Q6600. Go Ivy or wait on Haswell

NirK · 16 Jul 2012 at 18:59

Eugh I dont like apple

Tute · 16 Jul 2012 at 19:49

I actually think improving iGPU performance is a good idea - i've had a couple of incidents where a GPU has died or had problems and i've been able to send it away for RMA happy that i'll still be able to do some (light) gaming.

I mean, do people remember the Intel GMA days? Those things were abysmal.

crinkleshoes · 16 Jul 2012 at 19:55

If it was a seperate focus from CPU performance, then I would agree.

However, CPU performance chasing seems to have taken a bit of a hit to a wider view of performance, including iGPU... this I dislike.

They should be developing two seperate lines of CPU, one dedicated and the other with iGPU.

Sadly, this is not the route they have chosen.

wam7 · 16 Jul 2012 at 21:31

You would get a great boost by overclocking your CPU to ~3.2Ghz with probably very little effort and extra voltage. (Mine used to get there on default)

That being said, there is a stark difference between an O/C Q6600 and an Ivy at 4.5Ghz, especially when you start doing encoding etc.

NirK · 16 Jul 2012 at 23:05

It would be good if they could use the IGPU alongside a dedicated GPU. I read something along these lines but I dont think ti is very well implemented at the moment so it pretty much wasted if you have a PCI GPU.

crinkleshoes · 16 Jul 2012 at 23:25

If only 1 screen, it works quite well already to power down add in gpus

It adds a bit of input lag though, I think

Not suitable for dual link DVI or multiple monitors either, so no go for me!

If it could integrate properly, that would be great... But this latest gen of GPUs power down well on their own, it's not really worth it. I'd rather get rid of it all together for full desktop implementations. Fair enough for small form factor or laptop.

That's why they're doing it, they're making a killing on ultra books and through apple!

tbh · 17 Jul 2012 at 04:29

crinkleshoes said:
If it could integrate properly, that would be great... But this latest gen of GPUs power down well on their own, it's not really worth it.

They are working towards exactly this, AMD recently announced that Kaveri will feature fully shared memory between the GPU and CPU.

The future of AMD’s Fusion APUs: Kaveri will fully share memory between CPU and GPU

I understand that it is frustrating having what essentially amounts to wasted processor die real estate with current integrated graphics solutions, however these are just a necessary stepping stone on the road to a unified architecture.

Personally I'm really excited by the direction CPU/APU development is heading, I think it's going to benefit all of us from hardcore gamers to hipsters browsing on their ultrabooks alike.

NirK · 17 Jul 2012 at 11:02

It would be good if you could use the power of the CPU graphics to do some of the work in gaming, for example the dedicated graphics does most of the rendering and the IGPU on the CPU takes the load of anti aliasing or something similar. I dont know if this is possible though.

crinkleshoes · 17 Jul 2012 at 11:04

The problem with that is, it'll add input lag

BigBANGtheory · 17 Jul 2012 at 15:23

NirK said:
I wish they would just ditch the igpu thing entirely and leave that job to the graphics card so the CPU can be as good as possible.

You can get IVB Xeons with no integrated graphics (or disabled on die I'm not sure which tbh), but they are all locked.

NirK · 17 Jul 2012 at 15:37

crinkleshoes said:
The problem with that is, it'll add input lag

Mmm yes so back to the original point of igpu is a waste of time and they should ditch it or make 2 different CPU

Dirtyganker · 17 Jul 2012 at 15:41

crinkleshoes said:
If it was a seperate focus from CPU performance, then I would agree.

However, CPU performance chasing seems to have taken a bit of a hit to a wider view of performance, including iGPU... this I dislike.

They should be developing two seperate lines of CPU, one dedicated and the other with iGPU.

Sadly, this is not the route they have chosen.

Actually they have, and it's called Sandybridge-E. If you want a CPU that exploits pure CPU capability to the max then thats what you should have bought.

NirK · 17 Jul 2012 at 16:05

There is a slight issue there with cost though lol.

Dirtyganker · 17 Jul 2012 at 16:21

No there isn't - not if you're looking at just sticking with 4 cores and using something like the 3820 then it's cheaper than a 3770k. There are plenty of reasonably priced X79 boards around the £160 mark which is roughly the price you'll pay for a half-decent Z77 board. So if you want to compare like-for-like in terms of number of cores then there isn't much in the price.

But yes, if you want 50% more cores then obviously expect to a premium for it, otherwise buy to what you budget dictates but don't cry when what you want is too expensive - thats why we don't all drive Ferrari's afteral.

