5870 with Q6600

Admiral Huddy · 19 May 2010 at 08:29

Is anyone using an ATI 5870 on a overclocked Q6600.

I have a decent opportunity to upgrade my system. A customer of mine wants to pay for my survices in components.. long story but i have about £600 at my disposal and have no worries about adding to that budget plus the resale of existing parts would make even a full upgrade cost peanuts,

I'm tempted to have a complete system revamp, CPU, graphics etc.. but I'm wondering if it's actually worth changing the Q6600 @ 3.5GHz at all. I'm still using a 8800GTX (full spec in sig) and experience no problems in any game I'm currently playing.

So if i opt just to upgrade the video card to a 5870, will the Q6600 bottleneck this at all.

Any feed back would be appreciated.

Thanks

rollinsoundz_77 · 19 May 2010 at 08:32

your q6600 will NOT bottleneck that card at all.

'Wes · 19 May 2010 at 08:33

I doubt it, i've seen people with a Q6600@3GHz and a 5870 on other forums.

RavenXXX2 · 19 May 2010 at 08:34

Before I went to i7 in December, I was using a Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz with my 5870, games that I noticed a big difference in FPS were GTA4 and need for speed shift and marginal gains in other games, I would say a [email protected] is fine for a 5870.

Admiral Huddy · 19 May 2010 at 08:46

Feels kinda weird that I've had this CPU for more than a few years and the GPU even longer. So stick with the LGA775 platform for the time being yeah?
Thanks for the reply guys.

rollinsoundz_77 · 19 May 2010 at 08:49

Admiral Huddy said:
Feels kinda weird that I've had this CPU for more than a few years and the GPU even longer. So stick with the LGA775 platform for the time being yeah?
Thanks for the reply guys.

depends if you wana waste money on a upgrade or be happy with what you have, if i was you i would fully upgrade thats just me though.

RavenXXX2 · 19 May 2010 at 08:49

Q6600 maybe getting on now but it's still more than good enough today when clocked above 3Ghz, going from an 8800GTX to a 5870 is a huge upgrade.

Admiral Huddy · 19 May 2010 at 08:52

I agree and this is the dilemma really.

I also have a carp motherboard. The P5QC doesn't like high bus speeds so I've hit a ceiling on the OC.

RavenXXX2 · 19 May 2010 at 08:56

Q6600 won't do much more than 3.6 even on decent mobos.

If you can afford to go i7/i5 then yeah do it, otherwise your current setup is perfectly fine.

Admiral Huddy · 19 May 2010 at 09:17

Cheers Raven

DrSteve · 19 May 2010 at 09:40

I'm running a 5870 with my Q6600at 3.6 and don't see any real need to upgrade. Seems to run anything I want to play without problem even with eyefinity. Having said that, if someone gave me a chunk of cash I'd probably upgrade to i7 just for the sake of it :-)

Marine-RX179 · 19 May 2010 at 10:12

rollinsoundz_77 said:
your q6600 will NOT bottleneck that card at all.

Actually Q6600 (even if overclocked to 3.7GHz) WILL bottleneck the 5870 in games that are single or dual-threaded (most games that pre-date Windows 7) and deliver lower frame rate than CPU such as E8400 overclocked to 4.0GHz. But for games that are optimised for Quad (i.e. Battlefield Bad Company 2), it will not bottleneck the 5870 at all because the 3rd and 4th cores are being used effectively (whereas the E8400 overclock to 4GHz would bottleneck the 5870 a little, because it is slightly not keeping up with it).

maxilive · 19 May 2010 at 10:44

I've got a Q6600 @ stock with my 5870 *hangs head in shame*

Still getting reasonable framerates though, I should really look into overclocking it a bit

iv-tecman · 19 May 2010 at 11:14

My brother has a Q6600 GO and was using a 8800GTX. I recommended a new GPU and tried my ATI 5870 Vapor-x and I can honestly say, with the chip clocked at 3.2ghz it was a huge improvement over a 8800GTX

Batman Arkham max'd out at 60fps due to v sync on at 1920 x 1080 and dirt2 benchmarks at same res averaged 55fps with ultra detail and 4 x AA or was it MSAA??

