E6300 to Q6600, how excited should I be?

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benfinkel

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So a friend of mine has been working at Intel and got me a discounted Q6600 to upgrade me PC with. Here is my current setup, built last year:


Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86 Ghz)
2 GB 667 Mhz RAM
nVidia 7600 GT
19" Widescreen (1440x900)

Since I'm getting the new CPU I'm going to upgrade my video card as well to an 8800 GT (assuming I can find one) and I'm considering buying 2 more ram chips to get me to 4GB.

So I guess my question is, should I be VERY excited or just a little bit? right now I can play Oblivion, but not with high graphics settings, and Hellgate looks pretty good and runs pretty good. Am I going to see major improvements or is the step up small enough that it won't make much of a difference?
 
benfinkel said:
So a friend of mine has been working at Intel and got me a discounted Q6600 to upgrade me PC with. Here is my current setup, built last year:


Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86 Ghz)
2 GB 667 Mhz RAM
nVidia 7300 GT
19" Widescreen (1440x900)

Since I'm getting the new CPU I'm going to upgrade my video card as well to an 8800 GT (assuming I can find one) and I'm considering buying 2 more ram chips to get me to 4GB.

So I guess my question is, should I be VERY excited or just a little bit? right now I can play Oblivion, but not with high graphics settings, and Hellgate looks pretty good and runs pretty good. Am I going to see major improvements or is the step up small enough that it won't make much of a difference?
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You should be excited but not because of the Q6600 but because of the 8800GT.
 
alg7_munif said:
You should be excited but not because of the Q6600 but because of the 8800GT.
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Yes, that 8800GT would be a huge improvement especially with the resolution you play at.

I think you can still be excited about the quad core, who doesn't like getting new cool toys? :p
 
Well quad core is overrated actually even at 3.2GHz :D, at least in a normal daily usage.
 
alg7_munif said:
Well quad core is overrated actually even at 3.2GHz :D, at least in a normal daily usage.
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Unless you actually use all of that power. Just checked my quad (O/Ced to 3.0ghz) and its running at 95% on all cores and get my simulations done in 1/4 the time of my dual core 4200+
 
For gaming the Q6600 will not make too much of a difference, especially compared to a good video card upgrade.

As far as RAM goes be aware that unless you are running x64 OS that you will probably only get around 3.25GB with a 512MB video card due to the limitations of x86 hardware to address more then 4GB of address space.
 
alg7_munif said:
You should be excited but not because of the Q6600 but because of the 8800GT.
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qft. as others have mentioned - if you're looking for increased performance in games that 8800gt will piss all over your existing card. the processor upgrade will make little difference
 
Well cool. That's good news about the card :) Although one mistake, my current card is a 7600 GT, not 7300.

I AM still excited. After all, it's a quad core and everyone knows that 4 > 2. :)

Thanks!
 
I probably wouldn't bother with the ram upgrade. Unless you're using 64-bit OS, and even then I'd question how often you'd use it.

Spend the money on a good cooler like the Thermalright 120 Extreme so you can overclock the hell out of that Q6600!
 
also I'm wondering when you overclock how can you be so sure your chipset will be able to handle 4gb at the same fsb that it can run 2gb?
 
chrisf6969 said:
I probably wouldn't bother with the ram upgrade. Unless you're using 64-bit OS, and even then I'd question how often you'd use it.

Spend the money on a good cooler like the Thermalright 120 Extreme so you can overclock the hell out of that Q6600!
Click to expand...

Lemme get this straight. You don't want him getting ram because he won't get a peformance increase, but you think a larger cpu overclock on a QUAD CORE will?

Please don't give bad advice. Even a PPU will give him better performance for the money with his current system.

Once you have an e6300 even at stock, your system will chew up every game out there, and will probably never hinder you for a whole year.

OP, there's good advice on these forums, but unfortunately there are some dumbasses. Pocket the cash on the quad core, pick up an 8800gt, and upgrade your monitor. Or, get some other tangible bling (no one's going to feel the difference between a quad core on oblivion, but a proper 5.1 sound system will make your friends jealous).
 
Monkey_feces said:
Lemme get this straight. You don't want him getting ram because he won't get a peformance increase, but you think a larger cpu overclock on a QUAD CORE will?

Please don't give bad advice. Even a PPU will give him better performance for the money with his current system.

Once you have an e6300 even at stock, your system will chew up every game out there, and will probably never hinder you for a whole year.

OP, there's good advice on these forums, but unfortunately there are some dumbasses. Pocket the cash on the quad core, pick up an 8800gt, and upgrade your monitor. Or, get some other tangible bling (no one's going to feel the difference between a quad core on oblivion, but a proper 5.1 sound system will make your friends jealous).
Click to expand...

He's right, you know.
 
Yea, there wasn't a lot of chance of me overclocking :) Not that I wouldn't want to, but I don't have the energy to play around with all of those settings.

My chipset is an Intel p965 (Gigabyte DS3). 4 GBs no issue right? It says so right on the box.
 
overclocking would net you a nice performance improvement and make the system feel more snappy.


As you're only at 2.4Ghz at stock, and most of the time you'll only be using 1 or 2 of those cores. So clock speed is important.

Thats why you'll see people recommending a fast dual core over a quad core (assuming no overclocking).

But you should be able to hit 3Ghz easily with that chip, especially if you get a nice aftermarket cooler.

Stock 9x266 (1066 FSB) = 2.4Ghz
crank it up to the next "stock" FSB
9x333 (1333FSB) = 3Ghz
or try 9x334, I think the next FSB strap kicks in a 334, and might make it a tad bit easier to overclock.

BTW, I have that same motherboard with an E6600 in it at that speed. 9x334 = 3Ghz. (pics, etc from when I used to run it at 3.2Ghz, but at that speed/multi I couldn't use speedstep) Now, I leave mine at 3Ghz (9x334) with EIST, C1E, etc.. all enabled, and when its idle it drops down to 2Ghz (6 x 334) at like 1.0v.
 
Previous :Stock 9x266 (1066 FSB) = 2.4Ghz crank it up to the next "stock" FSB
9x333 (1333FSB) = 3Ghz or try 9x334, I think the next FSB strap kicks in a 334, and might make it a tad bit easier to overclock.

How much did you kick up the voltage too.
 
for 3Ghz like 1.45 in BIOS (9x334)
for 3.2Ghz I think it needed like 1.5 (8x400)

It was significantly cooler and easier to overclock at 3Ghz (9x333) so I put it back down to that. But I have a very early revision crappy chip. It didn't like going much above 3Ghz.

If he gets a G0 stepping, depending on his luck, he might be able to hit 3Ghz with as little as "stock" voltage 1.325v or less.

I say "stock" b/c a lot of the new G0 steppings have low stock voltage (average = 1.265) see: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1212904
 
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