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Q6600 Bottleneck

C

cryp

n00b
Joined
May 11, 2008
Messages
9
Hi
So if I get a 670, how much will the Q6600 @ 2.4 bottleneck modern games for example Crysis 3, I'm mean very high settings at 1920x1080 and maybe some AA?
I'm sure it will not run it at 100FPS but 40-50FPS is good...
Also, how can I test Crysis 3 for CPU bottleneck? Are there certain settings I should use to see if there is a bottleneck?
Thanks
 
a pretty big bottle neck. you would notice a pretty huge difference between a SB/IB or similar processor.
and for testing, i dont know if my method is correct but typically i would just run fraps and see if the CPU is 75% or higher.
 
pliskin679 said:
a pretty big bottle neck. you would notice a pretty huge difference between a SB/IB or similar processor.
and for testing, i dont know if my method is correct but typically i would just run fraps and see if the CPU is 75% or higher.
Click to expand...

So if CPU is 75% or higher then there is a big bottleneck?
 
well the Q6600 overclocks quite well, if you have the cooler for it, clock it up, at 3.0-3.6 they do very nicely, but yes there most certainly is a bottleneck, depending on what game you are playing, and such.

Most everything used at higher resolutions tap the GPU more then they tap the CPU, though there are games that are heavily CPU reliant.
CPU-Civilization 5, Diablo III, Borderlands 2(from what I have seen on reviews)
GPU-Crysis, BF3, Skyrim

Raw numbers comparison
http://.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Quad-Q6600-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500K
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=288

not sure what lad is referencing there, CPU/GPU should be both being used efficiently, I know for me using a Phenom 955 overclocked most every game I play and general usage my cpu is from 20%-87% used gpu 50%-99% this is using dual monitors but playing games on one at 1920x1080 high to max settings on a Radeon 7870 overclocked.
 
At stock yes, you will have a big bottleneck with that card... And what he mean its you can open task manager, or use techpowerup OSD(beta) server with coretemp, cpu-z, or anything like that.. And play some games.. If you see that your CPU have high usage more than 80-90% and the VGA its low usage. Then you have for sure that CPU its bottlenecking all.. But its a test to confirm what its sure... OC'ing to 3.2 will give a big performance jump...
 
very good. But there are some apps/games that will heavily load cpu and barely tough gpu at all, that needs to be kept in mind, clocking the cpu up will help a very large deal, also helps Nvidia cards to have a faster clocked cpu as well. Newer cpu/motherboard etc are more efficient better performance per clock, to keep it simple, take a modern cpu at say 3Ghz and compare to an older cpu at 3Ghz the new cpu will still be faster if you compare on equal basis, more efficient per clock performance and more instructions per clock will be done.

Anyways, faster cpu(clocked up higher or new one) will help for ones that tap the cpu out, for example battlefield 3 really likes fast cpu that can do alot per clock, E8400 as an example highly overclocked still does not get very good performance in BF3, Q6600 clocked up will be faster at it, but is still suffering cause it just does not have enough grunt compared to newer CPU such as AMD Phenom II, some of the FX chips, Core i7 first-2nd-3rd gen are just so much faster, even if they are using a bit more power in the process.
 
Q6600 can hit from 3.2-3.6 depending on how good of a chip you have and if you have a decent motherboard and cooler. I would try a favorite game out and slowly up the clock so you can see the performance difference, Crysis 3 can be a good test but there are other games/benchmarks out there you can use for now if you so wish.

BF3, Civ 5, Diablo III, Skyrim, War thunder are a couple choices, Metro 2033 as well of course.
 
Even at 3.6GHz my q6600 was bottlenecking a gtx570 in skyrim (with the setting turned up and a lot of graphics mods). I gained 5 to 30% frames/s depending on the area when I switched to a 3570k at 4.6GHz.
 
BF3 is the game that broke my poor Q6600's back. It simply could not supply enough data to a Radeon 6950 to keep my frames constant even at 3.3ghz. Upgrading to an i5 provided a huge boost in fluidity and resulted in the card actually reaching its full potential.

