pairing a q9550 @ 3.6/3.7 with a 6970 2gb, although personally i would probably go with the 6950 2gb.

 

[rbk123]

Just checked my receipt and I bought my Q6600 during the mad scramble when Fry's would occasionally have a sale for them at $189, for the vaunted G0 stepping. It's still my main rig OC'd to 3.6G and it's not going anywhere soon after I installed an SSD. It loses out to my 2500k when I run Handbrake, but outside of encoding there's no difference between the 2 (I don't game). If it's not relevant, I would never have known had no one told me..

 

[skipsneeky2]

Bought a Q6600 with a frys combo mobo deal for $300 or so when it first dropped.

Used it till the i7 chips came out and went i7 940 but my friend and me built him a rig around my old q6600 and he still uses it and can't stop complimenting how fast it is.

Would have to say for the time that was the best processor purchase i have ever made long live the Q6600!

 

[VirtualLarry]

I should point out that you can get an absurd amount of money selling your Core2Quad on Ebay.

I just sold a Q6600, Gigabyte motherboard and 4GB DDR Ram for around $300.

That almost covered the entire cost of my Sanda Bridge setup.

Hmm, that's the first that I've heard of that. Has 775 stuff on ebay increased in price lately?
I've got a spare Q6600, and a DFI X48 mobo that I might want to get rid of. Both of them are brand-new, amazingly enough. Except, I paid $470 for the both of them.

 

[happy medium]

At your resolution , you will be fine,even @ 1080p your cpu would be fine.

 

[Jhatfie]

I think that they are still good processors. Obviously not the best for gaming, but still strong enough for single GPU setups. I have a Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz in my son's rig paired with a HD 6850 @ 950/1160 and it tears most games up at 1920x1200. Can barely tell the different between it and my PII X4 @ 3.6Ghz and 6870 @ 960/1175 in my HTPC. Obviously neither is in the same league as my 2500k setup, but they still have some legs unless you are a super demanding gamer/encoder/renderer.

 

[GFORCE100]

The first Core 2 Quad came out in late 2006 as the QX6700 with mainstream models, aka the Q6600 that became so popular around April 2007. Given this your system is likely at most only 4 years old.

With that said yes, any modern graphics card (high-end) will be bottlenecked by such CPU.

I would wait for Ivybridge though, just try and find a little more patience somewhere, take a walk, have a beer, watch TV, anything, a few more months and you'll be happy you did

 

[RussianSensation]

With that said yes, any modern graphics card (high-end) will be bottlenecked by such CPU.

But he is gaming on an Apple LED display (2560x1440) with a single HD6970.

You know what Witcher 2, Crysis 2, Metro 2033, upcoming BF3 and Skyrim will do to a single HD6970? At that resolution a 6970 will be lucky to be doing 25-30 fps with everything on High in any of those games. Q6600 @ 3.6ghz won't be a bottleneck under those scenarios.

In Crysis 2 DX11, even at just 1080P Ultra, a 6970 barely breaks 30 fps .

 

[Spjut]

The games where C2Q/Athlon II/Phenom II CPUs hurt are in those games that have poor support for more than two cores...Starcraft 2 and Crysis 1 for example

But yours got a pretty fine oveclock

 

[nismotigerwvu]

I'm kind of amazed that no one has mentioned the fact that C2Q's have what amounts to equal IPC as Phenom II's. At decent clockrates, these chips are very solid still today.

 

[TidusZ]

I've been running my Q9550 at 4.25 ghz for about 2 years and it still runs all my games perfectly well. Don't think I'll have problems with Diablo III either, so probably wont be upgrading for a while.

 

[Rifter]

I'm kind of amazed that no one has mentioned the fact that C2Q's have what amounts to equal IPC as Phenom II's. At decent clockrates, these chips are very solid still today.

I think i covered that in post # 24 with my relevant as a PH II response.

 

[amenx]

I've had this Core2Quad rig for 5-6 years now and never felt like I needed any extra oomph. With my recent move to Mac, buying a new rig/CPU just for gaming seems a little bit irrelevant. I am just trying to push this rig as far as I can.

I just picked up a 6970 and am now having doubt whether I have the CPU horsepower to push this card, or if the card is even enough to push my monitor. Thoughts?

C2Q @ 3.6GHz
Asus P5B-Deluxe
4GB of Ram
GTX460 768MB to 6970 on an Apple LED display (2560x1440).

For gaming @ 2560x1440, I dont think you will see any improvement or gain with a new CPU (over a C2Q @3.6ghz).

 

[Arg Clin]

Found this article a while back http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/Phenom%20II%20X6%201100T/P17.html basically the conclusion is that in most games a PH II won't CPU bottleneck you until you reach Tri-fire/ 3-way SLI 470 levels. Since the C2Q performs more or less like the PH II I'd say you're good to go for a while still.

 

[Smartazz]

I'm still rocking a 3GHz Q6600 with an HD6870 and I'm pretty happy with the performance at 1920x1080. The only problem as others have pointed out is that the power consumption is a tad high given its performance in comparison to the new 32nm quads. In non-gaming applications, my processor is still plenty fast especially once I added an SSD boot drive. I think an upgrade to a ~5GHz Ivy Bridge would be a huge upgrade for me, especially since I plan on playing a lot of Battlefield 3.

Edit: Also, your resolution is so high that you'll likely be hitting a GPU bottleneck most of the time.

 

[-Slacker-]

If it's a 9000 series, sure, they're on par with the phenom IIs, if it's an 8000 series, then probably not.

 

[RussianSensation]

Found this article a while back http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/Phenom%20II%20X6%201100T/P17.html basically the conclusion is that in most games a PH II won't CPU bottleneck you until you reach Tri-fire/ 3-way SLI 470 levels.

That's a fair assessment when you are testing games at 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 4AA/8AA. 2560x1600 resolution alone is nearly 2x that of 1080P, and that's before any AA is applied. For high resolutions like that, GPU is where it's at