Considering Upgrade, Q6600 -> 2600K

r0cky

r0cky

r0cky

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I'm considering this upgrade from a Q6600 on X38 Motherboard. Currently have a GTX580, but want to go SLI with 2xGTX580.

What is Z68 like with only 8x PCIe lanes per card?

I would wait for Sandy-E, but my PC is 4 years old now, and it's dragging in modern games.
  • Intel Core i7 2600K Unlocked S1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.4GHz GPU 850Mhz 8MB Cache 95W Retail
  • 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 8-8-8-24, XMP, 1.50V
  • Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3, Intel Z68

I currently have an Antec P182, might also get a new P183, just as I hate the fan and cable mare at the bottom.

No idea on CPU Cooler either, currently have Noctua NH-U12F. I could get a free mounting kit from Noctua and transport that across (could use retail stock Intel cooler in interim).

This upgrade won't be cheap, so it will have to last a few years.

Any thoughts?
 
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Do you really need SLI 580's? they are very overkill unless you are playing on silly resolutions, that upgrade looks good but also maybe go for a I5 2500K? theres not much diffrence between the two. Yer the Noctua would cool that chip nicley and you would get some nice clocks out of it. 8X pci lanes in SLI will be fine, but if you are going to spend some serious money then maybe try and look for a board that surports 16x16?
 
The difference between 16x and 8x per card is not a lot, Hardocp tested the difference a while ago and it is about 2-3%

Also gigabyte boards are a bit lacking.

Look at the Asrock Z68 extreme 4
 
8x lanes per card at 3% wouldn't be too bad then.

I've got three monitors at the moment. 2x24" 1920x1200, and a 1280x1024 17". At the moment GTX580 drives the two 24", and an 8400GS drives the 17".

So I'd be down to 8xPCIe on the GTX580 due to the 2nd gfx card for the 8400GS. I was wondering if the onboard graphics would be able to drive the 17", whilst the GTX580 drove the main two 24".

Depending on prices/performance, I might go SLI GTX580, or just get a new GTX6xx series when they come out.

I don't mind spending money on the Motherboard, reliability is my main concern. Have always had Asus or Gigabyte. My last two were Gigabyte after a terrible Asus from years back!

The sensible thing might be to wait for Sandy Bridge-E, but with the delay I've become impatient! :p
 
r0cky said:
I don't mind spending money on the Motherboard, reliability is my main concern. Have always had Asus or Gigabyte. My last two were Gigabyte after a terrible Asus from years back!
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Problem with the low-end Gigabyte Z68 boards is that they don't have display output, and it's definitely out of consideration for your needs.

As for the HD3000 graphic, I think they are actually better than the 8400GS if I'm not mistaken.

Also, there's little different on frame rate/gaming performance between the 2500K and 2600K CPU...the 2600K would only be more benefitual to people that do encoding or other heavy-threaded stuffs. You'd be better off dropping from the 2600K down to the 2500K, and put the money you saved toward a SSD or something.
 
Cheers the information guys!

I think the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 has an HDMI output? I was hoping to drive the 17" from that.

The extra cache and threading abilities of the i7 will be useful to me. I also use my home machine to do number crunching and stuff for work.

I was also considering getting a 40GB mSATA SSD to try out the HDD cache capability. I end up with many GB on my C:\ drive, from all the engineering tools, software tools, compilers, and other bits and pieces.
 
You said it's lagging in modern games... Really? Which ones?

I have a Q6600 also and it does fine. I can't imagine with yours being coupled with a 580 it would struggle at all.
 
r0cky said:
GPU is around 60-70% utilization and the game is quite jerky.
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If that is the case, I would imagine the CPU is bottlenecking the GTX580 during the intensive moments. What clock speed is your Q6600 at? You still haven't answered that. But either way, I would imagine you won't have a high overclock on that X38 motherboard anyway...

Before getting another GTX580 to SLI, I would say you should upgrade to the 2600K platform and overclock it, and it should hopefully increase the GPU usage to the 90-100% range, thus the frame rate will be increased as well. After that, you can then decide if you really need to get another GTX580 to SLI.

Q6600 is a very nice CPU, but it is starting to show its age. Don't get me wrong...for games that use 4 cores fully they are still quite capable, but for games that don't and only using 3 cores or less is just not enough. For example, I overclocked my Q6600 to 3.6GHz and in Global Agenda during intensive scenes, the GPU usage will drop from 99% all the way down to 60-70% and frame rate dropping from 80-120fps right down to 23fps...it is clearly an issue with the CPU holding the graphic card back, but the main problem lies with the game only uses 2-3 cores...
 
Buchanan0204 said:
I have a Q6600 also and it does fine. I can't imagine with yours being coupled with a 580 it would struggle at all.
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An Q6600 would really hold a 580 back...
Anyone would be totally crazy to use a 4 year old CPU with one the lastest £400 GPU cards


The Q6600 was a very good cpu in it day,,,,,,But it far to slow now.. ;)
 
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chaparral said:
An Q6600 would really hold a 580 back...
Anyone would be totally crazy to use a 4 year old CPU with one the lastest £400 GPU cards


The Q6600 was a very good cpu in it day,,,,,,But it far to slow now.. ;)
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I blame majority of the games not using all 4 cores fully...otherwise an overclocked Q6600 can potentially still last for another year or two lol
 
chaparral said:
Q6600 vs i5 2500k

benchmarks here http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=288
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All games there except for Far Cry 2 are two-cores games though...and I don't think a Q6600 at stock speed reflect it's capability, considering it can be overclocked by 50% (2.4GHz to 3.6GHz).

Yes in games that are well-optimised for Quad such as BFBC2, a 2500K would most likely be able to deliver 5-10fps higher minimum and average than a Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz on the same graphic card, but it is still playable on the overclocked Q6600. However, the same cannot be said for games that are not well-optimised for Quad, as having 1 core or 2 missing in action would be disastrous for the GTX580.
 
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My Q6600 is overclocked to 3.6Ghz and I can comfortably play black ops with all the bells and whistles turned on at a res of 6000x1080 while maintaining a minimum frame rate of around 55-60FPS.

That's pretty good for a 5 year old cpu. It also handles Bad Company 2 quite happily at 1920x1200.

Dirt 3 is another one. Any modern game I try. It pretty much maxes it out with a minimum of 60FPS. There's the odd exception like the Witcher 2. Which I personally don't like anyway, so isn't an issue. I can't understand why it's so intensive when it doesn't look anything special compared to other games. Where is all the juice going? Think it's just a bit of a marketing scam. Or poorly coded.
 
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