SC2 was also hurting pretty badly, especially in larger games from the Q6600.
 
cryp said:
So if CPU is 75% or higher then there is a big bottleneck?
Click to expand...

It could be a bottleneck at 25% actually. CPU utilization on multi core processors is a poor indication of bottleneck unless you know exactly what to look for, and looking for 75% utilization isn't it.

That said, yes a Q6600 would more than likely be a huge bottleneck, especially at 2.4Ghz
 
a lot of folks are saying that Q660 with the referenced 6950 actually played well when it was overclocked of course.

BF3, Skyrim and a a few other games you really need to take the time to play with the settings ingame to get the most out of the card you are using, just to smack everything on ultra, to use FXAA and so forth will not always play nicely, Radeon 6k did not like the AA BF3 uses as an example and really does not like Skyrims type of AA.

Is it a bottleneck, yes a more modern cpu most certainly will get a lot more out of the parts, but it most certainly is not an extreme like using say an older Pentium 4 or Athlon X2.

Also I sure as hell hope you gained a lot of FPS with that cpu change that is a MASSIVE difference in clock speed let alone the processor itself lol.

I know BF3 has an in game command so you can see how much the gpu/cpu is being loaded, it is better to use the in game then it is to run things like fraps or afterburner as the extra cycles may not tell you the whole story as is vs the in game is more or less already running most of the commands as is.

No matter the game I advise you take the time to set the appropriate settings or you may be asking for to much, disappointed you are not getting a good game play, or indirectly not getting the experience you might be able to if you took the time to do so.
 
cpu usage is not going to tell you much about how it bottlenecks, my 4.8Ghz 3770k is always at 25% when I'm playing games (1 out of 4 cores fully used (singlethreaded game))
 
Try to test your game at your usual resolution without cpu overclock, note the fps.
Now lower that resolution in the same game and note the fps again, if the fps gets good boost compared to the previous resolution then its not a cpu bottleneck yet.
You can keep lowering resolution until you get about the same fps as the previous higher resolution.
Then you will find out at what resolution your cpu cannot keep up with your gpu.
If you start overclocking your cpu now, that lower resolution fps should be higher again than the previous higher resolution fps.

On the other hand if you lower your resolution in a game and find out that the fps are about the same as when you use your regular resolution then you can tell that your cpu is indeed the bottleneck for that game.
 
Last edited:
Jack Flash said:
Tested a Q6600 at 3.6 GHz with a 3GB 7950 and was limited to around 45 fps in BF3 at 1080p.
Click to expand...

What resolution and GPU settings?

Reason I ask, I have a Q6600 OC'd to 3.6 at the moment paired with a GTX295 and can easily hit closer to 70-80FPS average. I do turn down the eye candy a bit though (I tend to prefer high FPS over IQ for shooters).
 
I don't game much, but I can tell if you do any encoding of movie, a Q6600 doesn't hold a candle to any i7, even my 920 was about half the encoding time. And my i7 3770 is about half my 920 time.
 
A Q6600 will bottleneck a little bit but i think many of you are overexaggerating. I play with a Q6700 at 3ghz and a 7950. All modern games play great at 1080p with maybe 2x AA depending on the game. I usually get around 60fps average with the exception of graphic heavy games.
 
I agree on the exaggeration part, many also say the same with Phenom II or Athlon II quad cores, there is faster available but again it truly depends on the games in question or the tasks you are doing, period, an overclock will help, running at decent resolutions definitely helps as well, however running at a low res(1440 and below as an example) crossfire/sli and some games like Civ5 that are needing a lot of CPU grunt etc make a massive difference in requirements, also encoding and such can be done via gpu acceleration with the right programs.

CPU overclocking as far as bas clock speed and/or upping the FSB can help big time, will it be i7 fast, no, is it as fast as many modern CPU, no, but it still can very much be used if you take the time to get the most out of it, and take the time to use the right setting/programs in question.

