Would upgrading to a C2Q Q6700 still be competitive in the long run?

[Lateralusxxx]

Right now I am running a C2D e6400 on an asus p5w DH mobo, 2 gigs(planning to add another 2gb) of ram and an 4890 1Gb VC. Would upgrading to a core 2 quad q6700 now keep my system in the high range for a while or is this chip going to hold me back in the long run? is it worth the $180? I am thinking it might cost too much to upgrade my mobo, new ddr3 ram and a new CPU.
or is there something i could upgrade to that would be similar in price?

 

[Markfw]

Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

^^^^^ That. I have a new Phenom X4 at around 3.5ghz, and an oced Q6600 stomps the crap out of my setup. Q6600 is legendary for a reason.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

^^^^^ That. I have a new Phenom X4 at around 3.5ghz, and an oced Q6600 stomps the crap out of my setup. Q6600 is legendary for a reason.

Lol, trollware much? There's a whole host of benchmarks to prove you otherwise. Please take your fanboyism elsewhere (I recommend HardOCP if you don't like AMD).

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Why not go Q9550?

 

[Lateralusxxx]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
Why not go Q9550?

I've read the p5w doesnt run that size chip well. They support them via bios update, but they have problems. From what i have read, the q6700 is the best card that is fully supported.

Are there any benchmarks that show how well it performs with some more modern CPUs?

BTW im getting an arctic freezer 7 with it since it comes as a combo for only 5 bucks more.

 

[taltamir]

first, add more ram... 2GB is not enough.
As for CPU... 180$ seems a bit much, isn't there a better deal? I would get a used Q9400 on ebay and sell your current CPU on ebay as well

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

^^^^^ That. I have a new Phenom X4 at around 3.5ghz, and an oced Q6600 stomps the crap out of my setup. Q6600 is legendary for a reason.

Lol, trollware much? There's a whole host of benchmarks to prove you otherwise. Please take your fanboyism elsewhere (I recommend HardOCP if you don't like AMD).

Dude! Seriously not needed. If you got benches or reviews just post'em and politely point out the data suggests otherwise.

Going straight to the troll/fanboy grab bag of retorts is just lazy and puts yourself in a bad light.

At any rate, this xbitlabs review compared a PhII 920 @ 3.7GHz to a Q6600 @ 3.6GHz and while it is not an exhaustive suite of benchmarks it does in fact showcase that an OC'ed 3.6GHz Q6600 would certainly take a 3.5GHz PhII to task.

Now I'd personally argue that 3.6GHz is not the norm for an overclocked Q6600, 3.2-3.4GHz is more to be expected, and that 3.5GHz for PhII is not the norm either, 3.8-3.9GHz is to be expected, but that's not the datum which Arkaign was speaking to.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

^^^^^ That. I have a new Phenom X4 at around 3.5ghz, and an oced Q6600 stomps the crap out of my setup. Q6600 is legendary for a reason.

Lol, trollware much? There's a whole host of benchmarks to prove you otherwise. Please take your fanboyism elsewhere (I recommend HardOCP if you don't like AMD).

Dude! Seriously not needed. If you got benches or reviews just post'em and politely point out the data suggests otherwise.

Going straight to the troll/fanboy grab bag of retorts is just lazy and puts yourself in a bad light.

At any rate, this xbitlabs review compared a PhII 920 @ 3.7GHz to a Q6600 @ 3.6GHz and while it is not an exhaustive suite of benchmarks it does in fact showcase that an OC'ed 3.6GHz Q6600 would certainly take a 3.5GHz PhII to task.

Now I'd personally argue that 3.6GHz is not the norm for an overclocked Q6600, 3.2-3.4GHz is more to be expected, and that 3.5GHz for PhII is not the norm either, 3.8-3.9GHz is to be expected, but that's not the datum which Arkaign was speaking to.

"Take to task"? I haven't heard that. Could you qualify that one for me? Right now I'm assuming this idiom means "about on par" or "holds its own".

I think the issue is in reqards to arkaign saying the Q6600 would "stomp the crap out of" the Phenom II, which I would not concede as an accurate statement at all. "Stomp the crap out of" may be a subjective phrase, but to me (and for most people), it would imply a significant difference in performance (to put it quantitatively, I'd say 30% or more difference), which is just not the case even as the xbit article shows (the real difference between the two, in my estimation, is below 10% as one may be faster than the other; the average difference is probably less than 5%).

