Q9300... it has seen better days.

[Erithan13]

It's been a long time since I've played a game that didn't push past two cores. Which games are you playing that don't? That's not to say the Q6600 would be better. It's clocked much lower and has a much lower IPC but a much newer dual core outperforming the first consumer quad core Intel ever released doesn't equate to games not pushing past two cores.

The venerable Unreal Engine 3 powered a whole lot of games last gen, and it was predominantly dual threaded at least in earlier versions (Interesting blast from the past article about it here). I can't speak as knowledgeably about other engines although I suspect prior to the PS4/XB1 games were still very much dependent on one or two fast threads. Personally I had to drag an E8500/GTX260 combo all the way into 2015 due to severe lack of funds for an upgrade and it done remarkably well at the likes of Bioshock Infinite and Far Cry 2/3. Never tried anything more modern like Witcher 3 since I knew it'd be a bloodbath for such an old system - no doubt that even the fastest dual core nowadays just won't cut it at properly threaded modern games nevermind older dual cores.

IIRC the Unity engine was also entirely dependent on a single thread until fairly recently and that also powers a whole lot of games. Gamebryo (Fallout 3/Oblivion/Skyrim etc) also has problems with multithreading although frankly that engine is such an overall janky mess I don't think it's really relevant.

 

[deasd]

Modern or older games that don't push pass 2 cores,the Q6600 gets domolished by the G1820.

It's been a long time since I've played a game that didn't push past two cores. Which games are you playing that don't? That's not to say the Q6600 would be better. It's clocked much lower and has a much lower IPC but a much newer dual core outperforming the first consumer quad core Intel ever released doesn't equate to games not pushing past two cores.

You both don't get the point, Q6600 has same clock as G1820 and their 'IPC' is not as huge gap as you thought, but in gaming the system bus would have taken effect, Q6600 which had already 10 years old FSB is far worse than newest integrated and high-speed bus, this would hurt memory and graphic performance. Game is worst method to evaluate CPU though......

 

[waltchan]

Frequency clock speed is irreverent in comparing performance speed, one of the most common mistakes people make. A Haswell Celeron 2957u at 1.4GHz is far faster than a Bay-Trail Celeron N2840 at 2.58GHz, despite N2840 is the better-seller because of its attractive 2.58GHz marketing number. Everything is based on architecture.

 

[skipsneeky2]

It's been a long time since I've played a game that didn't push past two cores. Which games are you playing that don't?

World of Tanks with the standard render settings is really forgivable on dual cores,its the title i play the most atm and heck i haven't played it on the G1820 rig since its last update which increased dual core performance with sound processing on a secondary core.

When i say forgivable,it may be a understatement as before the update it was getting in the 50-125fps range.I wouldn't be surprised if its coasting well over 60 now with the update.

 

[2is]

The venerable Unreal Engine 3 powered a whole lot of games last gen, and it was predominantly dual threaded at least in earlier versions (Interesting blast from the past article about it here). I can't speak as knowledgeably about other engines although I suspect prior to the PS4/XB1 games were still very much dependent on one or two fast threads. Personally I had to drag an E8500/GTX260 combo all the way into 2015 due to severe lack of funds for an upgrade and it done remarkably well at the likes of Bioshock Infinite and Far Cry 2/3. Never tried anything more modern like Witcher 3 since I knew it'd be a bloodbath for such an old system - no doubt that even the fastest dual core nowadays just won't cut it at properly threaded modern games nevermind older dual cores.

IIRC the Unity engine was also entirely dependent on a single thread until fairly recently and that also powers a whole lot of games. Gamebryo (Fallout 3/Oblivion/Skyrim etc) also has problems with multithreading although frankly that engine is such an overall janky mess I don't think it's really relevant.

About a decade ago when there was a big debate between a Q6600 vs E8400 we had this discussion. People said the same thing you did. It wasn't long before E8400 users found themselves needing to upgrade to a next gen i5 or i7 on games as old as the original Black Ops and BF3 while Q6600 users were still getting good performance, and that was a heck of a long longer ago then last gen and I highly doubt games have regressed since then.

BF3/BF4 scales to 4+ as does every COD game since Black Ops 1. Batman AO (and UE3 powered game) scales past 2 cores as well. Likely other Batman games too but that's the only one I currently have installed to test. I'm really not sure where this idea that modern games don't scale past 2 cores is coming from. It's like we took a time machine back to 2005 and before.

 

[skipsneeky2]

BF3/BF4 scales to 4+ as does every COD game since Black Ops 1. Batman AO (and UE3 powered game) scales past 2 cores as well. Likely other Batman games too but that's the only one I currently have installed to test. I'm really not sure where this idea that modern games don't scale past 2 cores is coming from. It's like we took a time machine back to 2005 and before.

UT3 was why i went from a E6750 to a Q6600,older games that ran well on the Q6600 like COD BO1/BO2 and UT3 still run better on the Q6600 then they do on a G1820. Unplayable in BO2 and borderline playable in BO1 with the G1820.To much random hitching and long loading times on the G1820 to make even BO1 enjoyable.

Modern light weight mmos and pre 2007 games is where these modern dual cores shine.Don't think i would try any other blockbuster title dated after 2008 on them.

 

[iGigaflop]

I guess I'm agreeing with escrow4 about a comment he made in regard to Core2-era rigs, being pretty severely outdated.
( http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38141859&postcount=23 )

Even scrolling tabs of this forum, with NoScript (no ads), is not 100% smooth on my Q9300. (With a R7 260X 2GB GDDR5 card, connected via HDMI, 1080P, with audio playing.)

And browsing Newegg, even with NoScript, is pretty sluggish.

Some of that may have to do with the SSD, a Vertex2 50GB. (SATAII in a SATAII port.)

Even the A4-3300 FM1 rig that I built, with 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM, and a refurb Corsair Force LS 120GB (SATA6G in a SATAII port), with Win7 64-bit, seemed ... snappier?

Not sure why. Being a quad-core really doesn't help Firefox 45.0.1 64-bit at all, being pretty-much single-threaded.

I guess this rig would be acceptable, mostly, for Joe Sixpack, but after I've used my G4400 @ 4.455 with a PCI-E M.2 SSD, it's... a bit underwhelming.

I was toying with the idea of selling off the G4400 rigs, and trying to make some money, but ... I don't think so. They're too nice.

Maybe I can find someone locally to donate the Q9300 rigs to. Or, maybe I'll just put them away somewhere.

I have an older system that was my first build with a e8500 4gb ddr2 and a 560ti had a 8800gt that i use for kodi. But it was pretty snappy but i put a q9550 and 4gb more ram and it runs even better now, got the ram and cpu for $50 off ebay. But I see no reason why it shouldnt run pretty good especially since you have an ssd, and a fresh imstall of windows always fixes a sluggish pc for me. My current system about at that point i have way to much $hit on my pc. And a good overclock wouldnt hurt ive wrote so much i forgot if you said it was overclocked.