To all the Q6600 out there.

V

vogar34

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
267
So all of you Q6600 its been a long journey with an awesome CPU. From the people that have run their CPU stock to the ones that have overclocked it to the extreme and maybe even beyond that.... Well let me get to the point. Its seems that the time for us to upgrade is coming very near and I know there as been a lot of "I have a Q6600 is it time to upgrade and what to?" threads, but they seem to be focused on the OP. What I am wondering is what you run your q6600 with and at what clock possibly. Additionally I would also like to know what you plan I moving on to.

My Q6600 is running currently at 3.0ghz with a MSI X48C Platinum motherboard. I have ran it at higher speed and I had it a stock even for awhile. I am running 8gb of DDR2 1066 currently. I use to run a MSI P6N SLI Platinum with it, but than I decided to upgrade once they found a way to run SLI on the X48 with modified drivers.

Anyways I plan on seeing what Bulldozer does and if that "fails" I think I am going to upgrade to a 2600k. I ran an I7 before, but I went back to my Q6600 since I already had everything from files to programs already on it. Plus I didn't have to mess with any of the three motherboards sockets. Well except for the 1366 I had.

Let me know what situation you are in as well!
 
Recently moved from 3.2ghz Q6600 to 2500k. 2600k seems pointless for gamers and is in fact slightly slower in some cases due to hyperthreading. The 2500k, even at stock 3.3ghz, slays Q6600 at 3.2ghz. Clearly faster in gaming.
 
I was thinking about upgrading for a while, but when my POS MSi mobo started to die, I decided to buy a used mobo and heatsink (the heatsink I was using was garbage) from a member here instead.

The MSi wouldn't even let me overclock it to 2.6... it wasn't a great board. So with the new parts installed, I have mine back to running 3.6 without an issue. I forgot how wonderful it was. My old DFi let me run it at 3.4 stable, but gave it away to one of my nephews a year or two ago (and regretted it ever since).

Honestly, I'll probably still hang onto this setup for another couple years. Its still fast, runs games well and does everything that I need it to do, so I see absolutely no reason to go with something else :)
 
dr.stevil said:
I was thinking about upgrading for a while, but when my POS MSi mobo started to die, I decided to buy a used mobo and heatsink (the heatsink I was using was garbage) from a member here instead.

The MSi wouldn't even let me overclock it to 2.6... it wasn't a great board. So with the new parts installed, I have mine back to running 3.6 without an issue. I forgot how wonderful it was. My old DFi let me run it at 3.4 stable, but gave it away to one of my nephews a year or two ago (and regretted it ever since).

Honestly, I'll probably still hang onto this setup for another couple years. Its still fast, runs games well and does everything that I need it to do, so I see absolutely no reason to go with something else :)
Click to expand...

I guess I could see running this setup for a couple of years too. I won't argue with that since I went back to it!
 
Actually I'm hoping on getting some good deals on Black Friday to upgrade my current PC and then selling it and putting the money towards a new PC (possibly 2500k?).

BTW what do you guys think I should upgrade to maximize what I can get for my PC? 1TB Hard drive and possibly AMD 6850?

My PC sucks ass, especially the 3850.
 
HardLiner said:
Actually I'm hoping on getting some good deals on Black Friday to upgrade my current PC and then selling it and putting the money towards a new PC (possibly 2500k?).

BTW what do you guys think I should upgrade to maximize what I can get for my PC? 1TB Hard drive and possibly AMD 6850?

My PC sucks ass, especially the 3850.
Click to expand...

I guess the 1TB Drive works it just depends on how much space you need and what you are willing to spend. I really don't think it can get too much better than the 6850 for value at the moment unless you find a dirt cheap GTX260 or 4870 right now. It just seems that some perfectly capable cards have hit rock bottom recently, but that is just what I think.
 
Am hanging onto Ivy Bridge for native USB 3.0. Not enough bandwidth on my Asus p5Ke board. Got my Q6600 running 3.0 with 8 gigs of RAM on Win 7 x64. Bought an X-25 Intel SSD 80g about 2 years ago and it has helped me keep my system fast enough for the time being.
 
Sorry I meant not enough bandwidth on the PCI bus for the add in cards for my liking
 
Right now I generally advise that people looking for a gaming system upgrade to the Intel® Core™ i5-2500K over the Intel Core i7-2600K. With games right now very few of them can take advantage of more than 3 threads. For this reason the value of hyper-threading on the Intel Core i7-2600K is very low. So ask yourself is the 2MB of cache and the 100MHz clock speed difference worth the $100 difference in price. In most cases you will find that you can get better performance by speeding that $100 on something else like a SSD.
 
