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Q6600: good idea to go with DDR3 or stick with DDR2?

anindrew

anindrew

Senior member
Hi all!

My current system is probably 5 years old if not older. It's an Athlon64 3500+ with 2GB of DDR PC3200 and an x1950 Pro AGP. Rockin' it real old school still. Oddly enough, I can actually play Crysis at 1280x800 everything on High (not Very High as it's greyed out) and I believe I had to turn AA off. Needless to say, not the best gaming experience in the world due to my old system.

Being that I'm a gamer, dabbler in audio production, and taking an AutoCAD class which should lead to a new job/career, I'm really interested in building a new system. The Q9450 is tempting, but a bit pricey. The Q6600 at $199 seems like an awesome deal, especially with it's OC abilities. I'd probably only push it to 3GB or a little over.

If I got a Q6600, is it worth it to get DDR3? Any benefit to it? Or is sticking with DDR2 better?

Also, doesn't it suck how it's never a good time to build? You can build a kick ass system now for a good price, but OH WAIT Nahalem is coming out next year. I don't think I can wait that long, but damn! Hopefully I'll have a new job then and could afford an even better system if I wanted it.

Thanks for reading! 🙂
 
The Q6600 is a really good chip, and will last you a while unless you decide to go with a Nehalem build when they are out. You could do 3.2GHz on that, and it would easily power your graphics card to do what you want. I recommend either the 9800GTX, or if that's out of your budget, go with an 8800GT. Like StinkyPinky said, DDR3 is just not worth the price/performance ratio as of now.
 
775 boards will be around a long while. the P45 is even out on an Asus 775 board now... Intel did the right thing with maintaining their socket unlike AMD - bad AMD bad... bad bad bad. Getting 4Ghz on a 775 board is another plus too, making it last longer. DDR 3 4Gb kits are hitting the low 300's now. Thats alot of money, period. And we don't know exactly where the sweet spot of DDR3 on a Nehalem will be. Sell off what parts you can sell and add that to your new build and either way, you won't feel as burnt when the big Neh. comes out.
 
nehalem *might* also use ECC ddr3, so it *might* make the current unbuffered ddr3 useless, just grab some ddr2, as the fsb on the current core 2's wont allow for a huge performance gain thru fast memory.
 
All of you raise very good points! Thanks! 4GB of DDR2-1066 is quite affordable, too, especially compared to even 2GB of DDR3. I'd probably go with a 9800 GTX since $300 isn't bad for a really good graphics card. I already have a nice 24" monitor to go with it.

Another couple questions: Are the Q9450 or Q9300 going to perform significantly better than the Q6600?

Thanks again!
 
At the same clock speed, they're slightly faster than a Q6600, but they're also a bit harder to overclock, along with needing a higher FSB when overclocked, which is much harder on your motherboard. In other words, they both have their good and bad points.
 
I chose my 9300 over a 6600 for its power consumption at load levels because I am concerned about saving what money I can. It may not be alot but it puts my mind at ease 🙂
 
I have decided that I'd like to go with the Q9450. But, it depends on the overall price of everything I'd order. I like that it performs faster than the Q6600 at stock and that is has some other enhancements (12MB L2 cache, SSE4, 45nm, lower power). I'm not a hardcore OCer at all. In fact, I don't even OC my current old system (not like it could OC much anyway). I'd be ecstatic to get 3.0Ghz on the Q9450. I also think I want the Enermax Chakra case. It's very affordable, gets nice reviews, and I love that 250mm fan on the side.

Luckily, my hard drives and optical drives are pretty new, so I can move those over to the new system.

Now I have to decide on the motherboard, memory, and power supply. I'm leaning more towards the Intel chipsets, but the 780i is looking nice, too.

And again with the "waiting game:" it seems both Nvidia and ATI are putting out new graphics cards before the end of the month (in theory).
 
Since gaming is a big part of why I'm buying a new computer, I have decided to wait a little while. I want to see what Nvidia and ATI's new offerings can do.
 
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