And since we are talking about gaming performance here, there really isn't going to be a (noticeable and definitely not a "stomp the crap") difference between an overclocked Phenom II and an overclocked Core 2 Quad (whether it be a Q6600 or Q9000 series), especially under high quality settings and higher resolutions.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: Lateralusxxx
Right now I am running a C2D e6400 on an asus p5w DH mobo, 2 gigs(planning to add another 2gb) of ram and an 4890 1Gb VC. Would upgrading to a core 2 quad q6700 now keep my system in the high range for a while or is this chip going to hold me back in the long run? is it worth the $180? I am thinking it might cost too much to upgrade my mobo, new ddr3 ram and a new CPU.
or is there something i could upgrade to that would be similar in price?

Grab an used Q6700, to keep you going until i5. 180$ is too much.

 

[v8envy]

Question: what's slow on your E6400? Why not add another 2GB of RAM, OC to around 3 ghz and call it a day? My E2180 ran everything just fine, the bottleneck (at 1920x1200) was definitely the video.

My vote is for a Q6600 or X3210 and a 3ghz OC if you absolutely positively need a quad.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Now . . . I'm worried that the stock of those Q6700 OEM chips will run out before I decide whether to take the plunge. I"ve been watching the price on those things at Tiger and eWiz for a couple months now.

The Q6700 is exclusively produced in the G0 stepping. I, too, might have misgivings about upgrading my Q6600, but the Q6700 is more over-clockable with better thermals.

I see enough indications about the I7 technology that you don't get much extra in the way of performance moving from Kentsfield/Yorkfield to the I7 platform.

At the same time, I'm rather amazed at how the replacement of the XP (32-bit) OS with VISTA-64 (or Windows 7 64-bit) really opens up some performance bottlenecks. I like my Q6600 system more now than when I built it two years ago.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln
"Take to task"? I haven't heard that. Could you qualify that one for me? Right now I'm assuming this idiom means "about on par" or "holds its own".

Take to task is an idiom meaning to lecture, dominate in a verbal sense, etc. I am applying it anthropomorphically to processors to imply that for certain clockspeed disparities it is true that a Q6600 could outperform a PhII.

Specifically in the xbit benches all it took was a 3.6GHz Q6600 to outperform a 3.7GHz PhII for a variety of benches. If we accept these two reference systems as "equivalent" then we'd also have to accept that an even lower clocked PhII (3.5GHz for arkaign's data point) would experience a non-favorable widening of the performance deficit.

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln
I think the issue is in reqards to arkaign saying the Q6600 would "stomp the crap out of" the Phenom II, which I would not concede as an accurate statement at all. "Stomp the crap out of" may be a subjective phrase, but to me (and for most people), it would imply a significant difference in performance (to put it quantitatively, I'd say 30% or more difference), which is just not the case even as the xbit article shows (the real difference between the two, in my estimation, is below 10% as one may be faster than the other; the average difference is probably less than 5%).

And all I am saying is that arkaign is saying speaking to his own 3.5GHz PhII...he's not coming out saying he read somewhere that PhII sucked. He is saying his very own PhII 3.5GHz system gets stomped by a Q6600...what compels him to speak about his first-hand experiences in such a manner is something only he can answer and at best that should be the first question posed to him.

Calling him a troll, or any other demeaning label, just because he voiced his opinion regarding hardware he's personally owned is not acceptable.

 

[cubeless]

go thru bing and get a 6700 @ superbiz/ewiz for $148 shipped... oem... mine does 3.6... higher multi makes it oc a bit easier, maaybe... doesn't seem to oc much better than a good 6600... just a little easier on your fsb...

and it's very fast and smooth in games... just over 20K 3dmarks with xfired 4850's, mid 14k's with one...

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln
"Take to task"? I haven't heard that. Could you qualify that one for me? Right now I'm assuming this idiom means "about on par" or "holds its own".

Take to task is an idiom meaning to lecture, dominate in a verbal sense, etc. I am applying it anthropomorphically to processors to imply that for certain clockspeed disparities it is true that a Q6600 could outperform a PhII.

Specifically in the xbit benches all it took was a 3.6GHz Q6600 to outperform a 3.7GHz PhII for a variety of benches. If we accept these two reference systems as "equivalent" then we'd also have to accept that an even lower clocked PhII (3.5GHz for arkaign's data point) would experience a non-favorable widening of the performance deficit.