I've got a Q6600 @ 3.2. I'm going to hold out for one more generation. I'm not doing that much gaming these days anyways, at least not til Diablo 3 comes out...
 
I run my Q6600 2.8-3.2 GHz these days depending on my mood.

It does everything I need really, except scratch my upgrade itch.

I want More CPU, More GPU, More Ram, More SSD, More Cooling, More ISP speed...

Once I get a job, I will get them!

In the mean time, I have to say my upgrade 3 years ago from and E4300 to a Q6600 has given me so much, and my EVGA 680i just keeps, plowing through everything.

I think I am the only person on eart[H] that is happy with his Q6600\680i setup.

My hope is that Bulldozer will be awesome, but if not IvyB or even a 2600K would be an awesome upgrade.

But my dream would be a next gen SR-2 like setup. With enough threads to run, gaming, VMs for servers, HTPC, folding bigadvs, all in one box.
 
Even though I haven't got a q6600, I still have a socket 775 quad so I figured I'd post.

I got my q8400 from a friend for free for building his new 2500k system. To be honest at 3.6ghz I don't see the need to upgrade anytime soon. I think I'm going to wait for either the next big architecture leap from Intel (Haswell) or for the next generation of consoles to come out - since that is a significant factor in dictating hardware requirements these days.

As an aside I ran y-cruncher for the hell of it and finished the 25,000,000 digit test in 10.07 seconds! Pretty damn good relative to a lot of other processors! I :)
 
this is a very generic post. It really depends on software usage.

From passmark score
q6600 at 2.4GHz 2982
q6850 at 3.0GHz 3915
q9650 at 3.0Ghz 4621
i3-2100 at 3.1Ghz 3860
i3-2120 at 3.3GHz 4077
i5-2300 at 2.8Ghz 5571
i5-2500k at 3.3Ghz 7368

1. If you overclock C2Q-65nm/45nm anywhere beyond 3.0GHz, say mostly at 3.6GHz, then your processor score will be mostly within the range of low-to-mid SB i5-Quad. (or maybe slightly less).

2. For people with "generic" performance focus that already running overclock C2Q at very high frequency, thus the logical path is usually i5-2500K, else the final 2600K where more fund is available.

3. From that observation, you balance your overall cost against your current focus, be it new feature support, power consumption reduction, other considerations.

4. If you find point 2 and 3 not enough to justify cost outlay, then you are back to C2Q until further notice, perhaps explore Ivy or Bulldozer. However, most are dependent on software support. takes time to bake all the new hardware features into software ecosystem support.
 
I was able to sell my CPU, motherboard, memory and CPU cooler for enough to offset most of the cost of the new components. Also got a sweet deal on a 2500k for $150 from fry's and DDR3 is so cheap.

I couldn't get my CPU above 3.2 and the 2500k at stock feels significantly faster.
 
Got a friend running GTS250 1gb sli with a q6600 @ 3ghz and he's looking hard at an i5 2500k carrying his slightly over. The CPU boost alone will likely lengthen the legs on those gts250's quite a bit.

I'm thinking about moving my q6600 rig to a PII 965 and running Not at 4ghz Just because my q6600 doesn't break 3.1ghz without a major vcore boost.
 
personally, i'm waiting to begin gaming again until the next gen cards come out. at that time i'll upgrade my Q6600 to whatever processor is the best bang for the buck at 2650x1600 (so, most of them hehe)
 
Was looking to sell off the CPU/MB/RAM combination and drop in a 2500K in the current rig, but eventually decided against it, considering all my other parts except for the 6870 are all kinda old.

Will probably end up waiting for Haswell, since my Q6600 @ 3.5+ is still within the realm of 'acceptable' gaming performance at my resolution (1680x1050).
 
I am using a q9550 at stock speeds and my wife's pc has a q6700 at stock speeds. Both pc's are used for gaming. To be honest, I think we won't build a new system until Haswell in 2013 at the earliest. I realize getting a Sandy Bridge setup would give better performance but what we have now runs all our games fine. Until the next generation of consoles come out, I don't see much use in upgrading.
 
currently using a Q6600 at 3.2Ghz. In winter i raise it to 3.6Ghz. Running on a Asus P5Q-E with 4gb ram. As far as what im moving to, it will be either IvyBridge or Bulldozer. Im simply waiting for [H] review of the BD chip to see where it stands performance wise. If it just competes with SB, and doesnt surpass it then ill hold out for Ivy Bridge. I hold no allegiance to either camp, simply want the most bang for the buck performance. Also awaiting BF3 results on different hardware types as well to gauge where im at with my system.
 
