Core2 Quad?

Smorgasbord · 18 May 2009 at 16:56

I would like to limit myself to about £130, obviously will go higher for quality or lower if possible.

-Raphus- · 18 May 2009 at 17:06

OEM I think? And the other components of your system?

Smorgasbord · 18 May 2009 at 17:10

-Raphus- said:
OEM I think? And the other components of your system?

My current system is an E7200, 4GB of OCZ 'SLI Certified' 800MHz Ram, P5KPL-AM Motherbaord, 1TB Spinpoint HDD, 520W Cooler Master PSU, CM Elite 340 case, and a Sapphire 4770.

-Raphus- · 18 May 2009 at 17:34

Mmm... 4770 is very slow VGA for GTA IV, 4 cores cant give you really improvement. But big upgrade isnt for you money I think. So, the great solution with your budget will be Q6700. For your system - the ideal choise

Mainstream processor for mainstream PC. Without OverClocking on your mother 2.66GHz - min.
P.S: Than, in the future you should upgrade your Video card first I think.

-Raphus- · 18 May 2009 at 17:36

Unfortunately, your mobo doesn't support CrossFire. Second 4770 can be fresh power

Smorgasbord · 18 May 2009 at 18:25

-Raphus- said:
Unfortunately, your mobo doesn't support CrossFire. Second 4770 can be fresh power

Yeah I know my motherboard doesn't support Xfire. XFire's not something I'm too interested in at the moment.

So is the Q6700 definitely the best choice of chip for my setup? Rather than a Q8*00 or Dual Core E8*00?

Sean_UK · 18 May 2009 at 23:30

alexhull24 said:
That would be great, certainly would make up my mind as I have a very similar gfx.

Well I got the versus tests done early evening, been out till late tonight so won’t be posting them up now. However check back Tuesday for some interesting GTAIV results for both the E6750 and Q6600. I'm sure someone will find a way to pick holes in the results, but rest assured results are straight up.

Read what you will into them tomorrow.

Smorgasbord said:
So is the Q6700 definitely the best choice of chip for my setup? Rather than a Q8*00 or Dual Core E8*00?

Q6700 @ 3.2Ghz+ or any other Quad clocked to same speed or higher, well for GTAIV.

-Raphus- said:
GTA IV, 4 cores cant give you really improvement.

Sorry to say your wrong.

Smorgasbord · 19 May 2009 at 09:24

Sean_UK said:
Well I got the versus tests done early evening, been out till late tonight so won’t be posting them up now. However check back Tuesday for some interesting GTAIV results for both the E6750 and Q6600. I'm sure someone will find a way to pick holes in the results, but rest assured results are straight up.

Read what you will into them tomorrow.

Q6700 @ 3.2Ghz+ or any other Quad clocked to same speed or higher, well for GTAIV.

Sorry to say your wrong.

Nice one, look forward to seeing the results. In the meantime, i'm going to look at getting a P43/P45 motherboard with a new case, and will look at the Q6700's afterwards.

Cheers,

-Raphus- · 19 May 2009 at 11:01

Sean_UK said:
Read what you will into them tomorrow.

Waiting for...

Sorry to say your wrong.

Processor = physics only. You will have very low FPS with 128bit VGA and 512MB memory in the High resolutions. And GDDR5 can't help. I had HD4870 before GTX280 and played GTAIV with that VGA + Q9550: framerate was above 22 FPS with High Settings (all regulations to 50-60) and the weak place is Video Card only! Of course, with Low graphic setting the dependence from the processor will be higher. But if you would play 1920x1200 High Settings - you may have 8, 4, 2 or 1 core, but it will be of no use. I told in that meaning.

Smorgasbord, yes, you understood my words

Q6700 - your proc, man! Do it!

