Would a 6 core CPU be worth the investment?

[Turb3k]

Its one of those situations i feel, if you have boat loads of cash then hell get one, if not get a 2500k!
I dont really bother upgrading i just buy a new power house once every 4-5yrs hense my sig, but i wont touch that setup till 2015 Q4 now then ill prob buy another power house.
Sometimes i get cought out and they make a big gpu leap or cpu leap sometimes i dont.
Ive not really noticed any difference in games between mine and my friends i5 2500k though.

 

[andybird123]

4850's in crossfire and then a 6870. No never low settings. Highest in most games to be fair apart from AA except BF3 which as mentioned was a struggle.

I think you've proven my point really

there's an awful lot of games that a 6870 can't run on high settings, a dual core won't have made that situation any better

that you were running games on a 6870 at all, particularly with a dual core shows that you were quite happy to turn down settings to get playable frame rates

which is fine, nothing wrong with that if that's your approach and you are happy with it

but instead of spending all that money on a 2500k system and keeping the 6870, you could have just slapped a Q in your 775 board and gotten a better graphics card... you'd have faster frame rates now if you'd gone that route instead of wasting a 2500k on a 6870

 

[Rusty0611]

that you were running games on a 6870 at all, particularly with a dual core shows that you were quite happy to turn down settings to get playable frame rates

Incorrect - I only very rarely had to turn settings down from high (read: AA off only) to get decent FPS. I'm sure if I played more games than I do I would have found one or two (like I did with BF3) that I struggled with but my general gaming experience was pleasant. And this was a new generation game on an old generation chip anyway so I wasn't expecting my old architecture dual core to perform miracles.

My i5 2500k and 6870 produce 45-75 FPS on High settings with MSAA disabled and FXAA on High in BF3. So you're just incorrect here.

But instead of spending all that money on a 2500k system and keeping the 6870, you could have just slapped a Q in your 775 board and gotten a better graphics card... you'd have faster frame rates now if you'd gone that route instead of wasting a 2500k on a 6870

It's not really wasting a 2500k on a 6870 - it's called buying a new system in increments. A new graphics card is next on the list. Why on earth would anyone throw money at a Q6600 now? Very odd logic.

Anyway I'm not even completely disagreeing with you. The point is, yes, a Q6600 was probably a better upgrade for maintaining decent performance over a longer period of time but not to the extent you were originally suggesting.

And definitely not a win all justification for going for a hex-core CPU now over a quad core.

 

[andybird123]

Why on earth would anyone throw money at a Q6600 now? Very odd logic.

because a Q is what, £40 and you could still sell the dualcore (depending what one you had) and the Q can run BF3 on Ultra if teamed with a GPU that can handle it, instead of getting a £250+ CPU / mobo / new ram and ham stringing it with a low-mid end GPU

I always take the cheapest route to achieve what I want, although sometimes there is no "cheap" route to achieve what I want - if that makes sense - i tend to look at if from a "what's the best GPU I can afford and what system do I need to back that up - will it work with what I've got", rather than buying a new system and then looking for the GPU later - I'm waiting for Kepler release to snap up another 1 or 2 cheap 580's

I do also tend to want to run my favourite games maxed out and not on "high" or no/low AA, I want the full fat version, by getting the Q I was able to do that right through to the point that I started thinking about getting 3 monitors or 1600p with 580-SLI, where as other people that had dual cores and wanted to play with everything on max had to upgrade ages ago

to be fair I did only buy the 3930k because I spotted one at not much over the rumoured (at the time) price of the 3820, and it was available right there and then instead of waiting 2 months for the 4-core, otherwise I would have gotten the 4 core 2011 and waited for Ivy-E

 

[Rusty0611]

Fair enough - I do it the other way normally: CPU, motherboard and RAM first and then graphics card later (assuming of course that the original graphics card is up to scratch)

To be fair, this system has been running less than a month and a new graphics card is being bought in a couple of months or so anyway so it would have made the a Q6600 upgrade kind of pointless but I do see your point about a cheap as possible upgrade. But I was never trying to go that route so the i5 route worked better for me.

Anyway this is all tangential to the OP