I've got my old box sitting around with a Q6600 @ 3.0. Well, that WAS it's clock speed, but I think I throttled it down a bit because it started to run hot after a few years. Admittedly, I'm not the best at keeping things clean and probably need to dust the fans and vents.

I'm going to revitalize the system when Skyrim comes out by replacing the 8800gt - probably with a 6950 so that I can run my 27" imac IPS monitor at native resolution.

It's going to be interesting seeing how much the Q6600 bottlenecks game performance.
 
My Q6600 is hard to deal with... I've had it posting at 3.6, stable at 3.4, blah blah... but the only truly stable configuration I've got so far is 3.2ghz on a 400mhz bus.

This is with auto voltages in my BIOS and the standard DDR2 800 RAM. I suspect it was my RAM that was fucking everything up.

I'm going to upgrade my video card before I do anything else. I suspect it will be enough for me.

----

That said, if I were building a new system RIGHT NOW it would be Sandy 2500k and 6950 2GB with the hope of unlocking no doubt.

Edit: 3.4 on a 400mhz bus isn't stable either. LOL. I'm starting over. 3.0ghz 1333mhz bus is rock solid. I will inch up from here.
 
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I'm itching to upgrade as I've had my Q6600 system for nearly four years now - hard to believe. I only recently took the time to overclock this system and have it running at 3.2ghz at stock voltages, which I am pretty happy with. Added a 128gb C3 sometime ago, and pretty pleased with the extra performance there as well. I could do with a new video card as my 4870 1gb seems to do just fine still, but I wouldn't mind a few extra frames and the shiny DX11 bits.

If I were to upgrade, I'd definitely go for the 2500k, and give my Q6600 a second life in a WHS server. I really want to upgrade, but I'm not exactly tripping over money at the moment, and my current system's performance is more than adequate for the time being.
 
I play a ton of World of Warcraft and when I upgraded from my Q9650 @ 4.4Ghz to my i5-2500k @ 5Ghz it reminded me of the first time I played the game on a Core 2 Duo after using a Pentium 4.

A Core 2 Quad certainly can provide balanced performance especially in GPU limited situations but there are still games that focus primary on the CPU and clearly benefit from an upgrade. GTA4, Supreme Commander, and Bad Company 2 are a few more examples of games that also saw massive improvement from upgrading my processor.
 
Wangspeed said:
I've got a Q6600 @ 3.2. I'm going to hold out for one more generation. I'm not doing that much gaming these days anyways, at least not til Diablo 3 comes out...
Click to expand...

and for that game you wont need to upgrade...:)
 
Had to build a new system for various reasons like building a bunch of server VMs and also some mining and educational reasons. Went with a 2500K and was very sad to see the Q6600 go into the basement. I don't know what to do with it.

It ran @ 3.6GHz beautifully and it seems like a huge waste to see that whole system which I put so much blood, sweat, tears, and love into gather dust or turn into a file server/mining rig.
 
I have a Q6600 running 24/7 @ 3.6 on watercooling for almost 4 years now. I had 8 gigs of memory but about 2 months ago one 4gb pair developed some bad registers. So now I am running 4 gb.I plan on upgrading to an i7 2600K. I do some gaming, but it is not the primary purpose
 
System is in my sig -- I'm holding out for LGA2011, SB-E. Mainly use it for day to day work, websurfing, and occasional video editing/rendering, no gaming at all. Occasionally, I extend the desktop to my Samsung LCD TV and watch videos on the TV while I'm working on the machine, no problems with it.

When LGA2011 is available and I don't have to sacrifice PCI lanes with a video card & raid card, I'll upgrade. For now, the Q6600 serves it's purpose.
 
CallMeTheStig said:
Even though I haven't got a q6600, I still have a socket 775 quad so I figured I'd post.

I got my q8400 from a friend for free for building his new 2500k system. To be honest at 3.6ghz I don't see the need to upgrade anytime soon. I think I'm going to wait for either the next big architecture leap from Intel (Haswell) or for the next generation of consoles to come out - since that is a significant factor in dictating hardware requirements these days.

As an aside I ran y-cruncher for the hell of it and finished the 25,000,000 digit test in 10.07 seconds! Pretty damn good relative to a lot of other processors! I :)
Click to expand...

