I'm in the process of putting together a build for a family member using some recycled parts from my old system, perhaps combined with some new parts. The case (midi tower), PSU (650W), SSD, GPU (GTX 660) and 1200p monitor are from the old system and should perform fine. But I'm doubting how serviceable the old CPU, motherboard and RAM are compared to new low budget components.

The old parts:

Intel Q6600 quad core CPU
Asus P5Q Pro motherboard
8 GB DDR2 800 Mhz

The new parts I'm considering:

Intel i3-6100 dual core CPU
Asus H110M-K or Asus H110-Plus motherboard
8 GB DDR4 2400 Mhz

Typical usage will be general computing - browsing, office, video streaming, light photo editing, light gaming. Planning to install Win 10 Home 64-bit.

What I'm wondering is how much of an advantage in real terms the dual core i3-6100 would have over the old quad core Q6600. Is it worth spending the £200 for the new CPU, mobo and ram, or is there some life in the old Q6600 dog yet do you think?

The i3 would wipe the floor with the Q6600. It was a good cpu in it's time but it's day is long over.

I'm using an overclocked core2quad Q9550 on a P5Q with a GTX580 in a build that is used for pretty much the same tasks as you've specified. As Pastymuncher says the modern i3 will blow it out of the water no doubt, depending on what you're planning to run on it however it will probably cope reasonably well! My kids are using the old C2Q build to run overwatch, battlefront and BF4 and it seems to do ok! As you already have the parts you may as well put it together and give it a go to see how it runs. It will save you £200 if it turns out to be good enough, if it struggles, the i3 will most certainly be a worthy upgrade with a clear upgrade path in the future!

yoinkF said:

I'm using an overclocked core2quad Q9550 on a P5Q with a GTX580 in a build that is used for pretty much the same tasks as you've specified. As Pastymuncher says the modern i3 will blow it out of the water no doubt, depending on what you're planning to run on it however it will probably cope reasonably well! My kids are using the old C2Q build to run overwatch, battlefront and BF4 and it seems to do ok! As you already have the parts you may as well put it together and give it a go to see how it runs. It will save you £200 if it turns out to be good enough, if it struggles, the i3 will most certainly be a worthy upgrade with a clear upgrade path in the future!

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Good points, thanks. Before my new build I was playing Overwatch on my Q6600 system and it coped remarkably well. The gaming it'll be used for in the future isn't likely to be as demanding as Overwatch either, so should be good for a while.

Also, it'll be replacing a truly terrible HP laptop so even a Q6600 system is going to seem lightning fast in comparison. It'll be using a retail version of Win 10, so can always reinstall onto an i3 or i5 further down the road if needed.

Even a 2nd gen i3 for €25 is way faster than an old Q6600. I remember trying out Battlefield Hardline online at the stock 2.4Ghz just out of curiosity, it ran at about 20-25fps. Using an i3-2120 in comparison provided a fairly solid 40-50fps.

If you can overclock it heavily enough it's still very decent for casual use including lighter games. The Q9550 mentioned earlier in the thread is a much, much faster processor though - like comparing 1st and 2nd gen i5's.

If 'light gaming' includes anything recent, you'd be far better off investing in a better setup. You don't necessarily need to go Skylake i5 and DDR4, just get an old 2nd gen i5 based Dell or something off ebay and throw in a GTX750Ti or RX460 and for about £250 you have a rock solid budget gaming PC.

Treat it to an SSD if you haven't already, that will make it feel much snappier.

I have an overclocked Q6600. It's not frustratingly slow which is impressive for its age, but as said pretty much any generation of "core" cpu will be very noticeably faster.

You could try using the Q6600 and see how it performs. Have you considered overclocking the Q6600? Since the system has an SSD the Q6600 should be sufficient for the usage scenarios you have mentioned.

Worst case scenario; they are not pleased with the performance and you have to shell out for new parts.

You should be able to bump the FSB on the Q6600 from 266 to 333 MHz if I remember for an easy 3.0 GHz OC. Hyper 212 EVO or similar cooler would be a good cooler for that depending on what you have now.

I played with one for a few weeks earlier this year with a HD7870 and GTX 670 and it was playing fairly modern games such FC3 quite happily at 1080p.

I guess the GT660 would be somewhere between those two GPUs.

Thanks all for the tips. Yes, the system will have a SSD.

Sadly my Q6600 has never been a good clocker. It could never reach 3GHz and stay stable for long. Heat wasn't the problem (a Noctua cooler kept the temps down fine), so perhaps it was the motherboard. So it's always been run at stock or with a very slight OC.

Well, I will see how it goes. With a retail version of Win 10 I can always transfer onto an i3 and new mobo later. That said, I might just preempt the hassle of that and stump up for an i3 now.