Q6600 @ 3.2ghz to Ivy bridge 3570k. Fps increase 4 games? Any other benefits?

[tweakboy]

Praise the Q6600 GO


and its p5k ,, not pk5 lol

but ya Im in your boat, and all my games run 60fps capped ,,, 8x CSAA FSAA 16xAF high detail vsync on. Also I compose and produce... and my average project takes up to 80 percent when audio engine is on. no kickups or issues. Just wish I had a SSD.

I tell all, whoever has a quad, stick with it and use it, scr#w Intel ,,,,,,

The difference from Pentium 4 or D to my rig born in on Nov 22 2007 ... is HUGE , extermely ground breaking ,, Core 2 Quad ,,, its been almost 5 years and they still selling quads,,, so they can take your money, then build 6 or 8 core Haswell.... but ya I think I will upgrade to Haswell,, but thats a maybe,, if I dont need to I wont,,,its just a pain water cooled ,, Im happy where I am right now.

 

[Smartazz]

In the larger Battlefield 3 servers you will notice a huge difference.

 

[tweakboy]

I don't play BF3 my friend. I aint making a huge change cuz battlefield 3 would be 10fps faster , which I cant even see anything,,, Im 60fps capped every game...its the GPU rendering that allows you to see what your seeing, the CPU just does some other work.
3dmark proves this by giving you a CPU benchmark running at 1fps , frame by frame when CPU renders it. but once you go graphics card working with CPU you get 60fps for example..... The CPU does AI and other things,,,,

 

[pawel86ck]

I have Q6600 3GHz, 6 months ago my 8800Ultra died so I bought 680GTX. I wanted to see how much bottlenecked my 680GTX will be first and maybe few days later buy i5/i7. I have read on many sites that I will see small improvement, but the difference was spectacular.

In crysis 2 my fps were around 25-40fps before on 8800Ultra (dx9, veryhigh 1280x1024), and very often I have seen memory leaks that slowed the game to the unplayable framerates. On 680GTX and dx11 1920x1080 + Maldo HD + FXAA my fps was 50-60 fps for 90% of time and min 40fps, for me the difference was HUGE.

Then I have tried many other games that also showed HUGE improvement, even Max Payne 3 was not problem for my PC 60 fps 90% of the time. As I have found out there are very few games actualy that force my PC to reach lower fps. For example : crysis 1 30-50 fps, GTA4 25-40 fps but I say its still very playable, and I could play 1080p now instead of 1280x1024. I was so surprised by the performance of my OLD/NEW PC that my decison about buying i5/i7 was delayed.

Lately I've just read CPU benchmarks on Far Cry 3, q6600 at stock 2.4GHz run that game at 32fps avarage and 24 minimum but i5 3570 @ 3.4GHz was clearly better 72 fps avarage and 61 fps min. I could still play that game max'ed out but I think enough is enough, Its time to buy new CPU for sure because i5 just demolished my old q6600 in that game.

Guys, this i5 3570 is good CPU ? Or i7 will be much better ?

 

[xx0xx]

It really depends on the game, but I upgraded from a Q6600 SLACR running at 3.0ghz to a i5-3550 and it was a huge jump for Skyrim and Black Ops (1). My Black Ops fps nearly tripled. Skyrim I can max now without any slowdowns (with high-res texture pack installed).

Games that rely less on CPU will see more modest gains, but even then, it won't be insignificant.

It's all about the games and which part they depend on most. When I had the Q6600, I upgraded from an HD4850 to a 560 Ti and got no increase in Black Ops... talk about a poorly optimized game. :S

Ivy Bridge and Samsung 830 SSD are the two best upgrades I've ever made to my system's performance.

 

[tynopik]

If you're ok with your current system for now, might as well wait for Haswell

 

[pawel86ck]

Tynopik - Haswell will come out soon ? You think it will be significant improvement (performance)?

xx0xx- I have played black ops 1 on my 8800Ultra around 2 years ago, as I remember fps slowed down to 30 few times but generally this game was playable for me (40-60 fps average). And btw I want to buy SDD also

 

[tynopik]

Tynopik - Haswell will come out soon ?

4-7 months perhaps.

You think it will be significant improvement (performance)?

perhaps 10% better than IVB, so not really

but, it will have lower power, newer platform (more USB3.0 and SATA 6Gbps ports), and important new instructions (TSX, FMA, AVX2)

The new instructions probably won't matter any time soon, but if you plan to hold onto your system 5+ years, they might come in handy

 

[xx0xx]

xx0xx- I have played black ops 1 on my 8800Ultra around 2 years ago, as I remember fps slowed down to 30 few times but generally this game was playable for me (40-60 fps average). And btw I want to buy SDD also

For me it was this in COD : BO (approximated, not tested thoroughly):

Q6600 and 560 Ti
-------------------------
MAX: ~90 with no cap, higher if looking at wall
AVG: 45-75 - very map dependent
Random drops: 28-35 range
MIN: 28 (Havana map especially)

It was definitely playable, and still enjoyable to me, but just really annoying to lose firefights and movement range because of frame drops.

