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Q6600 still good enough?

Just gone for a i7 setup myself. My Q6600 and HD5770 coped well with BF3 but i was struggling when alt tabbing out of game to do other stuff.
 
This thread got me onto wiki and on jan 6th 2012 that Q6600 if bought on release would be 5 years old! not bad!

I think if you had say a 2560 res screen you could probably get away with it for another 6 months by transferring the bottleneck on to GPU.

Its about the same timespan i plan on my 2500k @ 4.6 lasting, probably 6 years if Ivy bridge can get us all 5GHZ 24/7 OC's
 
It's amazing that Q6600 the first ever mainstream desktop quad core processor (if I am correct) would be 5 years old this coming january 2012!!

Mine is overclocked to 3.5Ghz and the performance is nice and smooth across different applications though I am waiting on next gen gpus fo upgrade.

After few years my Q6600 PC will become media/general usage pc bar the gaming, so the value is still not lost :cool:
 
The fact the Q6600 is still a viable CPU after all these years say more about where we are as consumers and are need for faster microprocesses or lack of it.
 
Ive saved up for a new PC, I have a q6600 @ 3.6ghz with 8Gb RAM, but i'm in no rush to jump in at the moment. Everything plays fine for me. I not getting that "sweet spot feeling" yet.
Weve got
the HDD prices to normalise,
staying power of 2011 socket or other to consider.
Age of the watercooler?
New GPU offerings
revision 1.1 of X79
proper USB3 (and PCIE 3.0?) support
mainstream 6-8 cores with HT.
revision 1.1 of the cases and the coolers for this generation.
much gloomier economic forecasts will require prices to stay low to ensure people can continue to consume.
to come in H1 2012.
Im thinking June 2012 before i drop another 2K on a PC. The Q6600 on PCIE 2 was a good sweet spot; just need to guesstimate the next one - so all you would need is a GPU upgrade to see you through for another 5+ Years efficiently & at good value.
 
I think its still good enough but it all depends on your needs/usage. Ran my Q6600 at 3.6ghz for ages but now backed it off to 3.2ghz as I have had a few errors etc. Still seems to perform well with the latest games because they are mostly gpu intensive.

I believe I would see a noticeable improvement all round moving to a 2500k but with Ivy being 4-5 months away I don't feel the need to jump in and upgrade just yet.
 
If it was me, I would wait for Ivybridge, SB is kind of pointless now due to the lack of its gen 3 support and the next lot of cards being gen 3. Good idea would be to buy a new gen3 mobo and gfx card(can put this in your current system), then wait for IB to come out to make full use of it.
 
Tbh m8 i would just hang out with what you have for a few mth see what the new yr brings then make your mind up , your system should last you out for a while . i certainly would'nt go throwing money at ddr2 ram that would be a waste imo keep hold of your £££ for now
 
WingZero30 said:
After few years my Q6600 PC will become media/general usage pc bar the gaming, so the value is still not lost :cool:
Click to expand...

Exactly what i'm doing with mine. As soon as I sort out a small graphics card and a low profile cooler, I will be chucking it into a spare Antec HTPC case I have .

Probably will be able to do the job until it's natural end life.
 
ginjaninja said:
Ive saved up for a new PC, I have a q6600 @ 3.6ghz with 8Gb RAM, but i'm in no rush to jump in at the moment. Everything plays fine for me. I not getting that "sweet spot feeling" yet.
Weve got
the HDD prices to normalise,
staying power of 2011 socket or other to consider.
Age of the watercooler?
New GPU offerings
revision 1.1 of X79
proper USB3 (and PCIE 3.0?) support
mainstream 6-8 cores with HT.
revision 1.1 of the cases and the coolers for this generation.
much gloomier economic forecasts will require prices to stay low to ensure people can continue to consume.
to come in H1 2012.
Im thinking June 2012 before i drop another 2K on a PC. The Q6600 on PCIE 2 was a good sweet spot; just need to guesstimate the next one - so all you would need is a GPU upgrade to see you through for another 5+ Years efficiently & at good value.
Click to expand...

Christmas 2012 mate as u can bet on NV being late with maxwell cards.Whatever intel have next is a complete new design like NV maxwell so you would be best getting that with a good SSD and 16GB of ram.Thats the sweet spot.U get PCI3 and USB3 also.
 
ginjaninja said:
Ive saved up for a new PC, I have a q6600 @ 3.6ghz with 8Gb RAM, but i'm in no rush to jump in at the moment. Everything plays fine for me. I not getting that "sweet spot feeling" yet.
Weve got
the HDD prices to normalise,
staying power of 2011 socket or other to consider.
Age of the watercooler?
New GPU offerings
revision 1.1 of X79
proper USB3 (and PCIE 3.0?) support
mainstream 6-8 cores with HT.
revision 1.1 of the cases and the coolers for this generation.
much gloomier economic forecasts will require prices to stay low to ensure people can continue to consume.
to come in H1 2012.
Im thinking June 2012 before i drop another 2K on a PC. The Q6600 on PCIE 2 was a good sweet spot; just need to guesstimate the next one - so all you would need is a GPU upgrade to see you through for another 5+ Years efficiently & at good value.
Click to expand...

