Q6600 bottleneck?

[Dale]

Hi all,

With the release of BC2, plus a birthday I've recently upgraded my old 9800GX2 to a Saphire HD 5790.

Installed it yesterday, got all excited, ran (I know it's old, but its all I have!) 3DMark06 and then got irritated that my score was only a mere 1000pts above my old systems score.

Old system: 18026 3DMarks

Q6600 @ 3.45
Windows XP
3gb ram
Geforce 9800GX2

New system: 19095 3DMarks

Q6600 @ 3.5
Windows 7 Ultimate
4gb ram (G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PK PC2-8500C5 (2x2GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit)
HD 5970
(Plus Falcon SSD HDD)

The old system scores better on the CPU (5395 vs 4834) and SM 2.0 score (7128 vs 6976), SM 3.0 score was considerably better (new system scored 10042 vs old system's score of 8203)

Now I realise that it's real-world "how-does-the-game-itself-perform" that counts most, however I can't help but be a little dissapointed.

My main question now is would it be worth upgrading the Q6600 CPU to a Q9550?

My Q6600 is OC'd to 3.5 (OC's really quite well, I have a superb cooler on top that doesn't even run a fan - so it's quiet as well), does the Q9550 overclock just as well? I.e. to make the money worth it?

My motherboard is an aging Asus P5K Premium, and to be honest, I can only just afford the CPU, so changing the mobo is out of the question at the moment.

The Q6600 is now about as fast as I can get it without changing the cooling method, but to be honest, 3.5 is pretty average / good for one of these isn't it? Any more and it just BSoD at various points and becomes really quite unreliable. (Vcore is at 1.480)

So, would it be worth it to go for a Q9550, or would the gains be way to minimal?

Thanks for any advice.

CPUz screenie of Q6600 in current guise:

 

[Dale]

Thanks for the replies chaps,

Prime95 64bit up and running, 4 cores doing the business.

CPU hitting 65 degrees max, then drops back to 63ish at the moment (core1, other cores hovering between 59-62 degrees) - all cores working at 100%

 

[Dale]

Hi Guest2, no fan on the CPU (and no water-cooling), but I do have a 120mm exhaust fan (which sits right behind the cooler), Prime has just crashed, so in retrospect, it isn't really Prime stable at all (lasted just over 20min) - however, I'll add that it basically never crashes during normal operations (BF2, Borderlands, you know, "work"!!)

CPU got to about 65, no higher - idling away now at between 35 to 37.

I may re-assess the cooling and see if I can get it more Prime stable. Borderlands is getting between 40-60fps. Right at the beggining on the Zombie addon DLC without moving I get about 45fps, then down in the caves 65fps - This is with everything maxed out. Not bad I guess??

I'm installing L4D2 as we speak, will see what Fraps thinks of that and report back.

Doubt I'll go spending on a Q9550 though...

Thank you for your input guys.

 

[Dale]

Thanks DG, I may keep an eye out for a cheaper 2nd hand one, saves paying out £££ for one, then not being able to keep a worthwhile stable overclock.

9800GX2 was an extremely fast card in its day, and in SM2 games it will consistantly out perform a 5770.

However SLI can still introduce microstutter, while a single fast card will give a better gaming experience. Of course your new card supports DX11, and will give a better performance in games which dont work well with SLI as well.

Given the performance of the 9800GX2 you really should have gone either for a pair of 5770's and gone crossfire, or a 5850/5870 for a really fast single card.

Thanks for that info Corasik, however, my card is a 5970, not a 5770 (unles that was a typo, and 9800GX2 really is better than the 5970 in SM2.

 

[Dale]

I've just had another little tweak of the overclock of the Q6600, trying to get to 3.6.

I've changed the multiplier to x8 and upped the FSB to 450.

Should I be doing anything with the memory with this change?

the NB Voltage is still set to auto, should I change this?

I've booted into Win7 now, all working, however if I dare run Prime it stackes within about 30 seconds, so something isn't happy.