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln
I think the issue is in regards to arkaign saying the Q6600 would "stomp the crap out of" the Phenom II, which I would not concede as an accurate statement at all. "Stomp the crap out of" may be a subjective phrase, but to me (and for most people), it would imply a significant difference in performance (to put it quantitatively, I'd say 30% or more difference), which is just not the case even as the xbit article shows (the real difference between the two, in my estimation, is below 10% as one may be faster than the other; the average difference is probably less than 5%).

And all I am saying is that arkaign is saying speaking to his own 3.5GHz PhII...he's not coming out saying he read somewhere that PhII sucked. He is saying his very own PhII 3.5GHz system gets stomped by a Q6600...what compels him to speak about his first-hand experiences in such a manner is something only he can answer and at best that should be the first question posed to him.

Calling him a troll, or any other demeaning label, just because he voiced his opinion regarding hardware he's personally owned is not acceptable.

At the same time we expect a matter of results, evidence, or whatever pertaining to his personal experience and his opinion, which so happens to fly against most published reviews, to demonstrate why. Simply making a statement that is against the grain is not acceptable to me, either; backing up that claim would not lead us to such debates.

And I also hold fast in that the performance difference of a quad - any quad Phenom II or Core 2 Quad - over 3.2 GHz probably isn't going to give the user a noticeable difference over another despite clock speed advantages (or disadvantages). Unless, of course, there is a specific application(s) in mind, in which case the revelation of these applications would help shed light on why he stated his opinion as we all know some applications can heavily favor one processor make over another. And of course, this is why we would like him to produce an opinion with some facts, evidence, or just plain details.

I should note that I'm defending him being called a troll outright, as the manner of which he was called by the specific user and specific reply in question was no better than the statement being berated. However, that does not change the fact that making an opinion (which would outright go against the evidence produced thus far) without providing counter-evidence can be construed as troll-worthy by many. Whether or not his true intent was to troll is for debate, but then again this can be said of most posts of controversy across the Internet.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

^^^^^ That. I have a new Phenom X4 at around 3.5ghz, and an oced Q6600 stomps the crap out of my setup. Q6600 is legendary for a reason.

Lol, trollware much? There's a whole host of benchmarks to prove you otherwise. Please take your fanboyism elsewhere (I recommend HardOCP if you don't like AMD).

I wouldn't call it fanboyism. I have 2 940's@3.6-3.7, and in most things the Q6600@3.2-3.3 beats it. I would say "stomps the crap out of it" is a little over the line, but each to his own. Its not a rediculous statement.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

^^^^^ That. I have a new Phenom X4 at around 3.5ghz, and an oced Q6600 stomps the crap out of my setup. Q6600 is legendary for a reason.

Lol, trollware much? There's a whole host of benchmarks to prove you otherwise. Please take your fanboyism elsewhere (I recommend HardOCP if you don't like AMD).

I wouldn't call it fanboyism. I have 2 940's@3.6-3.7, and in most things the Q6600@3.2-3.3 beats it. I would say "stomps the crap out of it" is a little over the line, but each to his own. Its not a rediculous statement.

Thanks. I recently moved from an overclocked E5200 on an Asus G31 mobo to the PhII 805 X4 on the Gigabyte GA790X-UD4P, with reused 4GB DDR2-800 memory. As yet, I've got it up to 3.5Ghz, but it still feels more sluggish than the E5200 in general usage. In some benchmarks, the lowly E5200 @ 3.4ghz beats this setup. I think a Q6600 at the same Mhz would probably dominate it. I particularly dislike the Sata controller on this ATI chipset, using HDtune it seems I have about a 6% performance gap compared to the ICH9 on the Asus with the same HD.

I think the PhII 9xx series may help some with the extra cache, and definitely the BE chips are easier to overclock. A buddy just bought a 945 and has it at 3.7ghz, works just fine for him.

For gaming with a single video card, PhII vs. C2Q probably doesn't make much difference. For other tasks/benchmarks, there seems to be a larger gap. Some benches just beat the crap out of my system. NuclearMC is one

I guess I'm just wanting other people to know about my experience. Gamers will probably be happy with the PhII, but if the price is about the same (I paid about $250 for board/chip), the C2Q will be a better bet. Of course Socket-T/775 is a 'dead' socket, so that's another thing to think about. Perhaps a significant improvement is on the way as a drop-in on boards like mine?