NirK · 17 Jul 2012 at 16:31

But compared to something like a 2500k + 8gb ram + £120 motherboard it is quite a big jump in cost for very little gain in games. Depends if you want it for games or for encoding etc.

Nutty_Death · 17 Jul 2012 at 18:36

So would people say that it is worth waiting for the Haswell chip? I'm probably going to buy a new setup within the next 6 months but could push it back for the newer chip. (Going from laptop to a gaming pc)
I've basically specked a £800-1000 setup now, which should go down in price by the time I come to buy it.

feck199 · 18 Jul 2012 at 11:10

Tea_Bag said:
for a start, battlefield is not very CPU intensive. I play at 2560*1440 on ultra with a 6990 and my CPU (2500K @ 4.8Ghz) hovers around 50-70% usage. Itd be even lower if I bothered closing all the background apps and hw monitoring tools. my GPU(s) are always 95-100% usage.

it would be worth your while upgrading the GPU to a gtx670 maybe. it'll double you're average fps in BF3 and you would carry it over to future builds. you're going to become bottle necked at the CPU, but if you get a £30 cooler and OC it, there's still a lot of life in the q6600 yet. minimum fps will get a nice boost.

on the Sata3 front, outside of benchmarks, there is little real world difference. I move from an Intel 80gb x25m on a sata2 board to a Samsung 830 128gb on sata3 and on paper its worlds apart but in truth my boot times improved a bit and loading big levels in games seemed quicker. you've already got 95% of the benefits of an SSD over a hdd, being super fast access times.

Stop saying BF3 isnt CPU dependant, unless you actually have a q6600 with your GPU, and then upgrade you dont notice the difference.

But i wouldnt be shocked if that difference was in the range of 20-30fps. I've had theses side by side, and even a jump to a i2500k makes a Massive difference over a q6600.

Dont get me wrong its a great chip, but it will still bottleneck your gpu, if thats the clock speed or just the fact a 775 isnt up to the job anymore!

NirK · 18 Jul 2012 at 11:37

Deaths_Calling said:
So would people say that it is worth waiting for the Haswell chip? I'm probably going to buy a new setup within the next 6 months but could push it back for the newer chip. (Going from laptop to a gaming pc)
I've basically specked a £800-1000 setup now, which should go down in price by the time I come to buy it.

Well obviously the Haswell is going to be better and more future proof... It just depends on whether you think that you need it NOW or if you can wait another 6-9 months for Haswell. Obviously the Haswell is the better choice but if you want performance increase right now and a overclocked Q6600 is not cutting it for you then an i5/i7 are a pretty big upgrade and overclock well. Personally I would wait but it is entirely up to you and if you need the performance now or you can wait, either choice will be a significant upgrade.

Dirtyganker · 18 Jul 2012 at 14:07

NirK said:
Well obviously the Haswell is going to be better and more future proof... It just depends on whether you think that you need it NOW or if you can wait another 6-9 months for Haswell. Obviously the Haswell is the better choice but if you want performance increase right now and a overclocked Q6600 is not cutting it for you then an i5/i7 are a pretty big upgrade and overclock well. Personally I would wait but it is entirely up to you and if you need the performance now or you can wait, either choice will be a significant upgrade.

So far all the indication suggest that the earliest you're going to see Haswell is Q3 2013 - so in reality thats at least a year away so I don't see the point in waiting if what you aleady have is suffering.

Haswell isn't going to represent the same increase in performance going from IB to Haswell when you compare what the difference is between Q6600 and IB. Also, you seem to be making an assumption on what the real world performance of Haswell is going to be like when you can't possibly know. Why wait around for the unknown?

You will always be waiting for the latest and greatest thing but then you can end up waiting forever and not doing anything. One thing that I would have thought everyone would be in unanimous agreement on is that the performance from IB or SB is a big leap forward compared to a Q6600.

NirK · 18 Jul 2012 at 17:04

As I said both are a good upgrade but from what I have read it seems like haswell will probably be a decent jump up from the i5/i7 because it is a whole new architecture and not just a die shrink etc. Admittedly I do not actually know this because the specs have not been released yet but judging from Intels architecture changes in the past 10 years I would think it would be 20-30% faster compared to the current i5/i7.

Core2quad is definately getting a bit long in the tooth now but at the same time there is still not a huge amount of games which actually need much more CPU because consoles are holding back PC gaming so much... When the next gen consoles come out I would think that core2quad would be quite obsolete for gaming and and i7/haswell will be essential as opposed to just something futureproof to own which is what it is at the moment.