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Upgrade advice from a Q6700

BigBANGtheory

BigBANGtheory

BigBANGtheory

Soldato
Joined
21 Apr 2007
Posts
2,649
Hi gents, would appreciate some upgrade advice and opinions.

My main system is now 4yrs old I run a skt775 Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 @3.2GHz (overclocked from 2.66GHz), with 8GB of DDR2-800 (not overclocked) on an Abit AB9 QuadGT.

I have been through 2 cycles of GPU upgrades going from a Nvidia 8800 GTX OC -> ATI 4890 -> AMD 6950 OC. I mention this since my latest GPU is probably being held back by the CPU now, maybe it is maybe it isnt its just my perception.

The PC is used for a variety of tasks but obviously PC gaming @1080p is what consumes the resources.

Will I notice much of a difference with a Sandy Bridge CPU OC to ~4.5GHz?
Should I be waiting for Skt2011 having waited this long?
Should I just wait until I hit a brick wall with an application/game running too slowly or compromised in visual settings?
 
yes you will , i went from a 775 q6600 @ 3ghz to an i7 920 @ 4ghz and theres a big improvement in games, winrar , vegas etc etc

775 is old now, no denying it - its simply not really a socket anyone should be considering anymore for gaming.
 
The biggest improvement you would see is frame rate in games that don't use 4 cores fully.

For games that is well-optimised for quad, my overclocked 5850 (around as fast as a stock speed 6950) would pretty much sticking to 99% GPU usage at all time with my Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz...but in games that doesn't use all 4 cores, GPU usage will take a drive and so does the frame rate during the intensive scenes.

So the simple answer is in games that use Quad fully your Q6700 at 3.2GHz won't be much of a bottleneck for your 6950, but in games that only use 1~3cores, the bottleneck is quite severe.

I myself is tempted to upgrade to SB as well, but it's not because my overclocked Q6600 being incapable, but more to do with damn game developers still fail to make every single game well-optimised for Quad being a common standard .
 
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Thanks for the replies.

I can run everything I want ok atm, and yes single threaded and poorly optimised games are the worst of the bunch like Arma2 and X3.

I guess its the belief I could be missing out on significant performance gains without the additional CPU power that motivates the upgrade I don't want to upgrade for the sake of it though I want some tangible gains for the money.
 
Went from Q6600 to 2600K and the difference in games is phenomenal. The Witcher 2 is even smooth now in 1920x1200 (GTX 580).

Running 2600k @ 4.2GHz at the moment.
 
You could get a 9550 chip from the members market for £100 and it'd save you a few quid on a new sandy setup. If you have the money then defo get a sandy chip setup but then you're also looking at the outlay of RAM, MOBO and maybe a cooler too. I fyou have the spare cash then go for it :) If not then a q9550 or q9650 chip would be a good improvement as you can clock either to 3.6 or more.
 
subbytna said:
You could get a 9550 chip from the members market for £100 and it'd save you a few quid on a new sandy setup. If you have the money then defo get a sandy chip setup but then you're also looking at the outlay of RAM, MOBO and maybe a cooler too. I fyou have the spare cash then go for it :) If not then a q9550 or q9650 chip would be a good improvement as you can clock either to 3.6 or more.
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Core2's architecture is still too slow for light thread games though.
 
What about the skt2011 arguement i.e. is that likely to provide tangible gains over skt1155 Sandy Bridge CPUs and therefore worth waiting for?

I must admit there are so few application which take advantage of 4 physical cores atm that I am a little sceptical on 6+ cores until everyone starts using x64 multi processor compilers for a few years.

I also seem to recall reading an article on the lack of real world performance going from dual to triple channel memory banks.
 
subbytna said:
You could get a 9550 chip from the members market for £100 and it'd save you a few quid on a new sandy setup. If you have the money then defo get a sandy chip setup but then you're also looking at the outlay of RAM, MOBO and maybe a cooler too. I fyou have the spare cash then go for it :) If not then a q9550 or q9650 chip would be a good improvement as you can clock either to 3.6 or more.
Click to expand...

all depends on what your budget is as subbytna said upgrading to Sb will mean changing your mobo,ram,cpu cooler possible optical drive if it ide as most sb boards today don't have ide controller onit, its sata only. i would recommend upgrading cpu to either q9550 or q9650 as a stop gap for now and start saving up for socket 2011 cpu that will be coming out in the q1/q2 of 2012.
 
Sorry to hijack your thead, but I'm in the same boat as OP but with a Q9400 @ 3.2Ghz. Would I notice a major difference too?
 
hmm upgrading to q9550 or q9650 you be able to overclocker to higher speed more eariler and safely. i currently got a q9550 @ 3.4ghz but that is has high as i can get it with my current cpu cooler as it only a Arctic Freezer 7 Pro (rev1) which i got back in 2008 if i were to get a mega or true ulta 120 then i could overclock to 4ghz in theory, 3.8ghz for sure.
 
Thanks for the advice gents, I follow your logic and the Q9550 overclock seems the most sensible option to buy me a little more time and mileage out of skt775. I have a Tuniq Tower 120 cooler which should still do a decent job...

I don't think my reputation is good enough to allow me to join the members market yet so I might have to explore the public auctions.
 
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