If I have to much voltage (obviously not enough to fry the chips) would that make it crash? I've got the DRAM Voltage set to 2.10, and the CPU Voltage set to 1.45 (although CPUz thinks different).

 

[Dale]

Hehe, my bad - been doing that a lot!

OK, current status of play, machine is stable at 3.5, get 40-45fps in Borderlands (everything at max) and L4D2 doesn't go below 110fps (everything at max).

If I up the FSB to get 3.6 machine crashes all over the place! Odd.

 

[Dale]

I have tried it on stock settings, and all is dandy. I may do what you suggest and re-set the BIOS and start again.

Before that though I'll be info gathering, as I said above, I'm unsure as to what most of the settings mean.

 

[Dale]

Excellent, thank you Crinkleshoes, nice post - Expecially with your example 3DMark scores for me to compare with.

I have just bumped the Q6600 up to 3.6, but not sure how long I'll be able to last (I'm keeping an eye on temps, and they are getting a bit to hot for comfort - I saw 67 degrees at one point).

I'll do some pricing for the i7, but to be honest, doubtful I can afford to change - will wait and see how BC2 performs first anyway

 

[Dale]

Your Q6600 is fine. Look at this thread:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18120479

If a Phenom II is fine with an HD5970 I would also think that a Q6600 would be fine too.

3DMark06 is also not such a good test any more and I would be using 3D Mark Vantage.

I did think that, tried Vantage, but it stacks it after running the "system tests" at the beginning, so can't get a score.

 

[Dale]

No worries mate, glad I could help... I know the feeling, I've been wanting to upgrade for ~a month and thankfully got a lot of overtime, so was just able to scrape enough together hehe

One other thing I've just found... the new leaked 10.3s give a nice little boost in Dirt2... added another 10fps which I was surprised about! Not necessary, but always nice... Haven't tried any other games yet.

What cooling have you got? That's pretty warm for a 6600, but not too bad really, I always put my cut-off temp at 70C.

I ran my 6600 with a Noctua cooler and never noticed it peak over 60 (HAF932, so plenty of airflow), 3.6 was happy with 1.375V @ 400x9

I always found 400x9 to be more stable and run on a lower voltage than 450x9 with the difference in performance negligable.

Forgot to mention, this does all depend on what resolution you're running... I use 1920x1080. I've read through the thread and can't see your res...?

Cjheers Crinkleshoes

Bit more info:

Res is 1920 x 1200
Cooler is a Tuniq Tower (was running a Noctua, but just ditched it for a more powerful fan for now...)
I'm running 400x9 - but the only way I've got it remotely stable is with LOTS of voltage (1.53) - This is where (possibly?) some of my problem lies, I'm not sure I've Overcloced correctly in the BIOS?
(it is idling at the moment at about 41 degrees)
I've got a link for the 10.3's, I'll give them a go later...

If I turned the voltage down to 1.375 there is no way (in it's current state) it would be stable at 3.6, the only way I've found it to be stable is more voltage. I'll take a photo of the BIOS settings later and post them up for consideration.

Thanks again for the help, all very much appreciated!!!

 

[Dale]

Asus P5K Premium - I did try upping the NB to 1.3, maybe that wasn't enough?

Agree on the CPU, runs 3.4 very stable - but you know how it is, we always want more!

 

[Dale]

OK, I'll try upping the NB to 1.5, see what that achieves

 

[Dale]

Hey Crinkle, upped NB to 1.55 (either 1.55 or 1.7) and didn't really make a blind bit of difference with Prime, still stacks after about 2-3min or so. Borderlands or L4D2 don't ever appear to crash though.. big test will be BC2 in 2 days time.

I will install Fear2 tonight, see how that runs and report back here.

Did some Borderlands testing as well, the 5970's GPU's never really stress above 40-50%, ever. So I guess the CPU is actually bottlenecking as you thought. (mind you, CPU doesn't really stress over 60% or so either, but don't think Borderlands is that CPU intesive is it?)

 

[Dale]

Interesting conversations going here

Chipps, install Fraps, be interesting to see what FPS you are getting? I' sure I can run Crysis at max everything, just won't be what I consider playable gaming.

