The thing is I know I have the money now!! In 6 months I might be broke
Then put that money away somewhere and don't spend it! If you can buy a new pc now and not suffer any ill effects from the cash outlay, then save it for the time being.
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Sandy Bridge experience on Arma2 (from Q6600)
- Thread starter PCM2
- Start date
Then put that money away somewhere and don't spend it! If you can buy a new pc now and not suffer any ill effects from the cash outlay, then save it for the time being.
I disagree how many people even care about badly optimized games like crysis and arma II ? the old Q6600 has years left in it.
theres no need to disagree - just stick with your q6600 and dont upgade to sb. My q6600 runs @3.0 and it doesnt even play moh online without bottlenecking my gpu.
in benchmarks its a different story its dose aswell as any one else with the same gpu - in gameplay its just holds my gpu back big time.
nice info PMC2
Soldato
Arma2 is not a badly optimised game....given how much is going on it's a PROPER pc game that actually bothers to push hardware.
Thanks for this OP great article really.
I was tempted to upgrade but it doesn't seem worth it really for the cost/performance....another wait ensures.
Oh and the the q6600 over clocking I hate how people assume all chips can be mega over clocked and its simply not the case and peps are just given **** advice.
Like the OP my chips on water and I can't go over 3.1 no matter what I try and my board is regarded as one of the top over clockers.
Soldato
I agree. Even with 1.1Ghz + faster clock for clock + comparison to 4 years old cpu, there isn't substantial framerate difference. By now SB should have been giving 3 times the framerates over Q6600.
Pentium4 > Core 2 Huge increase in performance
Core2 > Core i series Incremental increase in performance
Core i series > SB Incremental increase in performance
it isnt the cpu that gives you framerates its the gpu (aslong as it isnt bottlenecked by the cpu)
I have this problem too. my Q9550 is still fine, it works. clock is stable at 3.8ghz
but something about sandy just makes me want to buy buy buy.
I have decided to get a 580 GTX first. hopefully that will satisfy the upgrade bug
comes down to money really, if you have enough then its a worthwhile upgrade, if you dont its not so bad to leave it, its 400-450 for what id buy, (i want 8gig of ram)
hopefully some review site will do a comparison @ same clockspeed, if they could do same ram speed (not sure if possible) then that would be awesome
hopefully some review site will do a comparison @ same clockspeed, if they could do same ram speed (not sure if possible) then that would be awesome
Even if you don't need to upgrade, it's worth considering whether it's the right time to do so anyway.
Your Q9550 and DDR2 memory are still very much in demand and worth a decent amount of money so now could be the best time to sell. If you wait six or twelve months then, whilst the price of the new kit may be slightly lower, the value of your current stuff could be significantly lower, thus the price to upgrade actually increases
i play arma2 quite often these days, mostly online with grass disabled. max view distance 5000 and everything set to high @ 1680x1050 resolution. im still getting decent fps (at least it feels smooth enough) from my amd phenom2 940 (not overclocked atm), checking in task manager and cpu usage maxes out at 50%, saw a big increase in frames when i got a 6950 gfx card.
ill be back with some fraps logs.
ill be back with some fraps logs.
Associate
That's what I've done - £301 for my Q9650 & 8GB 8500 goes a long way towards a free upgrade. Swapped in a dirt cheap e7200 and 2GB with my P5Q Deluxe and I've still got half decent performance while I decide to upgrade now or when the prices settle. Bit of a hassle selling and rebuilding tho.
Associate
Why so many people moaning about cost of upgrades mainly the q6600 owners when the q6600 came out board, CPU, and ram was about the same price as the sandy bridge set up
I don't see much moaning. What I see is people deciding if they should upgrade or not and thinking about the cost of buying now / waiting, seeing as the Q6600 isn't exactly a dead duck yet
.Nobody is moaning ? 
I think the sandybridge prices are pretty good overall for brand new tech.
If people want to wrongly believe that a Q6600 is bottle necking them that is fine too.
End of the day it's your money and up to you isn't it.
But don't try and give people the impression that a Q6600 is going to be a problem for gaming in the next two years as it isn't
Obviously if you always have the latest greatest top end graphics cards a potential bottle neck might occur for xfire Sli etc but then money isn't an issue so changing to sandybridge is a no brainer.
