Time to upgrade the Q6600

Sparky · 22 Oct 2011 at 00:11

Ok for starters,the Q6600 @ 3.4 has been imense and probably one of the best chips ive ever owned [well apart from the Opteron 146 i owned that was just a crazy chip]

Time to upgrade to one of these SB chips, probably a 2600k but [heres the crunch] What will i gain in performance from the move?
I mainly use the HTPC for bluray movies fed to a 1080p projector and just lately, BF3. Is it worth upgrading? will BF3 run better with the SB,what else do i need mobo,ram etc?

edit: money is no object

mysticsniper · 22 Oct 2011 at 00:13

The i5 2500k is your best bet, rather than the 2600k, unless you heavy into encoding?

The Asrock gen 3 motherboards seems to be very popular at the moment.

Westie · 22 Oct 2011 at 01:05

ive just gone from q9550 to I5 2500k, asrock extreme4 gen3 mobo 8 gig xms3 ram and kuhler watercooling, should hopefully hit 5ghz

BF3 will be awesome i only game at 1080p

ive known few people that went from 6600 to sandybridge and said they saw a massive performance in everything they did!

Buchanan0204 · 22 Oct 2011 at 01:10

I would personally wait for the next generation of Intel chips. The Sandybridge has been out quite a while now.

I have a Q6600, I'm more than happy with it. I built a friends PC a few months back with a 2500K at 4.6Ghz. I started transoding a movie in handbrake. When the Q6600 was at 25% the 2500K was at 40%. That was unfortunately not that big a jump for me. I was expecting double, if not more. My Q6600 is at 3.6Ghz... but still!

In games. I never see any improvement either with the same graphics card. Just going by the eye, not by monitoring of frames or benches. I can max most games with my Q6600.

Conclusion... Wait for Ivy or whatever is after that.