(I mean buy it)

cmndr_andi · 19 May 2009 at 11:10

Hi Raphus, I feel I should throw my experience with GTA into the mix. I play the game with my i7 920 @3.6GHz and a lowly 9800gtx 512MB. I have the settings set to high or very high for everything (game limits some stuff because of graphics memory limits). I find the game plays at 45-50FPS, sometimes dipping down to low 30s and it looks very nice throughout.

In comparison, my flatmate is running a C2D @3.5GHz and a 4850 and he struggles to get it past 30FPS.

From my experience and from what I have read, GTA 4 specifically uses the CPU far more than any other game I have recently encountered. Most other games are very happy on dual cores, its just a bad port in this case.

For the OP, go get the q6700, its a lovely chip

Sean_UK · 19 May 2009 at 15:44

-Raphus- said:
Processor = physics only. You will have very low FPS with 128bit VGA and 512MB memory in the High resolutions.

Only going by reviews I've read on the 4770, tends to be somewhere between 4830 & 9800GTS in the vast majority of tests with x0/x2 AA regardless of the memory bus limitations. I don’t have any experience of the 4870, 4850 or 4770 directly with regards to GTAIV performance. Oh and Raphus if I misread who you quoted or what you posted earlier, sorry I just found your English/posts a hard read + and happen to not even see one of later posts, well it was late when I replied.

Smorgasbord said:
Nice one, look forward to seeing the results. In the meantime, I’m going to look at getting a P43/P45 motherboard with a new case, and will look at the Q6700's afterwards.

Yeah I was going to mention your current motherboard, did a quick Google search and would seem it's really not one for over clocking at all.

Far as your gfx card goes cant really question what raphus mentions, but the slowest/oldest cards I've tested are the 8800GTS 640 and 2900XT 512, both seem to pull a steady 30+ fps with GTAIV @ 1680x1050 with an overclocked Quad...

Well I’m just finishing up some work, will post up the results in next hour or so

Smorgasbord · 19 May 2009 at 17:20

Thanks for that info pal!

You're not aware of a mATX motherboard that is good at overclocking do you? Or should I just go straight for a standard ATX case/mobo and OC the QUad?

Ta,

alex24 · 19 May 2009 at 17:52

There are no good cheap clocking mATX boards, however some do exist. What's the budget? You might want to look 2nd hand too.

wrayvon · 19 May 2009 at 18:29

There is a foxconn that likes q6600s! Can remember off the top of my head tho. I'l look later

-Raphus- · 19 May 2009 at 18:36

cmndr_andi said:
Hi Raphus, I feel I should throw my experience with GTA into the mix. I play the game with my i7 920 @3.6GHz and a lowly 9800gtx 512MB. I have the settings set to high or very high for everything (game limits some stuff because of graphics memory limits). I find the game plays at 45-50FPS, sometimes dipping down to low 30s and it looks very nice throughout.

In comparison, my flatmate is running a C2D @3.5GHz and a 4850 and he struggles to get it past 30FPS.

From my experience and from what I have read, GTA 4 specifically uses the CPU far more than any other game I have recently encountered. Most other games are very happy on dual cores, its just a bad port in this case.

Hm, maybe. So, GTA IV is physics only based game?

I am playing GTA now and my FPS with GTX 280 OverCl+ Q9550 OC is 45-50 with High only settings. You want to say GTX280 = 9800GTX? Or GTA really needs 100 cores @ 10GHz

Very, very interesting...

Sean_UK said:
Oh and Raphus if I misread who you quoted or what you posted earlier, sorry I just found your English/posts a hard read + and happen to not even see one of later posts, well it was late when I replied.

Ha-ha, man, yes I know that my English is awful

But, sorry I do not know it as well as you need. But the good thing is I can understand you

P.S: (offtop) You really can't understand anything in my words? Heh, maybe I should take some english lessons

Sean_UK · 19 May 2009 at 18:38

Starting simple, here's results from an in-game demo I made of the bank heist escape, involves plenty of street gun battles and car chases etc. Basically it works the cores hard and gives true reflection of real in game environment, unlike Rockstars own in-game bench demo.

