Q6600 end of life - is a 775 Xeon an option

[B@Th*nG]

Just replaced/upgraded my graphics card, as my old one went pop, with a RX480. The CPU, Q6660@ 3.264GHz) is very evidently the limiting factor now as gaming performance is not really any different. Obviously the sensible/expensive thing to do would be to replace the CPU/mobo/RAM buuutt who's interested in the sensible things when there's all manner of dumb/cheap things to do.

One possibility I've seen is to replace the CPU with a modded Xeon x5650, x5675, x5680 CPU. They're going for under £30 on the bay atm. I understand that the mainboard might need a new BIOS to support it and its new power requirements, I have an Abit IP35-E that MAY be up to the task. I also have some enclosed water cooling for the CPU, which is about as good as a very good air cooler to be honest (60c full load), but not much blowing over the board other than some case fans to keep the air moving. Performance wise it seems it may double what the Q6600 is offering.

I hear you can get massive clocks from these chips, 4.4ghz is not uncommon. Is this a go-er? Does anyone have any experience with this?

B@

 

[Armageus]

The only Xeons that can be modded to fit a 775 socket are the 54xx xeons - a x5650 is 1366.

The best you could do would be to grab a Xeon X5450 for about £5 which runs at 3Ghz/1333FSB, and potentially overclock that towards 4Ghz. The 54xx series are the later generation of Core2Quad, same as e.g. a Q9650.

 

[Avalon]

I’d personally stop trying to flog a dead horse and move on, anything you spend now is just wasted money on that platform. Abit have been out of the motherboard game for over a decade now, the site is gone as are the BIOS files, while you can track most down, its just not worth it at this stage.

 

[HeX]

Agree with Avalon, it's time for a new CPU/mobo combo. Even if you didn't want to go new there's plenty of 2nd hand parts that are a considerable upgrade to what you currently have!

 

[Justintime]

Yea went from a Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz to a Q9550 @ 4.2Ghz back in the day, results were uninspiring, its like going from a 150hp motor to a 180hp one in the same car model and transmission. Faster yes but not ike 'omg' wow.
Even an i7 2600k @ 4.4Ghz wasn't miles ahead for me, would say if you're on a tight budget a second hand skylake or Haswell might fit the bill.

(edit, meant to say 2600k not i7 920, twas a decade ago!)

 

[oweneades]

Honestly I would look to upgrade to a new platform rather than dropping in a faster CPU to a dead socket. Something like a Ryzen 2600, B450 board and 16GB of DDR4 3000-3200 RAM would be a enormous upgrade in both performance and feature set.

I have a few old 775 based systems I enjoy messing around with, but even heavily overclocked they struggle with anything approaching a modern GPU.

 

[Avalon]

1st gen AM4/Ryzen is basically the default budget choice now, used prices are low and it’s possible to get CPU+MB+RAM for £150ish. The proposed £30 you mention is a reasonable step towards an upgrade.

 

[AMDPower]

I have a x5650 and gigabyte ud3 you can have for free if you pay postage, also have 6GB ram you can have.

do you have a cooler for x58 system, if not can throw one in also but its gonna be heavy to post.

It was all working last I tried but can't guarantee anything.

 

[B@Th*nG]

Fair enough, all!

I have a x5650 and gigabyte ud3 you can have for free if you pay postage, also have 6GB ram you can have.

do you have a cooler for x58 system, if not can throw one in also but its gonna be heavy to post.

It was all working last I tried but can't guarantee anything.

Thank you for your very kind offer, but i think the advice above has tempered my interest in this little project. Thanks again!

B@

 

[Rroff]

Yea went from a Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz to a Q9550 @ 4.2Ghz back in the day, results were uninspiring, its like going from a 150hp motor to a 180hp one in the same car model and transmission. Faster yes but not ike 'omg' wow.

Albeit I had some crazy RAM which really helped but I saw a pretty decent jump from an overclocked Q6600 to an overclocked Q9550 and my Q6600s were running clocked at 3.825GHz towards the end before I swapped to the Q9550.

I might be remembering wrong but IIRC going from the Q9550 at 4.5GHz to the 4820K at stock I saw a more than 30% jump in game framerates with my then GTX470 SLI setup and the bottleneck move to the GPUs rather than CPU.

Thank you for your very kind offer, but i think the advice above has tempered my interest in this little project. Thanks again!

When I tried messing about with using Xeons of that era on a desktop motherboard I had mixed results - often I'd get hard system locks or random BSODs at random intervals that I could never narrow down while the CPUs worked fine in the appropriate server board and the motherboards worked fine with desktop CPUs - I'm guessing somewhere the lack of appropriate microcode was resulting in something not quite working 100% though it shouldn't have been a big deal.

 

[Concrete]

Fair enough, all!


Thank you for your very kind offer, but i think the advice above has tempered my interest in this little project. Thanks again!

B@

Would reconsider that offer! That CPU at 4ghz (easy to dial in) would make a fantastic combination with an RX480 at 1080p.

 

[LeMson]

Look at getting into the AM4 platform, lots of powerful cpu's to drop in later down the line as an upgrade path. Just make sure you get a decent b450 or better board to allow this.

If you want to slash the cash, 3600x, b450 tomahawk max, and 16gb 3600mhz ram

 

[jrwagh333]

I can't believe it's 2019 and I'm reading a thread about a Q6600. Amazing how that CPU has been relevant for this long. Great purchase.

 

[B@Th*nG]

I can't believe it's 2019 and I'm reading a thread about a Q6600. Amazing how that CPU has been relevant for this long. Great purchase.

It is pretty amazing. Just been playing Witcher 3 on it absolutely fine!

This is kinda why I was tempted just to give it a cheap speed boost. The board definitely does at least 400fsb so I know it's good for it. It'll buy me another couple of years while the Ryzen stuff comes down in price

B@

 

[HangTime]

Best off doing a full platform upgrade. On the plus side you've left it long enough that you will actually get a decent improvement, and DDR4 prices have come back down to reasonable levels compared to the spike a couple of years ago.

 

[FlyingScotsman]

Still rocking a [email protected] in my bedroom pc albeit a streaming box for plex and netflix but still going strong

 

[Doogles]

1st gen AM4/Ryzen is basically the default budget choice now, used prices are low and it’s possible to get CPU+MB+RAM for £150ish. The proposed £30 you mention is a reasonable step towards an upgrade.

Yeah even new you can get a nice 2700x/B450/16GB RAM for under £200 if you get a good deal. Saw a new 1600 for sale at a competitor for under £85!

 

[lofz]

I still use a Core 2 Quad Q9505 paired with 8gb ram as a streaming/torrent box and file dump. Still life in them yet for basic tasks.

 

[Avalon]

I still use a Core 2 Quad Q9505 paired with 8gb ram as a streaming/torrent box and file dump. Still life in them yet for basic tasks.

Given the idle is likely in the 120w range, and the IPC is horrible, you’re spending £145/yr ish just on power (13.06p/Kw for me), if it actually does anything CPU wise, that rises significantly. You can easily pick up a used Ryzen, board and RAM for that sort of money, and something like a 1700 only pulls 50w idle, a 2400G will pull half that. You could easily save the upgrade cost in under two years on either of those builds and be in profit. That is unless you don’t like whoever pays the power bill

 

[Tetras]

I suspect the high idle reported of those era systems was mostly the graphics card not clocking down, I don't think they're anything like that with an IGP or a newer graphics card. I had one that added over 30 watts at idle and it wasn't even low mid-range. With a recent card or integrated they're probably comparable to Ryzen (OC voltage not included). Those figures are an eye opener though, especially if running 24/7.