Q6600 Bottleneck

[hypertek]

go on youtube and put in q6600 gtx 670 etc, and you will see alot of different gameplay videos with that combo at different clock speeds.. than determine if that is not enough for you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y61WGWqyU-g. (remember recording can kill some fps since it is using resources, so take that into consideration) .
I think it is plenty if you won't be carrying about benchmarking/tweaking all the time for best fps

 

[RamonGTP]

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 , 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.

Just to put in in perspective, an e8400 probably runs BF3 MP close to 100% faster than an Athlon X2