q6600 - still viable for gaming? or is it time to upgrade?

[Nvidiaguy07]

If you can find a cheap $5-10 fan for the Tuniq, and want to hold out until Haswell, do that. Tuniq is still a very good cooler. But if you are going to spend $15-20 on a new fan, might as well get a new cooler . You'll be able to transfer the cooler over to Z77 motherboard on Socket 1155 since I am pretty sure the Tuniq won't work on Socket 1155 if you get Ivy. Also, 1150 is backwards compatible with 1155 socket. If you buy a cooler that's compatible with Socket 1155/1156 now, if you decide to skip Ivy Bridge, you should still be good to go later on. But this got me thinking: if you transfer the Q6600 to your 2nd rig, you'll want to keep it at 3.15ghz I suppose and carry over the Tuniq?

*Corsair A70 comes with 2 fans! for $30 after rebate* Sounds like you can get that cooler and keep the Tuniq working for your 2ndary system by using one of those fans for the Tuniq.

If judging based on budget coolers alone, the CM212 you linked is good too. It has a version with a better fan called CM212 Evo. If you want a very silent rig, Thermalright Macho HR-02 or Thermalright True Spirit 140 are good (but they are large/tall, and will cost about $40-50 with shipping and all). Another notable stand-out for $30 is True Spirit 120. Macho HR-02 or True Spirit 140 will give performance within 90% of the best such as Noctua NH-D14, Silver Arrow, Phanteks, Corsair H100.

There are so many great budget coolers, it's hard to choose. If you find a sale, Scythe Yasya, Xigmatek Gaia, Zalman CNPS10x Performa, etc.



Cougar 120mm (with or without fan control; depends on what you want).
Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP14 or AP15 if you can find it in stock
Noiseblocker SilentPro PL2
Noiseblocker Black Silent with PWM control.
^ You can look within the families to find the balance of noise and air flow. If you pay extra, you can get a fan with PWM control within some of these series.

Sensible budget choices
Yate Loon
Thermalright TR-FDB-1600 Fluid Dynamic



It's not hard. I just used a flat-head screwdriver to push the 2 white pins out from the bottom of the motherboard. Just be careful. Once you push them, the heatsink will still be attached. You just need to twist it and it should pop off. But honestly, if you are already stable at 3.15ghz and you have a fan on top, it's not worth the hassle. It sounds to me like northbridge temperatures are not impeding your CPU overclock. You can always use EasyTune to check your System motherboard temperature. Hardware Monitor is a neat program too.



P180/182/183 are some of the worst for case airflow. Stay with Antec 900.

Should you ever choose to upgrade your case sometime in the future, the link above, and this Review should quickly make you realize how important case airflow is for a modern system.

Unfortunately, a lot of people buy high-end coolers and then put it into a case with horrible airflow....Antec 900 is good though.



It's not 2 years. It'll probably be 12-15 months until Haswell. However, Haswell will use DDR3-1600 and your Socket 1155/1156 cooler should be backwards compatible. So worst case, get IVB, transfer Q6600 over. If in 15 months you feel the urge to upgrade, you can always dump IVB+mobo and carry over the CPU heatsink and the RAM.

Just make sure to get DDR3-1600 at 1.25 / 1.35 or 1.5V.

Right now the premium for 1.25 or 1.35V ram is very small. I also prefer modules with low heatsinks so that I have the option to throw a massive CPU cooler later.

I threw in a variety for you to come back to later on.

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series - 1.35V
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline - 1.35V
CORSAIR Vengeance Low Profile - 1.35V
G.SKILL Sniper Series - 1.35V
G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage - 1.25V :wub:

The *Dark Horse* - Samsung 30nm DDR3, but it sells out.

Cool, thanks for all the advice. I probably will upgrade when IVB comes out, and then upgrade on a shorter cycle.

I think my biggest problem is im not comfortable with selling used CPU/mobo/heatsink/ram etc. I always worry something would get damaged in shipping. And then theres the issue of securing it before i ship.

If i can get comfortbale with that. I would be ok with spending a few hundred every year or two and selling my old CPU/MOBO and possibly ram and upgrading. Until now though my cycle has been: buy for me, keep as long as possible, move old parts into extra PC until they have close to no value.

 

[Tempered81]

buy for me, keep as long as possible, move old parts into extra PC until they have close to no value.

Looking at the specs in your signature... The cpu and motherboard is definitely the outdated part. I'd pick up that 2500k, 2600k, or 3770k asap. For some games you will see a big difference. Twice the speed where you're purely cpu limited.