The resolution thing applies for the most part, but a GPU being used 99% in one game or app is not the same as it being used 99% in another, examples bitcoin mining, furmark, Heaven DX11, all load the gpu differently so it can be difficult to tell sometimes where specific bottlenecks lie, generally resolution on a known game that effectively uses CPU and GPU quite well say for example BF3 you can up and down the resolution and make it easier to tell where specific bottlenecks are at.

For example at 1080p unless it is a severely underpowered cpu(Athlon II x2 as example) with a given GPU you get nearly the same performance from most every CPU in some games(BF3 a prime example) You can see bottlenecks from 1920x1080, 1680x1050, 1440x900, 1200x1024 and so forth as it shifts the bias more towards the CPU based on FPS and reviews in question, not all monitors scale the same so this also has an effect, the mentioned Civ5, Borderlands 2, and a couple others do use the GPU for sure, but are way more CPU dependant, for them clocking the cpu/fsb up or using a more modern CPU will definitely show a much bigger difference then something that is more balanced or GPU heavy.

There is only so many ways and so many games to see the difference in results, Heaven DX11 might help? Encoding/decoding only means so much as well, not all CPU were built with that in mind, some most certainly are, same as GPU some are workhorses some are severely gimped but can game just fine.

Take a specific game that is known to be balanced, take another that is GPU heavy, take another that is very CPU dependent and compare results when clocked up in clock speed and/or FSB compare results with benchmarks for CPU and such you do not have so you can see what if any difference there might be, resolution is a super easy way to do so. At least in my personal experience 1920x1080 is generally more GPU heavy, 1440 and below more CPU heavy for a "balanced" game that is using both.
 
Saying an Athlon II x4 is a severe bottleneck isn't an exaggeration at all. I had one and it was well behind a core 2 quad, much less newer processors.
 
Domini said:
A Q6600 will bottleneck a little bit but i think many of you are overexaggerating. I play with a Q6700 at 3ghz and a 7950. All modern games play great at 1080p with maybe 2x AA depending on the game. I usually get around 60fps average with the exception of graphic heavy games.
Click to expand...


OK, a lot of games run fine for me, but that doesn't mean I'm not bottlenecked. I don't doubt that I will double my frame rate in some games.
 
RamonGTP said:
Saying an Athlon II x4 is a severe bottleneck isn't an exaggeration at all. I had one and it was well behind a core 2 quad, much less newer processors.
Click to expand...

That's funny I have an Athlon 2 X4 and it gets 4.12 in CB 11.5 while an OC'd Q6600 gets 3.52 in the video I posted. I'm sure I'm wrong, and your right though ;)
 
mmm I said Athlon II x2, the X4 can be bottlenecked in some games/apps cause of lower clock speeds, no L3 cache and missing some core level optimizations, there is not many overlapping Phenom II x4 and Athlon II x4 to compare directly but you can see the difference in nearly everything to show the difference, Generally speaking Phenom II x4 level of performance if perfectly acceptable for nearly every game for nearly all GPU combos, the exception seems to be when you are talking high end X2 cards and more then 2 GPU combos running very high Q settings, again depends on game in question some scale very well, others very poorly.

There is a bottleneck no doubt clocking up core/FBS speeds will help reduce it, I also do not doubt you will gain a lot in some games that are really cpu dependent, but not all games are, and its not a crap quad core, its a decent one once you bump up the speeds, its your $ up to you to decide how you spend it or if you need to spend it. I will advice again you test games that are GPU-CPU-Balanced to see how much bottleneck there might be and clock it up to see how much extra performance you get, of course most people will say "OMG its old you need to replace it cause new stuff is a bazillion times faster" there are ways you can make things faster, when you are already on the edge of what it can do, well that's different.
 
Architectures are different depending on chip of course, i7 900 series are beasts as are the 3700 series. Q6600 suffers due to low clock speeds, not having newest optimizations for SSE and such, slower FSB, but they as far as I remember scale VERY well considering all this.

