upgrade Q6600

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
gameing and video encoding
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
£1000 maybe a bit more
3) Where do you live?
uk
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
cpu mb memory psu gpu
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
case p180 keyboard mouse monitors
6) Will you be overclocking?
yes
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
24" 180x1200
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
soon
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
6 g asecond sata as i want ssd
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
windows 7 64

well its time to upgrade i think as the q6600 is getting cheeper and i dont want to wate till its worthless

the upgrade i am thinking about
Asus P6X58D-E X58£158.79 £135.14
Intel Core i7 930 D0 SLBKP Bloomfield £222.27
Sapphire HD 5970 2GB £444.99
Corsair Professional Series AX850 850W Modular PSU £146.75
6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator, DDR3 PC3-12800 £131.74

any advise please the more money i can save means i can buy a nice ssd or 2
or maybe i should stick to my old q6600 lol

You could try the SSD first, you might be surprised. That's not a bad machine.

I just made this jump almost exactly the way you have planned, trisscross. I went from getting 50-70fps on medium settings in L4D2 (q6600 at 3.2ghz 8800gts), to 200fps on maxed out settings. Starcraft 2 also runs at a solid 120fps with Ultra settings. The differences are I have a 5870, g.skill ram, and my PSU is 650w.

Have fun getting the motherboard to read all 6 gigs of ram though, there have been wide spread problems with the x58 platform trying to get all the ram detected -- you should do some research about that before diving in.

Drop the Corsair Dominator RAM and go with some XMS3 RAM instead.

What do you have as a CPU cooler?

How much does a single GTX 460 cost? In the US, two GTX 460s in SLI mode have been shown to be an excellent gaming "option" for less than one HD 5970.

@xerus` - Where are you getting that information from? I'm using 12GB in my setup and I haven't had any problems having them detected (in either the BIOS or Windows) or running them properly.

There's a fair number of people having ram detection issues across all x58 platforms...

http://i4memory.com/f54/asus-x58-6-...g-detecting-less-memory-than-installed-19200/
http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=82274
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=360061&mpage=1
http://www.ibuypower.com/ibpdri/tm.aspx?m=43131
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...rd_id=1&model=P6X58D-E&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...1&model=P6X58D+Premium&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

Some theories suggest that after market heatsinks are applying improper tension to the board which causes the ram detection issues, but others using stock heatsinks are having the same issue. Although, I don't exactly know what percentage of people out there are actually experiencing the issue, but I'm guessing it's not that large. (But still, it kinda sucks, I've been stricken with it.)

I had a memory detection problem on my build, it was actually bad memory though. There are a bunch of stories out there about CPU socket problems and memory socket problems or even getting the cooler mounted too tight. I found that odd as I hadn't heard of these things before, also there are some BIOS procedures in place to deal with them.

this memory detection problem is worrying me now i've read lots of good reviews about this board and find this disappointing should i maybe go with the Gigabyte GA-X58A, ive put up with p5wdh issues for too long

tiraides
TR3X6G1600C8 - 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic, DDR3 PC3-12800 is this the ram you recomend and can i also ask why
as for my heatsink i have 2 choices i pick one of the top 5 off frostytech or buy a waterblock and reuse my pump and 120 rad but after reading xerus post i realy dont know what to do
i could maybe consider 2x 470's would thay be any better than the 5970 i dont think there is much diffrence in price

i was also looking at HX3X12G1600C9 - 12GB (6x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) but i guess iam tempting fate a bit with this memory problem

To be honest, the links that xerus` provided are the first instances that I've known of a widespread problem with the X58 boards as a whole. However -- and I don't mean to take anything lightly -- most people who have/use an X58 board don't have any problems with it. Without further research on my (or your) part, I can't give you an estimate as to the percentage of people who have had problems with the X58 boards. Until I find something glaringly wrong, I will still recommend an X58 board for those who can fully utilize its advantages over other (P55, AMD 7xx/8xx) platforms.

Having said all of that, however, depending on how often you perform video encoding, you could go with a Socket 1156 Core i7 processor and a P55 board. Most benchmarks show that there is little difference between a P55-based setup and an X58-based setup in regards to single-GPU gaming. The X58 gains an advantage in resource-intensive programs due to its increased RAM capacity, and it gains a performance boost with CrossFire and/or SLI by having two (or more) PCI-E x16 lanes (whereas most P55 boards can support dual x8 CrossFire or SLI).

Regarding RAM, again, the Corsair Dominators are overpriced. Many people have obtained excellent overclocking performance using cheaper DDR3 1600 RAM that runs at 1.5V-1.6V. Tight timings matter little with regards to DDR3 RAM, as most board automatically adjust the timings (though you could manually adjust them yourself) to compensate for the speed that the RAM is running under. Only through synthetic benchmarks can you find the performance "benefit" with lower latency RAM; under most everyday tasks, it's not really noticeable.

Some recent benchmarks show that a dual GTX 460 setup beats out any single-GPU card available; in some cases, it's even better than a dual HD 5870 CrossFire setup. I recommend a dual GTX 470 setup only if you can afford it; the GTX 460 may be considerably cheaper (especially if you plan on buying two of them).

MaxBurn said:

You could try the SSD first, you might be surprised. That's not a bad machine.

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i'am going to buy a ssd first lol there cheeper prices of i7 will go down while i choose
do i a buy the budget ssd Kingston SSDNow V-Series or just go all out and buy the Crucial RealSSD C300

There's no guarantee that, after Sandy Bridge arrives, that prices for Socket 1366 Core i7s and/or X58 motherboards will go down much further.

If you're going to get an SSD, get something with considerably better (overall) performance than a standard HDD. If I had to choose between the two, I'd go for the Crucial RealSSD over the Kingston SSDNow V-Series... but there are other good options available.

can you please advise me the other good options available

thankyou

tiraides said:

There's no guarantee that, after Sandy Bridge arrives, that prices for Socket 1366 Core i7s and/or X58 motherboards will go down much further.

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hmmmm maybe i will be forced to go with amd performance + lower cost = more money for multiple ssd's

trisscross said:

can you please advise me the other good options available

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Well the Core i5 750/760 + P55 mobo route is still a good choice.

In terms of SSDs, Intel SSDs still seems to be the top notch ones.

tiraides said:

There's no guarantee that, after Sandy Bridge arrives, that prices for Socket 1366 Core i7s and/or X58 motherboards will go down much further.

Click to expand...

Yeah, case in point: Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs didn't drop that much in price after the release of AMD's Phenom II CPUs and Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs to make them viable cost-effective purchases.

Also keep in mind that when Sandy bridge arrives, it will only be a low/midrange replacement at first.

Sandy Bridge is NOT going to replace existing high-end i7 chipsets or processors for at least a year according to Intel roadmaps.

Socket 1155 is the replacement for socket 1156, not the replacement for 1366.