Mine is running at 3.61 and its a 9550 with more cache. GTX 570
I very much agree with you
 
Mad Lion said:
My Q6600 is hard to deal with... I've had it posting at 3.6, stable at 3.4, blah blah... but the only truly stable configuration I've got so far is 3.2ghz on a 400mhz bus.

This is with auto voltages in my BIOS and the standard DDR2 800 RAM. I suspect it was my RAM that was fucking everything up.

I'm going to upgrade my video card before I do anything else. I suspect it will be enough for me.

----

That said, if I were building a new system RIGHT NOW it would be Sandy 2500k and 6950 2GB with the hope of unlocking no doubt.

Edit: 3.4 on a 400mhz bus isn't stable either. LOL. I'm starting over. 3.0ghz 1333mhz bus is rock solid. I will inch up from here.
Click to expand...

Its either your ram or cooling.
i am stable at 3.61 with a 9550
 
WtBadAss said:
I have a Q6600 running 24/7 @ 3.6 on watercooling for almost 4 years now. I had 8 gigs of memory but about 2 months ago one 4gb pair developed some bad registers. So now I am running 4 gb.I plan on upgrading to an i7 2600K. I do some gaming, but it is not the primary purpose
Click to expand...

I would just upgrade to a GTX 570 or 580 and your ram.
Intel will be releasing something faster than the 2600k in a few months.
 
UnrealCpu said:
I would just upgrade to a GTX 570 or 580 and your ram.
Intel will be releasing something faster than the 2600k in a few months.
Click to expand...

which will be on an entirely new socket that isn't replacing the 1155 socket. its replacing the 1333 socket at a MUCH higher price point.
Personally I don't see the value in waiting for something that expensive when a 2600k is a MONSTER of a CPU right now.
 
NIVO said:
currently using a Q6600 at 3.2Ghz. In winter i raise it to 3.6Ghz. Running on a Asus P5Q-E with 4gb ram. As far as what im moving to, it will be either IvyBridge or Bulldozer. Im simply waiting for [H] review of the BD chip to see where it stands performance wise. If it just competes with SB, and doesnt surpass it then ill hold out for Ivy Bridge. I hold no allegiance to either camp, simply want the most bang for the buck performance. Also awaiting BF3 results on different hardware types as well to gauge where im at with my system.
Click to expand...

i agree, i2600k not worth the cash to upgrade. I can play 400 games on steam no problem at 1920x1200 high everthing with my GTX 570. Im at 3.61 all year round
 
GotNoRice said:
I play a ton of World of Warcraft and when I upgraded from my Q9650 @ 4.4Ghz to my i5-2500k @ 5Ghz it reminded me of the first time I played the game on a Core 2 Duo after using a Pentium 4.

A Core 2 Quad certainly can provide balanced performance especially in GPU limited situations but there are still games that focus primary on the CPU and clearly benefit from an upgrade. GTA4, Supreme Commander, and Bad Company 2 are a few more examples of games that also saw massive improvement from upgrading my processor.
Click to expand...

your 4870 is comparable to a 8800GT which is slow as balls.. Should of just upgraded your video card to a GTX 570+
That was your issue not the CPU
 
UnrealCpu said:
your 4870 is comparable to a 8800GT which is slow as balls.. Should of just upgraded your video card to a GTX 570+
That was your issue not the CPU
Click to expand...

2x 4870x2 is 4 4870 GPUs. You should learn how to read.

Also, a 4870 is more along the lines of a GTX260 than an 8800GT.
 
GotNoRice said:
2x 4870x2 is 4 4870 GPUs. You should learn how to read.

Also, a 4870 is more along the lines of a GTX260 than an 8800GT.
Click to expand...

I know how to read :)
You are right GTX 280 is comparable. Thats still a slow card.. I used to own one

Just like your other posts i am still not convinced like many others in your threads ,
 
UnrealCpu said:
I know how to read :)
You are right GTX 280 is comparable.
Click to expand...

Apparently you can't, because I never said GTX280.

Just like your other posts i am still not convinced like many others in your threads ,
Click to expand...

The difference being you're the only one who seems to think I'm trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm not. I posted my experiences and you can take them for what you will.
 
GotNoRice said:
Apparently you can't, because I never said GTX280.



The difference being you're the only one who seems to think I'm trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm not. I posted my experiences and you can take them for what you will.
Click to expand...

I gave you the benefit that your cards are just as good as a GTX 280 not a 260. Do you have to try to insult people to get your point across?
 
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