It's always hard to estimate the future life of a platform, but I'd say that the current i5/i7 Sandy Bridge line-up are an excellent bet for longevity. Every bit as good as the Q6600 was, imho.

Also, there's no reason to drop £2k on a whole upgrade in one go if you've already got a functioning system to upgrade from and are just waiting on one or two component updates like gfx cards or coolers. For instance, I only spent £320ish on my main components to go from Q6600 to i2500k (though I did then get carried away and splurge another £130ish on a 128GB SSD...). And that's before I recoup £100 or so from selling my old kit.

Oh, yeah, current gen3 mobo offerings from Asus, ASRock and MSI have full PCI-E3.0 functionality as well, so I don't think that's too much of an issue.

It's my impression that X79 will remain relatively highly priced compared to the 1155 socket platforms, too, so I'm not personally seeing them as the spiritual successor to the Q6600 for value-for-money and long-lasting performance.

An i2500k or i2600k at 4.5GHz+, though? Well, for me that was very much the same sweet spot feeling I got going Q6600 in the first place. And tbh, although I'm still clocking, testing, tinkering etc, and although I do have to take into account the SSD impact, it does properly feel like I've got a new, faster, better PC.
 
I have just built...

I5 2500K - OEM
Zalman Cooler
Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P
16GB 1600Mhz Kingston
£315

Sell old parts
Q6700, MB, 8GB DDR2
£140

Upgrade cost £175

Have spend that much on a night out with the OH.

Ivy Bridge is expected offer similar performance so an OC'd 2500k should offer you a decent platform for the next few years.

My Q6700 only cost me approx £140 over three years..... I'm sure SB will be the same.

Just don't mention GPU's.......

AD
 
I am going to make my P35 chipset board and my E8500 running at 4Ghz last well into the first quarter of next year. I could always make an argument why it should change but it still does what I want it to do.
That way I get to see what the Ivy Bridge CPU's and the newer Z77 (IIRC) chipset boards bring to the market. I have read very little about those boards but if I am right then it would mean that Intel will have native USB (up to 4) on board.

So even though it might well end up at being a 2500k or something by then for me the Z77 boards should offer something more than the current Z68 which are on the market now.
 
Raikiri said:
I had a Q6600 until the other day when I kind of accidentally upgraded, it's good (the Q6600) but the 2500k is definitely a hell of a lot faster for things like encoding and image editing.

Games wise, the frame rate is a little steadier but the difference isn't huge.

I'd consider upgrading if I were you, the cost of going to a 2500K, 16gb DDR3 and a new motherboard from a Q6600/4GB will be less than £200 once I've sold my old bits.
Click to expand...

Wait. How did you accidentally upgrade? :p
 
I wonder if running 8gb RAM on a heavily clocked Q6600 might make it a little shaky?

Now's the time to offload the Q6600 IMO while it still has some life left in it, did the same myself in June & the new system is much quicker, though whether I'll get 4 yrs of playing the latest games like the Q6600 provided remains to be seen.

Fingers crossed ;)
 
bainbridge said:
I wonder if running 8gb RAM on a heavily clocked Q6600 might make it a little shaky?

Now's the time to offload the Q6600 IMO while it still has some life left in it, did the same myself in June & the new system is much quicker, though whether I'll get 4 yrs of playing the latest games like the Q6600 provided remains to be seen.

Fingers crossed ;)
Click to expand...

I recently upgraded to 8GB ram with my Q6600 and didn't have to touch the overclock :)

For me the CPU is plenty quick enough, I think my money will be better spent on a SSD and some more improved cooling. I'd quite happy run this PC until it dies :p I think the CPU and GPU I have are fairly equally matched, in games they are both pushed to the max.

I'll have to wait and see what Ivy-Bridge brings, if it's nothing special I'll wait :)
 
andy_mk3 said:
I recently upgraded to 8GB ram with my Q6600 and didn't have to touch the overclock :)

For me the CPU is plenty quick enough, I think my money will be better spent on a SSD and some more improved cooling. I'd quite happy run this PC until it dies :p I think the CPU and GPU I have are fairly equally matched, in games they are both pushed to the max.

I'll have to wait and see what Ivy-Bridge brings, if it's nothing special I'll wait :)
Click to expand...

Hey

I had the same setup, thing is everyone with a Q6600 does say it is great, and no doubt it is. But if you did upgrade to an i5 2500k and overclock that to 4.6ghz like I did you do get a huge boost. Not only in encoding but some games you can get at least 20fps+ increases. I don't know if the Q6600 bottlenecks those 6950's or what, but stick that 6950 into an i5 and its amazing.

But yeah the Q6600 is amazing but upgrading it is night and day in performance as you don't see the increase from what an i5 can offer. I was unsure of the upgrade at first, but I am glad I did.
 
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