Q6600 bottleneck?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 2 Mar 2010 at 16:24

Dale said:
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

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.

Dale · 2 Mar 2010 at 16:34

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
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.

crinkleshoes · 2 Mar 2010 at 17:45

Dale said:
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

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...?

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
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.

Depends what you mean by "fine" mate... that's 2560x1600, so is going to be much more graphically dependant than the likes of 1920x1200 or lower... which is where you run in to cpu limitations. Having said that... BC2 especially is VERY CPU intensive.

That thread doesn't show any games where cpu limits the playability of the game... dirt 2 and BC2 are the important ones from my point of view...

Dale · 2 Mar 2010 at 18:00

crinkleshoes said:
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!!!

crinkleshoes · 2 Mar 2010 at 18:18

What motherboard are you running?

On my X48... there's one voltage which needs to be upped quite a bit, other than the cpu of course...

I'm pretty sure it's the northbridge, if you have an x48, I'll have a look for you... Only way to run higher frequencies is with more cpu volts, so could be that.

Otherwise, it could just be that I have a slightly better cpu, they're all different in their limitations.

Dale · 2 Mar 2010 at 20:49

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!

crinkleshoes · 2 Mar 2010 at 21:33

mine's all the way up at 1.5... hehe

Dale · 2 Mar 2010 at 23:35

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

crinkleshoes · 3 Mar 2010 at 13:24

Any luck matey?

Dale · 3 Mar 2010 at 13:45

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?)

Doppleganger · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:05

Just chiming in to say that I also think a top end GFX card can bottleneck even an overclocked Q6600 set-up. Certainly, my frame rates are not where I would expect them, seeing as I have a 5870 mildly overclocked. Looks like I'll be forced to upgrade to say an i920/i930 in order to get a decent upgrade.

chipps101 · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:21

i've been playing the bfbc2 beta for about a month now on my machine at 1920 x 1200 all settings maxed and 2x AA 4x AF and its running very smooth with no hiccups.

Doppleganger · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:31

My problem is that I want (need?) everything turned up to the max, at which point in some games the frame rate takes a dip. Especially the minimum frame rate. Think the problem is partly because of unoptimised console ports at which case you just to through brute power at them.

chipps101 · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:41

but when turning up AA & AF isn't it only the gfx card that takes the hit and not the cpu ?
and your 5870 is much more powerful than my gtx260 so should cope with ease on the AA & AF front.

Doppleganger · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:51

It doesn't though, that's the issue. It's not really a lack of system ram (I have 4 gigs) and others with the same graphics card are getting better frame rates. The only other thing it might be is a lack of VRAM but 1 gigabyte should be enough for 4xAA and 60fps gaming at 1920 x 1200 right?

Anyway, had the Q6600 for a good couple of years so about time I upgraded.

The only thing to consider now whether it's worth gambling on a Phenom II X4 955 as I don't do encoding or anything like that.

crinkleshoes · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:54

chipps101 said:
but when turning up AA & AF isn't it only the gfx card that takes the hit and not the cpu ?
and your 5870 is much more powerful than my gtx260 so should cope with ease on the AA & AF front.

Yes... BUT a handful of games of CPU limited to the point where even on the lower settings, you still can't get over 60fps...

When I started playing the BC2 Beta, I only had one 5770 and a 3ghz q6600. The only thing that slowed that down was ambient occlusion, but even with that off, I was only getting ~45fps. Ok, it was a constant 45fps so it was playable... but still not what I want when playing an FPS!

I got a second one, hooked it up, went in to the game and got 45 fps... wtf!?

Turned on ambient occlusion & 4xAA & 16xAF... 45FPS... wtf!?

Upped myy Q6600 clock speed to 3.6GHz & the frames peaked just over 50FPS.... ahhh... cpu limitation!

Got a 4GHz i7 & frames shot past the 60fps mark

Plus I get to run it with AO, 4xAA and 16xAF... niiice

chipps101 · 4 Mar 2010 at 19:11

i'm waiting to see what these new 6 core cpu's will be like before i upgrade so i'm happy to stick with my q6600 @ 3.3 just now as i truly think my gtx260 is my bottleneck atm and even then crysis warhead is the only game i have not been able to set to the highest settings with some form of AA & AF and not had a smooth playing experience at 1920 x 1200.

Dale · 4 Mar 2010 at 21:23

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).

chipps101 · 4 Mar 2010 at 22:24

ok just installed fraps and on crysis warhead 1680 x 1050 all settings to gamer with no AA i was getting mid 40's dropping to high 30's when lots of fire on the screen.
the bad company 2 beta won't let me connect to EA online atm

maybe it's down or something for tomorrow's release ?

Doppleganger · 4 Mar 2010 at 22:26

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

...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).

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.

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!