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Q6600, will my rig be suitable for gaming?

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21 Aug 2012
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7
Hey guys I have, what i think is a acer aspire m5630. All i know about it is that is has 4gb of ddr2 ram, q6600 quad core 2.40ghz and onboard vga graphics.

It is all stock besides a artic freezer 13 cpu cooler which has half my temps from 60c to 30c :) I want to get into gaming, or know the power is there when i need it. I have seen on here that the q6600 is a good cpu when overclocked but is it outdated for games like mw3? I will need a new motherboard, probably a p4Q which i have seen is good for overclocking the q6600.
Basicly can anybody help me and suggest some items for my computer??

:) Thanks
 
If you can overclock the Q6600 to 3.2GHz it's a bonus. It will play MW3, BF3 alright as long as you get a good graphics card. It will bottleneck the card but not enough to affect gaming. I was happily using mine with my 7970 to play BF3 but ended up getting an i5 3570k to unlock the potential of my card.

Just try to get overclocking that Q6600, the Q6600's I've used both needed about 1.34V in bios to run stable at 3.2Ghz, which was equal to 1.28V in windows according to HWMonitor and CPU-Z. I don't think it is worth getting a new motherboard for a Q6600, better to save money and upgrade to 1155. On ebay you can get motherboards like the P35C-DS3R for about £50 which will let you overclock but that's £50 that you could put towards a 1155 board and an i3 or something.

My last setup was 4GB DDR3 (P35C-DS3R can take DDR2 aswell)and a [email protected] and 7970. Q6600 go for about £50 on auctions.
 
The CPU shouldn;t have too much of a problem with a medicore graphics, doubtful it could do well with something like a 7850 though.
However its the onboard graphics, doubtful that will play any games. You need a new machine, proper PC really for games.
 
Q6600 with 7850 would be okay for most games at 1080p. Just struggles in multiplayer.

*sorry meant in large multiplayer servers.

Anyway, if I were you I would get a 7850 or something and see how well the rest of the pc copes with games, 4GB ram is enough for most and a stock Q6600 shouldn't be too bad and then if it sucks you can save up for a new platform, useless upgrading socket 775 now.
 
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thanks for the replys and input :) Would you recommend a new board and cpu then? They confuse me with the sockets and which one goes with which and i dont know what I would be buying, is the i7 the best setup out?
 
I'm running a Q6600 @ 3.2. It's paired with a 7850.

I'm happy with it as a gaming rig, not felt the need for a CPU upgrade yet. Might need to upgrade to the likes of Crysis 3 though! :eek:
 
Depends on what situation it is in, for gaming i5 is perfect. i7 has more features for heavy processing. There's not really any reason to get more than an i3570k with a decent z77 1155 board. For example:

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i3570k might be too much for your needs, so could save some money there.
 
Lol yeah, I wouldn't run expensive kit on an acer psu. Might be able to salvage the cd key from the Acer?

The CoA key on the sticker, that should be somewhere on the case, should be usable if it hasnt already been used. The actual key used when preinstalled is an oem key, and wont work without a SLIC table in the bios (which, afaik, no motherboards ship with outside of an oem build.)
 
Fair enough, I've never really purchased a pre built system before. My personal OEM keys have transfered through all my systems (one at a time of course).
 
I'd say get a 7850 now (and probably a new PSU, since the stock Acer one is probably rubbish- not worth destroying a new graphics card) and just see how that goes. If it isn't enough performance, then get a Z77 board, some new DDR3 RAM and a 3570k.
 
Yep, same thoughts as above. Like I said earlier, get 7850/what you can afford and if your cpu doesn't cut it for you upgrade it.
 
a graphics card will make the world of difference compared with onboard, even if you just get a 2nd hand 560ti/570
these cards will play most games on highish settings even with a Q6600, I had a Q on not much more than 1.3v running at 3.6ghz on a cheap/big cooler (HDT S963), you might also find a small bump to 6 or 8GB of RAM helps (though only if running 64bit windows of course)

your biggest problem might be that your pre-built machine is locked down and doesn't really allow upgrades / overclocking

if it won't OC at all then you might be better off with something like a 560 (non-ti) or 6870... these should still allow medium-ish settings as a stop gap to a full upgrade / whole new machine when you have more like £500-600 to spend
 
My rig is about the same, running a 4970 graphics card, it plays every thing I throw at it, Skyrim, Settlers 7, Prototype 2 and so on, been thinking of upgrading but at the moment can't see any reason to.
 
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