Resized from 1680x1050

E6750 @ 3.0GHz, Bank Robbery Escape Demo pt1

Q6600 @ 3.0GHz, Bank Robbery Escape Demo pt1

E6750 @ 3.0GHz, Bank Robbery Escape Demo pt2

Q6600 @ 3.0GHz, Bank Robbery Escape Demo pt2

E6750 @ 3.0GHz, Bank Robbery Escape Demo pt3

Q6600 @ 3.0GHz, Bank Robbery Escape Demo pt3

Part 4 and 5 of my demo involved the subway escape section, and doesn’t really push the cores much due to the enclosed environment, so I didn’t bother. I used EVGA Precision’s on screen FPS monitor to keep an eye on frame rates.

E6750@3GHz tends to come very close to maxing out a number of times, and whilst watching the home made demo I noticed several stutters with some very low fps drops, such as 17fps at one point. Q6600@3GHz shares the load between all 4 cores and never really peaked on any one core either. In-fact it managed a much healthier frame rate in general, with no stutters and a minimum 25fps. Hopefully OcUK don’t mind the image spam and I’ve not done anything wrong? I so then someone please inform me and I’ll edit it accordingly.

I have more, just thought I’d start with the above^

Smorgasbord · 19 May 2009 at 18:42

Mint, so it definitely likes the Quad Core.

As regard to case/motherboard, what could i get for £120?

I like the look of the Cooler Master 330 Elite, I've had one before and quite liked it, but suggestions welcome

I'm nearly definitely getting the Q6700 i believe too

-Raphus- · 19 May 2009 at 19:18

Smorgasbord said:
As regard to case/motherboard, what could i get for £120?

I like the look of the Cooler Master 330 Elite, I've had one before and quite liked it, but suggestions welcome

Ok, Cooler Master 330 Elite is good case, with 120mm cooler. If you like it - buy, good choise

cmndr_andi · 19 May 2009 at 19:32

-Raphus- said:
Hm, maybe. So, GTA IV is physics only based game? I am playing GTA now and my FPS with GTX 280 OverCl+ Q9550 OC is 45-50 with High only settings. You want to say GTX280 = 9800GTX? Or GTA really needs 100 cores @ 10GHz Very, very interesting...

Lol, I would love my 9800gtx to be the same as a gtx280, i'd be a a very happy man. However, you card is clearly head and shoulders above mine. But thats the unfortunate truth of GTA4 (on the PC), as long as you can bring at least 9800gt levels of performace to the table, you are not limited by the graphics card; Its all CPU baby!

As your quad core is roughly equivalent to mine in terms of general gaming performance, I think our similar framerates bear this argument out. I remember I saw a test where they used an e6600 and a q6600 on GTA4. The quad core had almost TWICE the framerate of the dual. Takehome messsage, that game has issues if you have a dual core. Maybe they thought it would be a good idea to do some of the graphics processing on the CPU or something silly like that

-Raphus- · 19 May 2009 at 20:14

cmndr_andi said:
Lol, I would love my 9800gtx to be the same as a gtx280, i'd be a a very happy man.

Yes, man, GTA is your game too! There is 9800GTX = 280GTX. Are you happy?

As your quad core is roughly equivalent to mine in terms of general gaming performance, I think our similar framerates bear this argument out. I remember I saw a test where they used an e6600 and a q6600 on GTA4. The quad core had almost TWICE the framerate of the dual. Takehome messsage, that game has issues if you have a dual core.

OK, I saw somethink like this too... So, the general question gor GTA IV is how much cores it needs? :rolleyes:

Maybe they thought it would be a good idea to do some of the graphics processing on the CPU or something silly like that

Oh no

CPU can't do the graphics processing. But in this really crooked port from XboX R* may do everything you realized

P.S: Hey boys, we should stop flood about GTA IV. This topic is about Quad only!