Upgrade path?

Yeah, that's true regarding all that outlay, I'm just faced with two real choices. Either go Q6600 and upgrade the graphics, or go with a far better CPU, and then have to stick with the graphics card I have right now.

Its a toughie, especially considering that Southern Islands should be released later this year, but again, once that comes along it won't be too long until NI, and that whole agressive cycle starts again.

Personally, I must admit I'm leaning towards the whole upgrade to AMD now, and then come my birthday in October stick my money into a top of the line SI card, hopefully before the prices jump like they did with this series. But obviously a hex core system would be held back by the 5770, though only for a few months...

Dammit, I want to upgrade everything! :x

Edit: The most notable game I can't really play is the APB beta, though obviously that's an unoptimised beta, so its not exected to be super smooth. Dirt2 is also hitting 100% over both CPUs, as does BC2. Though I appreciate that these games are also going to be GPU limited to an extent as well.
 
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iviv said:
Yeah, that's true regarding all that outlay, I'm just faced with two real choices. Either go Q6600 and upgrade the graphics, or go with a far better CPU, and then have to stick with the graphics card I have right now.
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Well, I wouldn't go that far saying Phenom II X6 is 'far' better than a Q6600. While 6 cores benefit people that use it for heavy-thread tasks such as video encoding etc, gaming wise it is only on par with most Quad cores in terms of frame rate (worse in some cases).

Phenom II X6 is the same architecture as the Phenom II X4, but with two extra cores, so it's not really a huge step forward for gaming because most games don't even use up the 4 cores.

If you want to upgrade with entire make-over, 2011 year would be a better time to do it, as both AMD and Intel would provide more CPUs for you to choose from (thus hopefully push the prices of the current ranges down). For now, you can just grab a 2nd hand Q6600 to use, and wait till AMD and Intel release their new CPUs; you can sell your Q6600 for simliar price you bought it and upgrade then.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Well, I wouldn't go that far saying Phenom II X6 is 'far' better than a Q6600. While 6 cores benefit people that use it for heavy-thread tasks such as video encoding etc, gaming wise it is only on par with most Quad cores in terms of frame rate (worse in some cases).

Phenom II X6 is the same architecture as the Phenom II X4, but with two extra cores, so it's not really a huge step forward for gaming because most games don't even use up the 4 cores.

If you want to upgrade with entire make-over, 2011 year would be a better time to do it, as both AMD and Intel would provide more CPUs for you to choose from (thus hopefully push the prices of the current ranges down). For now, you can just grab a 2nd hand Q6600 to use, and wait till AMD and Intel release their new CPUs; you can sell your Q6600 for simliar price you bought it and upgrade then.
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Ah, a voice of reason! :p

When you put it like that, the Q6600 really does seem like the best option for now, doesn't it? Lets see if I can find a nice cheap one in the MM then!
 
I'm wondering . . . iviv has a 65nm Conroe clocked at 3.4GHz on an old ASUS P5B . . . will he be able to clock a used Kentsfield up to the same frequency? (i.e can the mobo handle an overclocked quad?) . .

If his games are not Multi-Threaded then perhaps they will run a bit slower if he can't clock the Quad to 3.4GHz?
 
Big.Wayne said:
I'm wondering . . . iviv has a 65nm Conroe clocked at 3.4GHz on an old ASUS P5B . . . will he be able to clock a used Kentsfield up to the same frequency? (i.e can the mobo handle an overclocked quad?) . .

If his games are not Multi-Threaded then perhaps they will run a bit slower if he can't clock the Quad to 3.4GHz?
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Let's 'assume' he can only overclock the Q6600 to 3.0-3.2GHz...it's not gonna bottleneck the 5770. Even if the 5850 was bottlenecked by the Q6600 in dual-threaded games, 5-10% less performance on a 5850 would still be way higher frame rate than a 5770...so I would worry too much about it.
 
I thought I was happy then, but suddenly more good points are being made XD

Thats a good point though, Wayne. My overclocking's limited by the northbridge overheating from my RAM, but with the current price of ram, its silly to change to 2x2Gb sticks at this point in time. Though then again, I may be able to make most of the money back selling my current ram... but then again, if I'm going to be buying ram, buying more DDR2 is just going to be buying into a dead end?

So assuming a quad's going to need more power than a dual, that's probably going to mean that I'll be overheating at lower speeds?

I mean, the is obviously speculation, I appreciate that, but considering I could end up with worse performance in some games with this upgrade, would it be worth it? I would like to assume that most games released in the past year or so would be multi-threaded, so the individual core power didn't matter so much as more cores could pick up the slack, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the case.

Ugh, damn you all! I was hoping this would be simple!
 
iviv . . . I was just re-reading the thread and I saw you mention you play Supreme Commander? . . . Isn't that one of those RTS games that gets a good boost from more cores?