I posted some benchmarks from Anno 1404 that show the 2600k doing 2.4x the fps of the q6600, from that same website they benched crysis 1 as well. Both cpus at stock frequency. If you don't care about performance in games, the Q6600 is fine for just about anything - unless you're in a rush to encode or hash something

Anno 1404:
i7-2600K 54 fps
C2Q Q6600 - 20.6 fps

Crysis 1:
i72600K - 35 fps
C2Q Q6600 - 22 fps

 

[MustangSVT]

still sticking out with c2q 8200 @ 3.2ghz .. until it dies.
abit p35 e is slowly dying though. NIC doesnt hold mac adress and rear sound port doesnt work.

So far it works well with everything EXCEPT! SC2 really kills it in heavy battles (around 10fps), but then I have it all on ultra .

 

[xx0xx]

Starting to feel the bottleneck. In games that tend to be CPU-bound, it's noticeable.

I play Black Ops a lot, and it's very CPU-bound. I upgraded from an ATI 4850 to an nVidia 560TI (for many reasons and other games too) and get about the same frame rate in Black Ops .

Running a q6600 G0 between 2.7 and 3.0ghz (I mess with it occasionally). The GPU upgrade probably gave me a 50-100% (very approximated, haven't tested) increase in all other games. I hear that Skyrim is somewhat CPU-bound, so I'm looking forward to upgrading, though it seems to be quite smooth even now with the q6600 and 560TI.

I won't be able to even afford a new machine until Ivy Bridge, so I guess the timing works out well for me lol

 

[nyker96]

when I turn up the eye candy, most of my games running on a x4/620 is mostly gpu limited. so I think if you overclocked your Q6600, you will also be gpu limited most of the games. I think if you want more graphics/better eye candy, a gpu upgrade will net you more.

 

[Charlie98]

I would go with a 2500K now... you said the Q6600 has a new home waiting for it. I think the 2500K is pretty solid for what I think you are wanting it for. You can play the waiting game with IB or even Haswell but a 2500K and a decent Z68 mobo will carry you past that. Why wait.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

I would go with a 2500K now... you said the Q6600 has a new home waiting for it. I think the 2500K is pretty solid for what I think you are wanting it for. You can play the waiting game with IB or even Haswell but a 2500K and a decent Z68 mobo will carry you past that. Why wait.

Well the computer it will be going into is hooked up to the TV, and is primarily used for movies, not too much gaming, so its not urgent that i upgrade that. (when i do game, i usually just set it to 1280x720 anyway, so its actually pretty decent ATM. Once i get a new TV, that looks good at 1080P then i could crank it up. - im using an older samsung DLP 1080p TV right now, but 720p and 1080p dont look too much different, so 720p is better to make text and every thing bigger.)

I think even if i wait for ivy bridge to come out, i could still at least get a better price on the 2500k if i chose to go with that. I know its probably just marketing hype, but the way they are describing IB really makes me want to wait.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I went from a Q9550 overclocked to i7 860 at stock and the difference was
HUGE.

Then I went from i7 860 3.4 to i7 2600k at stock and the difference was DECENT, but much smaller than before. But well worth it,

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

I went from a Q9550 overclocked to i7 860 at stock and the difference was
HUGE.

Then I went from i7 860 3.4 to i7 2600k at stock and the difference was DECENT, but much smaller than before. But well worth it,

Gaming performance? or overall performance.

 

[sm625]

In most games, a 3.2GHz Q6600 is just about an even match for a i3-2100. That's what the average fps benchmarks say anyway. I think minimum framerates are going to be significantly higher on the newer uA, not to mention with the much faster RAM. I am willing to bet that if you upgrade to the cheapest IB i3 you're going to notice a huge improvment in gaming. I noticed a huge improvement going from a 3.0 Q6600 to a 3.6 i5-750. By huge I mean >50% improvement in minimum framerates.

 

[sm625]

This article doesnt have a Q6600, unfortunately, but I still think it has a lot of useful info:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-9.html

Besides, even if it did have a Q6600 it wouldnt be running at whatever speed yours is so it doesnt really matter anyway. Just compare to the phenom 955, since that is very close to a 3GHz Q6600.

According to this data, a pentium G860 would spank a Q6600. So it is a safe bet that the cheapest IB pentium is going to do the same.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Gaming performance? or overall performance.

Gaming performance.

Overall performance not much, but gaming performance definitely.