Funny thing is, *ALL* of those numbers^ double when on Win XP due to the way DirectX/Sound are handled <__< .... >___> .... #__#

Random drops were the worst part, makes it hard to play on many maps as you can feel your twitching/turning/sprinting getting slower when the fps drops very suddenly


i5-3550 (including standard turbo boost enabled) and 560 Ti
-------------------------
MAX: ~200
AVG: 110-140 - very map dependent
Random drops: 70-90
MIN: ~70



If you get a reliable SSD (like Samsung, Intel, etc.) for even JUST your OS, it is totally worth the speed increase for all of your standard applications, installation times, and so forth. It even makes iTunes relatively fast on Windows! *GASP*

 

[toyota]

I have a hard time believing that a 3550 is 2.5x faster than a Q6600 in that game especially with a mid range card at a normal resoltion. that sounds like the kind of difference you would see with a gtx680 at 800x600.

 

[xx0xx]

This is at 1680x1050 fully maxed. No reinstalled OS, no reinstalled game or anything. Literally removing the Q6600 and accompanying motherboard and replacing them with a 3550 and respective motherboard. Only other part of the upgrade is I went from 4GB of DDR2 800 to 8GB of DDR3 1600, but the RAM's affects on performance should be very minimal.

Same card, same clocks on card. Black Ops is a special case. It is CPU-bound horribly on Windows 7. The usage percentages on Win 7 are wacky vs. the percentages on Windows XP. On Win 7 it relies on the CPU powering the fps because it doesn't fully make use of the GPU. So under Win 7, going from Q6600 to Ivy Bridge 3550 is a huge jump. Other benchmarks of the CPU show those kind of performance increases in non-game applications (which are CPU-bound), so why is it that surprising?

In other games it made a much more expected/linear increase (but still significant). But Skyrim and BO1 (both CPU-hungry games to some extent) benefited greatly.

In addition, the numbers above for the i5 are with shadows ON and the numbers for the Q6600 are with shadows OFF, so the gap is even larger than shown above by about ~10fps. All other settings the same/maxed.

 

[pawel86ck]

perhaps 10% better than IVB, so not really

but, it will have lower power, newer platform (more USB3.0 and SATA 6Gbps ports), and important new instructions (TSX, FMA, AVX2)

The new instructions probably won't matter any time soon, but if you plan to hold onto your system 5+ years, they might come in handy

I thought it will be totally new generation (maybe 50-100% more performance), just 10% doesnt make any difference for me, so I will just buy CPU that is OC friendly right now, and that alone will give me 10% more performance I think:hmm:.

 

[biostud]

Lower power concumption, USB3, PCIe 3.0, SATA-600

 

[inf64]

I thought it will be totally new generation (maybe 50-100% more performance), just 10% doesnt make any difference for me, so I will just buy CPU that is OC friendly right now, and that alone will give me 10% more performance I think:hmm:.

Yes but you won't have AVX2/FMA and lower power draw. It's a trade off .
But if you are in need of upgrading right now then do it. 3570K or 3770K will hold their own against Haswell in standard benchmarks. Only in some very special cases Haswell will show ~100% speedup and that is when new AVX2/FMA ISA is used by software.

 

[sarthakyadav]

hehehe....don worry buddy...u will not be dissapointed by your upgrade...gtx 560 ti has enough juice to play bf3 at your reso,and well about the cpu upgrade...u will have much better avg frame rates with it...coz its not about the highest pt the frame rate hit...its about the lowest drop...with ur current cpu bf3 would be shitty with lag spikes..(multiplayer loves more cores,singleplayer good enough on an i3)....u would play way better...
all the best!!

 

[pawel86ck]

Lower power concumption, USB3, PCIe 3.0, SATA-600

1- I dont look for lower power consumption
2- What about USB 3 ? I thought all current PC's have that ?
3- On my asus P5ke I have very old PCIe and its enough for 680GTX, not to mention PCIe 2.0.

Yes but you won't have AVX2/FMA

These instructions can be applied in future games ?

 

[inf64]

These instructions can be applied in future games ?