FX 8xxx are VERY geared towards encoding and such, but at the same time compare them in a CPU biased game/application and they suffer dearly cause of the way they are built and the way the OS use them currently, not enough code that the cpu handles by itself(like Intel new version of HT) and its reliance on the OS to properly thread things is truly not helping the design choice, that being said games/apps that truly take advantage of the design show a ton of promise, similar to Radeon 5d-4d shaders, the ones that can use it(bitcoin) scale wicked well, most things do not as devs for one reason or another do not bother optimizing for it.

Moral of the tale, yes there is better, faster, newer, more optimized, but it is well worth reading into the parts in question, not all grass is greener on the other side if you really take the time to look into things. All depends on your needs and how you plan on using the tool.
 
teletran8 said:
That's funny I have an Athlon 2 X4 and it gets 4.12 in CB 11.5 while an OC'd Q6600 gets 3.52 in the video I posted. I'm sure I'm wrong, and your right though ;)
Click to expand...

I'm sure I'm right also since I owned both and it was no contest. I didn't have to refer to any random 3rd party video's. I had both products, at the same time. Wanna guess which one I sold first? Wanna guess which one I sold quicker and got more money for at the same time? I know you like to jump in and defend your processor, since you've done it so many times in the past. It was a slow processor back then, it's not any better now. Consider yourself lucky that you haven't had a need for anything better. You've saved a nice chunk of change sticking with a low end CPU.
 
which C2Q and which Athlon II x4? very similar to what some have said in this thread about i7 being so much faster then C2Q, I sure as hell hope so lol. Athlon 64 X2 in their time were "performance chips" Athlon II x2 are general user, x4 are quad general, Phenom II x4/x6 are performance chips, FX are enthusiast as far as AMD lineup is concerned. For Intel Pentium--C2D--C2Q--C2Q-E now is Pentium--i3--i5--i7--i7-E, it is not always cut and dry, sometimes a more bargain chip will still have great performance compared to the more expensive brothers
(Athlon II x4 can keep up in most things to Phenom II x4 mid end ones) (i3 sometimes can with i5, i5 sometimes with i7 example 2500k vs 2600k not much separating them)

Myself I have a Core 2 E8400 that clocks around the 4.3Ghz range, am currently using a Phenom II 955 that can also hit the 4.3Ghz range, the E8400 is very fast but it is missing some power and struggles some with the games I played at the time being BC2, BF3 and so forth but for older games plays wicked good, my 955 however does not have an issue with anything I currently play or have played even with a mild overclock. Point is, Q6600 should be fine for pretty much everything out there save for specific tasks(encoding) or specific games, it just needs the clock speed boost to make the difference in its older, and slower, but also scales well with clock speed, not benchmark bs but real world performance improvement, FSB as I have stated makes a wicked difference as the memory and the whole subsystem relies heavily on that, having higher speed memory help as well to get the cpu clocked up where you need it to be 667 bare minimum 800/1066 preferred of course.
 
I upgraded to a i5 3570k from a Q9550 and saw a noticeable improvement in BF3 with 2x460 GTX in SLI.
 
well one is a quad with 12m cache at 2.83Ghz 1333FSB, other is a quad 3.4 turbo to 3.8 6mb cache with an effective multiple GB/S FSB equivalent(QPI) that is also faster, so, yes it very well should be faster all around, everything is beefed up.

This is sidestepping the point, users asks if bottlenecked, I myself am not directly answering but am hoping he can see if it is or not by some suggestions given, does not seem as a "should I buy a new one" what you are saying QK does not directly apply as using SLI/CF is not the same thing as single GPU and the bottleneck overall will of course be more severe in the process if comparing the 2, seeing as Nehalem and up gave a lot more oomph to everything, not just the cpu, but the cpu themselves were/are higher clocked to begin with, declock it to the same level and see the difference :) though am sure if he wants/wanted to do SLI/CF then by all means no point in using anything but modern generation motherboards/cpu if using a modern GPU or 2.
 
How does it not apply? You said yourself in the first sentence that it would be faster all around. I had a bottleneck with my Q9550. @ 3.55mhz. Clearly upgrading cleared the the neck.