I guess I could revise my original statement to a simple : Q6600 > PHII when both are oced to the mid 3ghz range IMHO.

 

[Shmee]

if there is a micro center near you, get an E0 Q9550 for $170. If not, then ROADTRIP!

 

[Leyawiin]

Originally posted by: v8envy
Question: what's slow on your E6400? Why not add another 2GB of RAM, OC to around 3 ghz and call it a day? My E2180 ran everything just fine, the bottleneck (at 1920x1200) was definitely the video.

My vote is for a Q6600 or X3210 and a 3ghz OC if you absolutely positively need a quad.

This is my thought. He'll want the RAM regardless and OC'ing the E6400 could very well give him the extra performance he needs. I tend to be one of those "Get all the mileage you can out of the current setup" type people before finally upgrading.

 

[Lateralusxxx]

Originally posted by: cubeless
go thru bing and get a 6700 @ superbiz/ewiz for $148 shipped... oem... mine does 3.6... higher multi makes it oc a bit easier, maaybe... doesn't seem to oc much better than a good 6600... just a little easier on your fsb...

and it's very fast and smooth in games... just over 20K 3dmarks with xfired 4850's, mid 14k's with one...

Thats exactly what I did. also they had a combo where you could get a arctic freezer 7 for 4 bucks more which is a good deal on a decent aftermarket cooler. and i bought a copy of vista/win 7 upgrade for $109. Through bing i will be getting 63 bucks back in cash.

I dont like buying stuff on ebay anymore... so many power sellers, so you never know what you are going to get. I'm fine paying a little extra for the piece of mind.

I have a question on upgrading ram... right now I have 2x1gb g.skill ram. should i get two more sticks of the same ram or should i get 2x2gb? I have done some searching on the net and read that if you run 4 sticks instead of 2, the ram only runs at 677 rather than 800. Is that a big deal? any advice on a ram upgrade?

 

[cubeless]

good choice, if i do say myself...

as for mem, yeah, best to go with 2 2gb sticks, but with twiddling u can get the 4 sticks to run, probably... the biggest issue will be if you can't find identical sticks then it's a lot harder to get the most out of them... and just buying the 'same' memory again may not get you the same chips, etc...

my advice is sell your sticks and go with some nice ocz reaper 1066 for around $45 for 4gb ar... will give you the headroom u need to wring that 6700 till it squeaks...

 

[Lateralusxxx]

sweet.. thanks for the help.
Now i need to sell my 8800gt, c2d 6400 and my ram.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Get a Q6600, and overclock it. I think it will be a difference that you could live with for quite a while. You should get 3.2 ghz easy.

^^^^^ That. I have a new Phenom X4 at around 3.5ghz, and an oced Q6600 stomps the crap out of my setup. Q6600 is legendary for a reason.

Lol, trollware much? There's a whole host of benchmarks to prove you otherwise. Please take your fanboyism elsewhere (I recommend HardOCP if you don't like AMD).

Dude! Seriously not needed. If you got benches or reviews just post'em and politely point out the data suggests otherwise.

Going straight to the troll/fanboy grab bag of retorts is just lazy and puts yourself in a bad light.

At any rate, this xbitlabs review compared a PhII 920 @ 3.7GHz to a Q6600 @ 3.6GHz and while it is not an exhaustive suite of benchmarks it does in fact showcase that an OC'ed 3.6GHz Q6600 would certainly take a 3.5GHz PhII to task.

Now I'd personally argue that 3.6GHz is not the norm for an overclocked Q6600, 3.2-3.4GHz is more to be expected, and that 3.5GHz for PhII is not the norm either, 3.8-3.9GHz is to be expected, but that's not the datum which Arkaign was speaking to.

So it's already been extensively shown that the Ph2 holds it own clock/clock compared with the q6600. This was put to rest a few months back. If someone wants to come in and start making claims contrary to that with wording like "stomps the crap out of it", then that's simply fanboyism and, seeing what that kind of fanboyism and comments similar to Arkaign's have done to threads in VC&G, it might as well be called trolling.

xbit Ph2 gaming
xbit Ph2 vid encoding
It's beating the q6600 solidly in both of these.