Sure they can be used in future games but the rate of adoption of new instruction sets in commercial software is rather slow. Maybe in 5 years we will have games that are AVX2 optimized. In order to have software that supports AVX2 you need to have hardware (and a good deal of market % with it) that supports it.

Also note that AVX2 supporting games won't be "100% faster" when ran on AVX2 hardware(Vs the rest). Games are GPU bound first so my guess is that increase will be much smaller,in the 10-20% region.

 

[jmarti445]

Wait till Haswell, my personal recommendation. I have a Phenom X4 940 that is still a relevant processor, and a Phenom X6 that has absolutely no problems with games. If you want to upgrade, do the video card, cause I got a big jump when I went from a 9800 GTX+ SLI to GTX 470. Not to mention that you can video encode with the DX11 cards.

 

[pawel86ck]

inf64- Thanks for the informations. I will try some games like farcry 3 and new hitman and decide next week what to do. But I need to say q6600 was the best CPU EVER, 6 years and I can still play new games very well, unbelievable.

jmarti445- I have already bought 680GTX so no need for new graphic card, (at least for my needs SLI would be just useless).

 

[Madpacket]

Q6600@3+ghz is pretty decent for Bf3, even on 64 player matches. Yes the frame rate dips at times but never becomes unplayable IMO.

 

[Arkaign]

The Q6600 overclocked is equivalent to an Athlon II which is still tested with modern games and if it isn't just check the Phenon II stats and figure your chip is slightly slower clock for clock. So go check the results of the benchmarks to find out if you are held back in any games. Other games will benefit also like starcraft II, Civ 5, etc but some won't. Figure out what you like to play and check the benches. One thing I'm confident in is that a Sandy / Ivy overclocked to 4.5ghz will be a long lasting chip just like your Q6600 was so I think the upgrade is justified. Especially since my upgrade only cost me $270 for the CPU, board, and RAM.

This is incorrect. Q6600 (8MB L2) and Q9450/9550/9650 (12MB L2) are appromixately equal to PhII X4BE clock for clock. Athlon II (no L3, small L2) is 5-20% slower clock for clock depending on app.

Anyway, as others have noted : upgrade everything at once, doing otherwise is going to be unbalanced. Shoot for good 1080p performance, as those displays are extremely cheap.

2500k + Z77 mobo + 7870 would be a tremendous upgrade, paired with 8 or 16GB DDR3-1600. 3570K is also an option. Either way chunk the stock cooler in the garbage and get a heatpipe tower unit such as a 212+ or whatever.

Selling your Q6660, mobo, DDR2 memory, and 560ti will net you a significant chunk of $$ towards the build. If you can afford it now, go ahead and grab a 7950 3GB instead of the 7870, it will give you a longer lifespan of being able to max out 1080p in new titles.

Edit : I see you are on a 60GB SSD. Go ahead and replace that as well. 256GB models are available that aren't insanely expensive, and that will give you a lot more room to keep games on the SSD, as well as keep it at a low enough utilization threshold so that performance doesn't tank. The more data you have on an SSD, the performance drops to a moderate to high extent when you get it closer/close to full.

 

[pawel86ck]

2 weeks ago I bought i5 3570K + Asrock Z77 pro4 + 60 GB SSD and gave q6600 to my sister. Now I can see how fast 680GTX really is. The difference in crysis 1 is spectacular, on 1080p (stock 3570K) + fxaa my average fps is 70-100 fps now (51 fps min), before 45 fps (and 25-30fps min),

Second thing is SSD... I was totally blown away when I saw how much faster windows7 is loading, before it was around 1m,30s, now 12-15 seconds!

To summarize this topic, I could still play games on q6600 but upgrade was definitely worth it!

 

[MrSquished]

my experience going from Q6600 to i5 chip while keeping the same GC and hard drives:

i had a Q6600 G0 stepping oc'd to 3.3ghz with a 5850 1gb card, 4GB of ram.

Playing BF3 at 1900x1200 (native resolution) i had to play with everything on low to get decent fps that stayed around 30-40fps - but often enough closer to 30fps, which was too slow for me.

i swapped in an i5 3570K, 16gb of ram on an Asrock z77 extreme4 mobo, stuck with the same 5850 card, hard drives and PSU - and now in BF3 with everything on High and Ultra (0xAA, 4xAF) I get 45-60fps (v-sync is on) and closer to or at 60fps more often than not, which means FPS are actually higher.

going from a q6600 to an i5 was a huge upgrade gaming wise for me in regards to BF3 while keeping a lowly 5850 1gb card and saving myself an upgrade for when $$$ is more available.

 

[Bman123]

Going from a core 2 quad to a ivy I5 will be a huge difference in the minimum frame rate and that is what matters most.