I am not 100% sure at what point a bottleneck can occur but I think it's more very best gpu and or two card setups that require a 4ghz cpu and not many single card solutions.
I think the sandybridge prices are pretty good overall for brand new tech.
If people want to wrongly believe that a Q6600 is bottle necking them that is fine too.
End of the day it's your money and up to you isn't it.
But don't try and give people the impression that a Q6600 is going to be a problem for gaming in the next two years as it isn't
Obviously if you always have the latest greatest top end graphics cards a potential bottle neck might occur for xfire Sli etc but then money isn't an issue so changing to sandybridge is a no brainer.
I am not 100% sure at what point a bottleneck can occur but I think it's more very best gpu and or two card setups that require a 4ghz cpu and not many single card solutions.
Last edited:
Associate
- Joined
- 29 Oct 2007
- Posts
- 37
If there was such a thing as a Q6600 fanboy I reckon you might just qualify. Did you even read the results posted?Nobody is moaning ?
I think the sandybridge prices are pretty good overall for brand new tech.
If people want to wrongly believe that a Q6600 is bottle necking them that is fine too.
End of the day it's your money and up to you isn't it.
But don't try and give people the impression that a Q6600 is going to be a problem for gaming in the next two years as it isn't
Obviously if you always have the latest greatest top end graphics cards a potential bottle neck might occur for xfire Sli etc but then money isn't an issue so changing to sandybridge is a no brainer.
I am not 100% sure at what point a bottleneck can occur but I think it's more very best gpu and or two card setups that require a 4ghz cpu and not many single card solutions.
I only logged on to see if anyone had tried SB with Arma2 yet - many thanks PCM2 for the info. I play Arma2 almost exclusively on the specs below, and am limited on the mobo/RAM to 3.7GHz at anything like stable, the potential 4.5GHz+ has fuelled the (already smoking) upgrade bug as there is no way I would get to that speed currently. And as pointed out, the shelf life of these components (and a few other backups on the shelf) is limited.
The benchmarks are a pretty tough test for any system, and as pointed out the min fps are not fully representive (I often see dips in the teens but it does not feel like it, not being a twitch FPS game).
I can imagine a GPU upgrade following many CPUs for this game, with SB.
Thanks again for the info.
cjph
The benchmarks are a pretty tough test for any system, and as pointed out the min fps are not fully representive (I often see dips in the teens but it does not feel like it, not being a twitch FPS game).
I can imagine a GPU upgrade following many CPUs for this game, with SB.
Thanks again for the info.
cjph
Caporegime
Arma 2 is coded like crap.
Surely if that happens to be what someone plays then how it is coded is neither here nor there as far as they are concerned. All they care about is which chip at an affordable price can play that crap code at the fastest speeds. One of those tests shows the minimum frame rate has doubled from a frankly crappy 15 to a far more useful 31. To someone who actually plays the game that is a godsend surely?
To anyone who doesn't play, and if it really is coded like crap, then no maybe not. But the thread is quite clearly titled.
^Precisely, the whole "crap coding" argument really gets on my wick.
The reason for poor performance is irrelevant, providing that hardware upgrades still see gains. And here we can clearly see that there is gains to be had from a faster CPU.
If anything, so-called 'craply coded' (i.e. those with bad performance) games are an even better benchmark and an even more persuasive argument to upgrade because you see noticable gains from faster hardware.
On the contrary, I'd say a ~50% increase in minimum framerate is absolutely fantastic and far better than one might have hoped for from only a 30% higher clockspeed. He could have spent £300-400 on a new GPU and probably seen lesser gains.
To the OP, I think the real lesson here is that you need to start manually tweaking - get that voltage and clockspeed cranked up as there are clearly some further gains to be ha in Arma2.
The reason for poor performance is irrelevant, providing that hardware upgrades still see gains. And here we can clearly see that there is gains to be had from a faster CPU.
If anything, so-called 'craply coded' (i.e. those with bad performance) games are an even better benchmark and an even more persuasive argument to upgrade because you see noticable gains from faster hardware.
On the contrary, I'd say a ~50% increase in minimum framerate is absolutely fantastic and far better than one might have hoped for from only a 30% higher clockspeed. He could have spent £300-400 on a new GPU and probably seen lesser gains.
To the OP, I think the real lesson here is that you need to start manually tweaking - get that voltage and clockspeed cranked up as there are clearly some further gains to be ha in Arma2.