Another thing-- Xbit only OC'd the cpu-nb to 2.1Ghz, 2.4 is guaranteed (not sure what happened to theirs but if you look at some of the tables on overclock.net of the newer stepping (ie any AM3) chips nearly all that have tried have gotten their cpu-nb to 2.4, most to 2.6). Seeing how overclocking the cpu-nb makes for a nice performance improvement when you're really stressing the CPU (note the Crossfire*3 benchmarks with Northbridge at 1.8 and 2.28ghz), pushing it to 2.6ghz guarantees you reach at least parity with the q6600 clock/clock in all but a few benchmarks (Folding for example, heh), and even enables it to beat it in several.

So, and I stand by what I said, "stomps the crap out of it" or "dominating" is just obvious troll/flamebait/fanboyism.

 

[Arkaign]

Did you even read the links you published at the top from Xbit? "It's beating the q6600 solidly in both of these." Who would compare a stock cpu to an OC cpu?

Crysis Q6600 oc is faster
Far Cry 2 Q6600 oc is faster
Ut3 PhII oc is faster
World in Conflict Q6600 oc is faster
Left for Dead Q6600 oc is faster

The 'Video Encoding' page only has two benches, both of which are won by the 3.72ghz PhII. Q6600 wins every test in general performance and splits the tests on rendering despite the clock speed deficit. The Q6600 oc also dominates the higher-clock PhII oc in the rendering test. Looking through the total list of benches in that article, the VAST majority of wins go to the 3.6ghz Q6600 over the 3.72ghz PhII, it's at least a 3 to 1 number.

Go to the NuclearMC thread, and see what scientific number-crunching does with Q6600 vs. PhII. A couple examples :

Phenom II 955 @ 3.7ghz : 16393
Phenom II 940 @ 3.68ghz : 15418
Q9450 @ 2.8Ghz : 16126
Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz : 12058
Q9650 @ 4.05ghz : 23397
Q8200 @ 3.0ghz : 16832
i7 920 @ 2.67ghz : 17373
E5200 @ 3.4ghz : 12199 ABAIIAEAGECDDB.IGJ
Phenom II 805 @ 3.0ghz : 10026 AJJBFABACICJHH.HFH

The last two are both mine, with the checksums there (confirms real benchmark results at the recorded clock speeds). After getting the PhII 805 to 3.5ghz, it gets just under 14000 now, which is pretty sad. The PhII 800 series does seem to take some punishment for the lower cache amount.

I'll toss some batteries in my camera in a bit and take some pics of my setup to show I'm not making it up, I paid good money for the 790X + Ph2 805 X4, and I really want it to be good. I also can't get my NB to 2.4, not even close. It pukes around 2.2ghz, though I haven't given it more than a small voltage bump. I like AMD, and I frequently recommend ATI video cards, it's just that this purchase has been pretty disappointing.

I really don't get where you're coming with these accusations that I'm a fanboy, or that I have significant favoritism one way or the other. If I had patience, I could link you to a multitude of times that I've recommended the recent ATI GPUs.

What I'm currently upset about is that my brand new overclocked PhII gets beaten in most things by a chip that's closing on THREE years old. I also didn't get my PhII at exactly a bargain price. I probably would be less disappointed if I had unlocked a bargain X3, as this thing was stupidly expensive for what it is. Q6700 apparently can be had for ~$170, and as I already had a board, that would have made sense to me.

HOPEFULLY there will be some future Cpu gen (32nm + more cache?) that will drop in to this board, as I'm ALSO not happy with the Intel multi-socket roulette. Perhaps two sockets I could understand, but three is excessive IMHO.

EDIT : Forgot this page, in which three out of four tests dramatically favor the lower-speed Q6600 @ 3.6ghz to the 3.72Ghz PhII. Other Applications. Thankfully the PhII at least shows strongly in WinRAR.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

In all of those gaming tests, there is not a noticeable difference in performance between the PhII and the Q6600 OC'd. They are also testing at 1280x1024 with medium quality settings, meaning there will be even less of a difference (I don't know how there can be less than a no difference, though) in a real world situation.

I also hold no weight in the synthetic Sysmark scores.

You also need to learn the use of the word "dominating", because in the rendering list you so gladly made this statement the Phenom II is faster in Cinebench R10 and the Q6600 is a whopping 0.83 fps (8%) faster. I do not consider 8% for this one test a domination. Over 25% would be domination.