And even a single 670 is faster than 460's in SLI. So in effect his 670 would be bottlenecked with a Q6600.
 
yes an no faster does not mean harder to feed, it is easier to feed a single gpu then dual gpus, and the higher gpu allows a high res usually making it easier again to feed, a lot of little things to take into account, but yes by all means modern cpu and modern board you get gains from all of it really.
 
i picked up a q9550 about 2 weeks ago along with a Gtx 650 ti 2gb (as a cheap last upgrade for this system). Got it overclocked at 3.9ghz (Couldn't get it to 4ghz, it is just too power hungry). Running with a gtx 650 TI I am running crysis 3, maxed out fine, bioshock infinite , tomb raider and bf3 all maxed out. 2x2gb DDR2 800, 1680x1050 res (My monitors native) . I want to pick up another 2x2gb and upgrade my storage drives before I look at upgrading anything else.

I have no problems with that resolution and running all my latest games at max.

A 670 is probably a bit much for that q6600 at stock speed, but if you go with a lower model like a 650 ti boost than I think that would be a perfect setup for your q6600 if you can overclock it a bit.
 
Bah, my Q8200 doesn't bottleneck my GTX480, which is nearly equivalent to the GTX660ti.

At stock, yes, a Q6600 is going to be your shortcoming. At 3.2ghz+, it's MUCH less of an issue.
 
the bottleneck of a q6600 at 3.6ghz overclock will be about 20% in games versus a new 3570k at stock. Now if you factor in overclocking the 3570k the difference becomes higher.
 
there is lots of factors to take into account as well, such as how high the FSB is etc, there was never a shadow of a doubt core I series chips are faster, but as stated, take one declock it so the clock speeds are no longer in the equation, dump the QPI as low as possible to see the actual core speed differences, there is lots to take into account, the clock speed is of course a large factor(boost as well don't forget)

Anyways does not matter much, ddr2 800-1066 to allow FSB to stretch and if your lucky you got a good chip and a good motherboard to allow different sets of dividers to crank it as much as possible, core clock is one thing, FSB is another of course.

So yeh, not much overall difference between them if you say that 20%, that is not that large gain overall and am quite sure is game specific to see the major differences on average(such as Civ5)
 
What about a 7850 or 7870? would a bottleneck be very noticeable clocked at 3Ghz(Q6600) on 4gb's of DDR2?
 
HardLiner said:
What about a 7850 or 7870? would a bottleneck be very noticeable clocked at 3Ghz(Q6600) on 4gb's of DDR2?
Click to expand...

It depends on the game. For a game like Metro, probably not. For a game like BF3 MP, probably. I had a Q6600 @ 3.2 and a 5870, that 5870 is now mated to a 2500k and there's a substantial performance boost.
 
dragonstongue said:
BF3 is not very CPU oriented overall, decent cpu all get roughly the same performance. 7870 can be fed by even Athlon X2 64, totally depends on game and resolution, as it has always been, Nvidia cards tend to need a more powerful cpu to feed them then AMD cards, however both obviously benefit from it.
http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html
Click to expand...

Single player maybe, but on a huge map with a mess of players in MP, it's a CPU hog.
 
Agreed on this, I know a few of my buds have issues playing 64 man maps with their PHII 955/965 but they also do not overclock at all, not on cpu nor on gpu, at least 1 person I know uses an older Tri-Core 720 with SLI 460s for BF3 MP, it still runs reasonably well at 1680x1050 considering his scores were always quite good.
http://translate.google.ca/translat...er+cpu+benchmarks&sa=X&hl=en&biw=1939&bih=956

on this they run 1280x720 which is very cpu biased just to show raw numbers, I used my E8400 at stock clocks in BF3 MP with both a 6870 and a 7870, was it playable yes, enjoyable, not at all :p, a decent quad core is more or less required, but playable/unplayable are a matter of opinion, I know my bro runs some games that run like crap and he still plays and enjoys them, I could not cause FPS is just far to low for my comfort(laggy/choppy)

Anyways, was just showing some info best I could for OP. New more powerful is not a bad thing, but it may not be 100% required directly, clocking up base and FSB then try if still run like crap, well at least there is the option of getting something newer, that's what I would do if it were me.
 
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