How does it play atm with your 3.4GHz Conroe?
 
Supreme Commander does run better a quad core but TBH it runs fine on my backup PC which has an E6320 overclocked to 2.8GHZ and an HD3870. OTH,Forged Alliance is a bit more demanding though! My main PC has a Q6600.
 
It plays pretty well, had to disable AA since ATI cards hate it, though that may have been fixed in a recent driver.
I've not actually played it recently, though I think I do remember it starting to chug a little when you got up to silly unit numbers on the larger 8 player maps, but that may just be me trying to talk mysef into an upgrade XD
And yes, I do use FA, wouldn't touch the vanilla game again after it :p

Also, Wayne, you did that thread on why the Phenom's are better than i7's, didn't you? That was an interesting read, and made me look at the Phenom's in advance of this thread, since Intel's are always the ones people are shouting about, but in comparison they seem much more expensive.

Edit: Looking at that chart, My E6600 at 3.4 would be similar to their E6750 at 3.3? Still, there are a fair few FPS between that and the Q6600 at 3.3, assuming I could get mine that high. That's the problem though, its all assuming I can clock it as high as my current one :x
 
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A Phenom II X4 955BE and an AM2+ Crossfire capable motherboard will cost around £200.

Perhaps if you could get a Q6700 the higher multiplier will make easier to overclock on your motherboard.
 
Big.Wayne said:
I see . . . so what's the main reason he's upgrading from a LGA775 3.4GHz Dual to a 3.0GHz Quad?
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That's exactly what I was thinking. Unless he's upgrading his 5770 to something better, he doesn't even need to upgrade his CPU at all. However, IF he does upgrade from 5770 to...let's say a 5850, the Q6600's extra cores will compensate the short coming of the low clock speed in newer games that are optimised for Quad. True that a Q6600 is not gonna be faster than a E6600 if both are at the same clock speed for single/dual threaded games and may not be using the 5850 to its max, but for games that are optimised for Quad the Q6600 don't need to be clocked too high to use the 5850 fully.

By the way iviv, what res you gaming at? 1920x1080 I assume?

As for upgrading, 2011 would be a better time to do so, even if it's upgrading to AMD Bulldozer. I would imagine there would be motherboards with better chipsets optimised for the AMD Bulldozer and are better than the current range of 800 chipset AM3 boards.
 
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I'm at 1680x1050, and 1440x900, games on the larger one unless they're multi monitor :p

At the moment, this looks like its going to be a two part upgrade. Mobo/cpu first, and then graphics later. Though then again, maybe if I save all my money until 2011, then grab either the new intel or AMD chips, as well as an SI card, hopefully that will keep me going for another 4 years like this rig has.

Only problem is that I won't have anything new and shiny now! Oh well, I guess I can wait!
 
iviv said:
I'm at 1680x1050, and 1440x900, games on the larger one unless they're multi monitor :p

At the moment, this looks like its going to be a two part upgrade. Mobo/cpu first, and then graphics later. Though then again, maybe if I save all my money until 2011, then grab either the new intel or AMD chips, as well as an SI card, hopefully that will keep me going for another 4 years like this rig has.

Only problem is that I won't have anything new and shiny now! Oh well, I guess I can wait!
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Actually I just remember something...

Why don't you download MSI Afterburner and overclock your 5770? That doesn't cost a thing (well, except tiny bit of hard-drive space and internet bandwidth :D).
 
Hmm, I never really thought much about it. I did try using that Catalyst's inbuilt thingy, it spend half an hour to decide that I could crank the card up to the maximum clocks with absolutely no problem whatsoever, started up a game and it bluescreened, and continued to do so until I put it back to stock speeds, not even 1mhz would keep it stable XD

I put that down to some dodgy software, though. I'll try that afterburner this evening!

I assume when OCing the card, its just a matter of putting everything up 5hz, stressing it for 20 mins, and repeat? Or is it simpler/more complicated? (And it'll work on my sapphire card, right? :p )
 
iviv said:
I assume when OCing the card, its just a matter of putting everything up 5hz, stressing it for 20 mins, and repeat? Or is it simpler/more complicated? (And it'll work on my sapphire card, right? :p )
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How about just ask over at the graphic card forum for people that overclocked their 5770 to give you some numbers/figures to use as reference? :p
 
Yeah. I'm having some issues with overclocking it, since as soon as I increase either of the clock's, the idle clock speeds drop to rock bottom, which is useless for desktop work/Aero generally since its all laggy. Removing the overclock brings speeds back up to normal idle levels.
Under load, the new clock speeds are in effect, and the GPU's hitting 75C after 5 mins stress, I'm not sure how hot they can run at, though it is a hot day.

Anyway, I posted all this in my thread in graphics, just waiting for a reply now XD
 
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