Penryn or Q6600?

[BlairH]

Hey guys.

I'm currently running an E6600 on an nVidia 680i, and was wondering whether or not it's worth waiting for the new 45nm quads. The Q6600 G0 stepping procesors are really good overclockers from what I can see, plus they aren't exactly expensive.

I've heard that the 45nm processors will be -clock for clock- 5% to 7% faster than the current Q6xxx series. Presumably, they'll run a tad cooler too! That said, their stock FSB is 1300, which means that there might not be enough headroom for overclocking on my 680i (which is an original pre-revision board)

What do you reckon? Penryn or Q6600?

 

[BlairH]

Personally I would wait for Penryn, but see what other people say about it before committing yourself to anything.

Cheers for the input.

Are you getting enough performance out of the E6600 at the moment, or do you actually need quadcore?

The main purpose of the upgrade would be to prepare my rig for multi-threaded games like Alan Wake and the like (Without having to swap out my motherboard when Nehahlem arrives). In the interim, I do a fair bit of video encoding and multi-tasking.

At the same time, I'll probably be having watercooling installed, so cooling the overclocked quad wouldn't be an issue.

 

[BlairH]

The original EVGA 680i won't clock quads well at all. The newer rev will do 475ish fsb, more with mods. Penryn does run a LOT cooler.

Yeah, I have a launch day EVGA 680i, so my guess is that I'm shafted unless I go for a top-dollar multiplier unlocked extreme edition. FSB overclocking of quads isn't exactly the 680i's strong point. That said, extreme editions are so expensive that I might as well go for a new motherboard and a Q6600 (or Penryn) instead.

 

[BlairH]

Do older versions of 680i board support 45nm process cpu?

I sure hope so. According to the folks over at the EVGA forums, it should do (probably with a BIOS update).

 

[BlairH]

Right, I now have my heart set on a QX9650, since my original, launch day 680i isn't exactly known for effective FSB overclocking on quads. However, since the QX9650 has an unlocked multiplier, I needn't worry about that right? (I'd be content with upping the multiplier by one notch or two)

That said, it's a 1333mhz FSB processor and, although my 680i officially supports that frequency (and THEN some with dual cores!) it might not be able to hit that default frequency with a quad core such as the QX9650. Would I be right in saying this?

Any thoughts?

 

[BlairH]

What you can do is this, build a rig (with P35) and for now choose a E21x0 series dual core (70/80 dollars) so you can play your games. Then when the new quads hit the stage you buy one of them Same as I'm doing, easy, saves some money and plays the games still very well when overclocked to around 3.2Ghz

I'm not currently looking to downgrade my system.