Doppleganger, take a look here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=16088819#post16088819

It's another good Q6600 thread, more specifically this post (by JTrickle):

Gona need to post a bit more than that

I'm pretty happy with mine that I picked up last month. Been with a core2 3.8ghz for ages. Decided to go for the quad after coming across a few games now that use them. And also, as they seem to be going up in price now, not down.

On paper, a 4gh amd Phenom2 is only 10% faster than a 3.6 core2quad /w 2+mb cach per core.

...interesting that he says the Phenom2 is only 10% faster?

Tomorrow commeth the hour, BC2 and I'll report back what my 3.6 (slightly toasty!) overclock can do with the 5970 in tow (or more like the other way around lol).

 

[Dale]

Yeah, I'd say high 30's would annoy me (not that I own Crysis, but I do know how hardware intensive it is!)

The BC2 Beta went ofline 4ish days ago I think when the Beta closed down in prep for the full release.

Thanks for reporting back though

 

[Dale]

Yeah I wanna see him elaborate on that. I'll do a bit more research before I decide on what to do. Good luck with the overclock! There's something deeply satisfying about getting to 3.6Ghz with a Q6600.

Indeed, exactly what I would like to see - Not sure I'd go that way yet though, I haven't done even nearly enough research.

Satisfying yes, however the fact that Prime last for less time that it takes to make a cuppa is always in the back of my mind - however, so far it hasn't affected my gaming or Windows 7 experience so I'll let it lie. If the OS starts crashing then I'll know its a real issue...

 

[Dale]

Btw, here's an idea of what I'm on about. It's DX10, Enthusiast Shaders, 2 x AA on the frost level so it's a pretty tough benchmark. See my minimum frame rates of 12.79!

Thanks for that Doppleganger, if I ever install Crysis (which I think I should, even if it is for benchmarking!!!) I'll run the same thing to compare.

we have this thread here where we were doing single and multi threaded benchmarks at our overclocked speeds and our q6600's seemed to be doing quite well in the chart - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18108128

hopefully my bfbc2 will be delivered tomorrow and i can get some figures in fraps in it for you

i have never used fraps before and normally just go by how the game feels to me as to how to set it up, at first farcry 2 seemed a little jumpy at max settings 1920 x 1200 but a couple of forceware updates have changed that and all feels smooth with that also maxed out now.

Thats good - If the game feels fine to you then that is what counts - after all, it is only you playing on your PC - However, if we're problem solving or comparing frames at specific clocks you'll find Fraps is so widely used as a reliable, free FPS counter then it is a good idea to have it installed to chuck numbers around the board

 

[Dale]

I better not tell you that I could make 4.05GHz bench-stable then... lol (well, i'm talking 3d mark / game stable... maybe not prime etc, i never tried because of the temps)

Granted that's with wayyyy too many volts than you should ever put through an air-cooled chip and with about a dozen fans in various configurations including a 30cm desk fan pointed squarely at the side of the open case... lol!

Ran 3.78 for a while, but that got too hot for my liking aswell... 3.6 was just the sweet spot for 24/7 use


Only 1hr 18 mins til bfbc2 is unlocked

Oi you! Be quiet! 3.6 is plenty before I actually melt the die at 90+ degrees! lol

...oh, and I'm clock watching as we speak re: BC2!

i was deeply satisfied getting mine to 3.5 for the fritz and super pi benchmarking let alone 3.6

I ran mine at 3.5 since I got it, and all in all, pretty happy with the result (2.4 up to 3.5 on minimal air cooling, can't be disgruntled with that at all)

The only thing I was a touch irritated at was the performance increase (or lack of) when I bought my 5970. As we've covered above, the only way I think we're going to get full use out of that card is with a mobo / CPU upgrade.

 

[Dale]

Headshot_Harry

 

[Dale]

Christ, I've not logged into that for years! lol

Are you "Crinkleshoes"? I'll try adding you...

**Edit: I did just get a weird Steam message saying that something was offline.....