Got a free QX6700.. Ideas, anyone?

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Nakamori

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So my coworker just gave me his old gaming rig- It has a QX6700, 4 gigs of DDR2-667 on an OC mobo, and an 8800GTS (Which I can upgrade) and it seems to be working perfectly.

Last May I bought my first new system in five years and treated myself a bit - An XPS 17 laptop with Q2630M, GT555m, 8 gigs of DDR3. I use it for everything, including my web development, running queries to a 1.5GB sql server, and gaming. Its great at pretty much all of these things- It just comes up short of my hopes with one game- Battlefield 3 when hooked up to my 1920x1200 monitor. It's the game I spend the most time on.

How well would an overclocked QX6700 with 4gb ddr2 do with BF3 at 1920x1200 if paired with, say, a 6850? If it works well I have a thought to sell my laptop (I think I can get close to $1000 still) and get an ultrabook or something since I don't game on the road anyway. The end upshot would be me gaining some gaming performance with a midrange desktop video card, better portability with a small laptop/ultrabook, and maybe a couple hundred dollars saved from my xps17 sale.

I guess the gist of my question is would a QX6700 + 6850 be able to play BF3 decently at 1900x1200, or at least appreciably better than my gt555m laptop does?
 
Sell both and build a new gaming machine and buy a new ultrabook. I honestly think that's the best option.

The QX6700 rig should do OK coupled with a new GPU.
 
A QX6700 and 6850 will play BF3 decently well in 1900 resolutions, but don't except any AA and/or much eye candy. I'd still sell it though and consider it a down payment upgrade to anything that was recently released as that would be a huge upgrade.
 
Nakamori said:
So my coworker just gave me his old gaming rig- It has a QX6700, 4 gigs of DDR2-667 on an OC mobo, and an 8800GTS (Which I can upgrade) and it seems to be working perfectly.

Last May I bought my first new system in five years and treated myself a bit - An XPS 17 laptop with Q2630M, GT555m, 8 gigs of DDR3. I use it for everything, including my web development, running queries to a 1.5GB sql server, and gaming. Its great at pretty much all of these things- It just comes up short of my hopes with one game- Battlefield 3 when hooked up to my 1920x1200 monitor. It's the game I spend the most time on.

How well would an overclocked QX6700 with 4gb ddr2 do with BF3 at 1920x1200 if paired with, say, a 6850? If it works well I have a thought to sell my laptop (I think I can get close to $1000 still) and get an ultrabook or something since I don't game on the road anyway. The end upshot would be me gaining some gaming performance with a midrange desktop video card, better portability with a small laptop/ultrabook, and maybe a couple hundred dollars saved from my xps17 sale.

I guess the gist of my question is would a QX6700 + 6850 be able to play BF3 decently at 1900x1200, or at least appreciably better than my gt555m laptop does?
Click to expand...

I recently upgraded from a Q6700 @ 3.3GHz, 4GB DDR2 and a GF 560Ti (880MHz factory OC). BF3 was playable at 1920x1200 with all settings on high, AA off, AO off, Vsync off. Frame rates were generally in the mid 40's, indoor scenes up to 60, with some dips in heavy action.

I agree with the above post though, sell everything (I got $475 for my old system on Craigslist, it also had 1TB HDD, P180 case, Corsair 520HX PSU etc). Buy an Asus Ultrabook for travel and a new desktop gaming machine to play BF3 properly. Bonus is you no longer have to travel with a ridiculously large gaming laptop.
 
It really does depend on budget here. While BF3 is playable adaptive vsync on and with all eye candy on with a card like a GTX 680 on my 9550 @ 4Ghz, you will probably be glad you built a newer system if your able to if you are budget constrained. The socket 775 systems are hitting a point where they will not be able to deliver the gaming experience that demanding users want in the next year or so. Personally I'm trying to hold out till win8/USB3/PCIe3/Haswell are all out.
 
OC that chip to around 4GHz and it will be great for any modern games. Saves you around $300 for a new rig.
 
I would sell everything and go to a Microcenter if theres one near you. You could get an i5 3570 + a decent mobo for around $300.
 
They're worthless. Give them to me and I'll dispose of them so you don't have to bear that burden. :)

It's pretty equivalent to a Q9450 (FSB is 1333 vs 1066 on your QX6700), so:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=51

You can use it, but any 775 quad processor is starting to get long in the tooth with the newer games and software. It's a tough call: keep it and use it knowing it will do just fine, or sell it now while it still has some value and get a K series SB or IB... I'd probably start a thread about it, too!
 
Thanks for the input guys. The consensus here seems to be to sell both systems and revamp my computer arsenal entirely. Probably shouldn't expect any less from [H] users :cool:

It was definately the direction I was leaning to until my coworker told me today that he was willing to sell me his old gtx 460 for $75. So I'll be jumping on that and seeing how this baby can do before making a decision. I've been out of the desktop game for a while but from what I have read it seems like I'd probably be spending ~600 in new parts to build an appreciably superior system than this one (assuming I sell this system whole and not reuse the PSU, hard drive, case, etc.). Let me know if I'm off on this assesment.

I'm not overly excited about any high-gfx games coming out down the road (other than bf3 it is dota2 and sc2 for me) so if this computer can run bf3 smoothly at like medium settings I'll be pretty content until the next gen-console level graphics come around, I think ;)
 
I don't have the same CPU as you but I did just a mini-upgrade from my 4.5 year old system to my current system in signature. I was running a Q6600 at stock, 4GB RAM, and my 5850. For Battlefield 3 iirc, I did mostly medium settings, shadows at low, motion blur/AO/AA/something else at off, 1920x1080 resolution. FPS wise it was actually 40-50 ish on Vanilla maps, 25-40 ish on B2K maps, all assuming 64 player servers under 80 ping.

I admit I wanted high settings, but the game looks (and runs) better than Bad Company 2. I got this i7 920 because someone donated it to me (instead of the trash can). BF3 really loves a good CPU on top of a decent video card. If that 460 is the 1GB edition, it'll be worth a shot to see where the system stands.
 
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