1. FPS increased.

2. Even if I increased the settings to the point where FPS were slightly lower than the Q9550 overclocked, it was still far smoother and a far more enjoyable experience, without any stuttering or lag or unsmoothness. Stuff which fps or even min fps for that matter doesn't take into consideration to a HUGE extent.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

And before I got the Q9550 overclocked, I had a E7200 3.6-3.8. Going from that to a Q9550 overclocked was not much of an improvement, but going from Q9550 to i7 860 at stock was a much bigger improvement.
Of course this was a few years back, respectively during launch or a few months after, for each component

 

[Edrick]

I say buy a 2500K now.

And then if you get the upgrade itch in a year or 2, you can simply drop in a IB CPU without replacing the MB. If you wait for IB, then you are stuck on IB and if you get the upgrade itch in a year or 2, you will be replacing your MB too for Haswell.

 

[blckgrffn]

This article doesnt have a Q6600, unfortunately, but I still think it has a lot of useful info:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-9.html

Besides, even if it did have a Q6600 it wouldnt be running at whatever speed yours is so it doesnt really matter anyway. Just compare to the phenom 955, since that is very close to a 3GHz Q6600.

According to this data, a pentium G860 would spank a Q6600. So it is a safe bet that the cheapest IB pentium is going to do the same.

That's fine and all that, except for games like Dues Ex: HR and BF3 where stepping to a duallie is likely to hamstring you compared to the quad.

A quad to quad is still a smart way to roll, IMHO.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

have prices gone up on the 2500k since it was released? I've also noticed my 560 Ti is more expensive than when i bought it (for 200 a little over a year ago).

I'm probably going to cave when IVB comes out.

My only question now is this:

Since im buying CPU/MOBO/RAM, is it going to cost even more for haswell because it will use a new socket? (even though it will use the new memory?)

I remember one reason why i didnt jump on sandy bridge was because the motherboards were so expensive, and the chipsets were brand new.

So compared to buying when IVB comes out, how much more will haswell cost for the entire package?

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Haswell will probably cost more because
New socket
New mobo
New arch

CPU prices may not be more but ram and mobo may cost extra

 

[piasabird]

It would be nice if we had benchmark on the next i-5 or something like that. I dont think the next i-5 will be that much of an improvement compared to the 2500k. Since you are gaiming, then you are not going to use the Intel 4000 graphics. Hard to make a prediction with nothing to go on. I am not an early technology implementer. I like to take my time and let other people be the Intel Testers.

Maybe the i-5 will come down in price by about $40 or so.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Haswell will probably cost more because
New socket
New mobo
New arch

CPU prices may not be more but ram and mobo may cost extra

hmmm, i think im gonna get IVB then and not wait for haswell. Would it be too early to start looking at what mobo/ram im going to buy, or is there going to be new ones coming out that i would want. Or is it going to use the newest chipset and all that for the most part.

It would be nice if we had benchmark on the next i-5 or something like that. I dont think the next i-5 will be that much of an improvement compared to the 2500k. Since you are gaiming, then you are not going to use the Intel 4000 graphics. Hard to make a prediction with nothing to go on. I am not an early technology implementer. I like to take my time and let other people be the Intel Testers.

Well even if its a small improvement, the smaller die shrink will make it run cooler and easier to OC right?

I normally wait as well, but the price of ivb isnt going to be much more than the price of sandy bridge today, so theres no way IVB will be WORSE than SB.

Might start looking around at mobo and ram now considering ill be looking at the same ones when IVB comes out right?

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Ib e will cost more than twice of ivy or haswell and perform slower than haswell for games. Ivy and haswell will be nearly the same price, maybe 10-20% diff hopefully, Ib e will be at least 2-3 times as much

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Ib e will cost more than twice of ivy or haswell and perform slower than haswell for games. Ivy and haswell will be nearly the same price, maybe 10-20% diff hopefully, Ib e will be at least 2-3 times as much

what you've just said ... is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this thread is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

You are one hell of an idiot, let us see you cry when you are unable to buy your Ib e and when you are penny sucked for lower performance.

I thought you wanted Ib e instead of Ib and hence tried to help you, but you don't deserve it, lol

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

You are one hell of an idiot, let us see you cry when you are unable to buy your Ib e and when you are penny sucked for lower performance.

I thought you wanted Ib e instead of Ib and hence tried to help you, but you don't deserve it, lol

Do you even know what your talking about?

 

[aaksheytalwar]

You started the fight.

 

[NTMBK]

OP, have you thought about OCing that Q6600?