Either way, a Q6600 at 3.2ghz with a 5870 will see a huge improvement.

iv-tecman · 19 May 2010 at 11:20

DrSteve said:
I'm running a 5870 with my Q6600at 3.6 and don't see any real need to upgrade. Seems to run anything I want to play without problem even with eyefinity. Having said that, if someone gave me a chunk of cash I'd probably upgrade to i7 just for the sake of it

I think current hardware or at least GPU has started to overtake the current crop of PC titles. When you consider that a lot of games are developed for Xbox 360 API then its no surprise that a new tech GPU such as a 5870 with a decent clocked CPU can churn out 60fps at 1920 x 1080 as most of the PC titles are just console ports with a higher res...

What is it now, 2 - 3 years since crysis was the last REAL PC benchmark game? All others have been cross platform console and PC games.

I think current hardware can pretty much chew up the current crop of PC games with plenty or power left over. My system struggles with hardly anything, and that's a first for me, as I remember 4 years ago that I used to look at PC games and wonder if it'd run. Now its a case of - will it use my Xbox 360 controller.. lol How time have changed.

wam7 · 19 May 2010 at 11:38

The majority of games are GPU limited so you don't need to change a Q6600 @ 3.6. You'd be changing the CPU just for the hell of it, not for the need.

MoRT489 · 19 May 2010 at 11:40

Provided a Q6600 is over 3.2GHz there is no way it's gonna bottleneck a 5870. however, depending on what games u play (like GTAIV) u may see some benefit in using i7 but i doubt it would be much.

Marine-RX179 · 19 May 2010 at 12:01

People that are saying things like "there's absolutely no way that a Q6600 with moderate overclock with bottleneck 5870"...please actually go have a look at some results for Q6600+5870 performance in single/dual-threaded games.

Even games like Crysis that are known to be heavily GPU bounded, a Q6600 at 3.7GHz will hit the CPU bottleneck before reaching the GPU bound of 5870 for the game, simply because they game is dual-threaded and not optimised for Quad...and Q6600 running in just dual-thread is not keeping up with the 5870.
Crysis 1650x1050 HIGH
5870 GPU bounded average 57fps, 16xAF 4xAA GPU bound average 48fps
Q6600 3.7GHz+5870 average 45fps

However for newer game titles that are optimised for Quad, even a Q6600 at 3.0GHz will not bottleneck the 5870.

So for dual-threaded games, the Q6600 should idealy be overclock to around 3.6-3.8GHZ to minimise the bottleneck.

Phoenixdancer · 19 May 2010 at 12:59

yes it will be a bottle neck, but dont worry!

elpedro · 19 May 2010 at 13:09

Marine-RX179 said:
People that are saying things like "there's absolutely no way that a Q6600 with moderate overclock with bottleneck 5870"...please actually go have a look at some results for Q6600+5870 performance in single/dual-threaded games.

Even games like Crysis that are known to be heavily GPU bounded, a Q6600 at 3.7GHz will hit the CPU bottleneck before reaching the GPU bound of 5870 for the game, simply because they game is dual-threaded and not optimised for Quad...and Q6600 running in just dual-thread is not keeping up with the 5870.
Crysis 1650x1050 HIGH
5870 GPU bounded average 57fps, 16xAF 4xAA GPU bound average 48fps
Q6600 3.7GHz+5870 average 45fps

However for newer game titles that are optimised for Quad, even a Q6600 at 3.0GHz will not bottleneck the 5870.

So for dual-threaded games, the Q6600 should idealy be overclock to around 3.6-3.8GHZ to minimise the bottleneck.

Don't pay any attention to the above. Definately over hyped and not true. Any gain would be negligible (1-2FPS). A 3.2GHz Q6600 would not bottleneck the 5870 in Crysis. See the chart below of Crysis Warhead taken from Guru3D.

An absolute mix of architectures and clock speeds, as soon as we hit 1600x900 there's nothing in it whatsoever, even when the 980X is running at 4.4GHz! Typical GPU bottleneck all the way.

And certainly won't be an issue if you are playing at 1080p or higher. Furthermore, Crysis is an outdated and poor example.