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Q6600 to i5

mr1000

mr1000

mr1000

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Joined
7 Dec 2007
Posts
412
I will be upgrading my PC in the near future, primarily to be able to play Elite Dangerous, I know my graphics card wont cut it (GT8800) and that will be the first upgrade (probably a GTX970), question is, will the Q6600 cut it? I realise it will bottleneck the card, but will it be significant?

Budget doesn't allow me to upgrade mobo, cpu, ram and graphics right now, if I can get away with it I will just do the card and the rest later. (earliest early next year, possibly not for another year if I can)

Any thoughts?
 
I would sell the Q6600, board etc and buy a AMD 8xxx series if you are on a budget. Maybe get a cheaper GPU.
 
Old gear will be going to a PC for my son, so selling on not an option unfortunately... I want to future proof as much as possible, staggering the upgrades makes that more possible. If it weren't for the release date for Elite, I would do it all at once. I suppose the real question is, will my current setup, with the new GPU do the job until I can upgrade the rest? The 960 sounds interesting though, but will it be much cheaper and not too much of a performance drop?

Is all I can do atm not to place the order so I can join the Beta.... :-)
 
Mr1000, get a second hand 6950/70 from someone, they cheap as hell now (£50/60) and that will be fine till you can get a new PC.

You still be bottlenecked, but it's better then the GT8800.
 
So, general consensus is, its not worth upgrading the GPU until I can upgrade the rest too? or go for a mid way card for now.... Something about spending money on something I know I will be replacing in a few months doesn't sit too well with me... :-/
 
mr1000 said:
So, general consensus is, its not worth upgrading the GPU until I can upgrade the rest too? or go for a mid way card for now.... Something about spending money on something I know I will be replacing in a few months doesn't sit too well with me... :-/
Click to expand...

Having had a similar debate with myself recently (previously on a Q6600 3.2, 4gb, 5770) I decided to go for a new system. One of the main things that swung it for me was not just the performance but I wanted more memory (DDR2) and USB3 as well as all the efficiency improvements with the newer chipsets and processors (I tend to leave my machine running).

I am very happy with the improvement and with the possible exception of adding hyperthreading via an upgrade I am set for a few years.
 
I've recently gone from a Q6600 at 3.4 to a i5 2500k at 4.5.

I upgraded mostly because of bulk photo editing. If I was only gaming I'd have kept the Q6600 and just gone with a more powerful GPU.

How much RAM is it running, and what PSU is running it currently? A 6950 for around the £60 mark and a CPU OC to 3.2Ghz (If your mobo is able) would be a nice upgrade.
 
I actually completely disagree with most comments on here.

Buy the 970 assuming you have a decent ish PSU yes there will be a bottleneck but the graphics card does most of the work on 3d games and a Q6600 is still a very capable cpu I suspect people would be very surprised to see the results and you will be very disappointed at how little difference it makes when you get round to replacing the CPU.
 
Sheesh man, even a modern Celeron will kick that 6600's back end.

You've got a lot of choices at that section of the market man. AMD 6300, Pentium Anniversary, Celerons....

My worry would not be that the Q6600 will bottleneck. Of course it will.. The GTX 660 was about where the balance ended. My concern would be that your old board will support Maxwell. I highly, highly doubt any company would bother adding support now (As in a new bios update).

Tread carefully. Lots of 775 boards did not even support Fermi properly, and had trouble with Kepler.
 
I'm also upgrading from my Q6600 at some point but I work on my machine and need a CPU good for 3D rendering. Most likely going to go all out and go for X99 but the parts I want aren't available yet and it's looking to be quite pricey. If I was just going to do some light work I probably would have just gone for a 8370 system. Hell it's probably still good for more high end work and I've almost been tempted to just go with it. I also game to but I'm not mad on 4K resolution and having render quality all at maximum.
 
ALXAndy said:
Sheesh man, even a modern Celeron will kick that 6600's back end.

You've got a lot of choices at that section of the market man. AMD 6300, Pentium Anniversary, Celerons....

My worry would not be that the Q6600 will bottleneck. Of course it will.. The GTX 660 was about where the balance ended. My concern would be that your old board will support Maxwell. I highly, highly doubt any company would bother adding support now (As in a new bios update).

Tread carefully. Lots of 775 boards did not even support Fermi properly, and had trouble with Kepler.
Click to expand...

Do you mean the board might not even be compatible with a 970?

Its an ASUS PK5-E
 
2Thumbs said:
I've recently gone from a Q6600 at 3.4 to a i5 2500k at 4.5.

I upgraded mostly because of bulk photo editing. If I was only gaming I'd have kept the Q6600 and just gone with a more powerful GPU.

How much RAM is it running, and what PSU is running it currently? A 6950 for around the £60 mark and a CPU OC to 3.2Ghz (If your mobo is able) would be a nice upgrade.
Click to expand...

Running 4GB Ram and a Corsair HX 520W PSU
 
mr1000 said:
Do you mean the board might not even be compatible with a 970?

Its an ASUS PK5-E
Click to expand...

Yes. That would be up to Asus to sort out and update the bios as needed, but whether they would bother now? no idea.

When I bought my Radeon 5770s I got a black screen until I had updated the bios on my old AM2+ board.

Mind you there's always DSR.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-531-IN

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-582-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2698

Then pick up some second hand ram. IIRC all of Asus' H81 boards will overclock the Pentium, and bit-tech managed 4.6ghz on the stock cooler @ 90c (which though is hot is within acceptable limits).

Then

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-065-KF&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1750

IMO works out around the same as a 970 but is a much better upgrade all round.

Please make sure you first check whether that board overclocks the Pentium. I read that all Asus H81 do but I could be wrong.
 
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