Q6600 Nowadays

Civ 5 seems to take quite a while even with the i7920 and greater later into the game.
 
harpoon said:
Not to put a dampener on this thread, but the Q6600 is starting to show its age in the latest games...

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Starcraft II

Civilization 5

Of course these benchmarks are shown with the Q6600 @ 2.4GHz, at 3GHz+ it will be faster, but compared to Core i5 / i7 it's not in the same league.
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The IPC of the C2Q's is roughly equivalent to the Phenom II, so if you had a Q6600 at the magic 3.6ghz mark you could use the Phenom II x4 970 as a benchmark. Still not quite in the same league as the i5, but certainly not bad for a chip that will be 4 years old this spring!
 
Assuming a Q6600 is clocked at 4ghz and a 4 core Sandy-Bridge is 25% faster clock for clock than Nehalem and clocked at 5ghz (no HT), how much faster is the SB than the Q6600?
 
I think its 8% from Kentsfield to Wolfdale, another 25% from Wolfdale to Nehalem, and then 25% to Sandy Bridge.

So 1 (reference) x 1.08 = 1.08 x 1.25 = 1.35 x 1.25 = 1.68

That puts it at 68% faster clock for clock, now to compare 4ghz to 5ghz your adding another 25%.

1.68 x 1.25 = 2.1

So Sandy Bridge at 5ghz would have 210% of the performance of a Q6600 at 4ghz.

Now this is all VERY rough because those performance increases aren't linear across applications and when you start multiplying approximations your error grows. Still, should be roughly twice as fast in theory, whether that translates itself into real world performance depends on what other bottlenecks exist.
 
R-Type said:
The IPC of the C2Q's is roughly equivalent to the Phenom II, so if you had a Q6600 at the magic 3.6ghz mark you could use the Phenom II x4 970 as a benchmark. Still not quite in the same league as the i5, but certainly not bad for a chip that will be 4 years old this spring!
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It's about 2 leagues below if you consider that it needs 3.6GHz to be 1 league below a stock 2.66GHz i5, which itself can be overclocked to 4GHz. ;)

Don't get me wrong, the Q6600 was a great chip for its time, but I think it's at the stage where it'll start bottlenecking a mid range GTX460 / HD6850 class GPU...
 
At 2.4GHz and games that are largely CPU limited there may be a slight bottleneck. At 3+GHZ and/or games that aren't totally CPU dependent there wont' be an issue. A 460 or equivalent isn't all THAT powerful
 
I'm sticking with the Q6600 until... I have no idea to be honest. A few years ago when I bought the chip, I suspected it could last a really long time. I expected it would last until 2010. Well, 2010 is almost done and I done feel a single urge to put it behind me right now.

The system I have now is end-of-life, as in it has reached the end of its upgrade chain. The last one I made was actually 2 years ago when I got the GTX 260. I'm now just sitting back and waiting for something to actually give me a reason to upgrade. I'm think the 8GB of RAM I bought when DDR2 was dirt cheap was/is helping out greatly as well (no matter how much I stuff I load up, nothing ever seems slow).

I love my now apparently aging system. :D
 
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My q6600 is a bottleneck in BC2. Other than that it's still kicking. It's going to be hard to wait until the next enthusiast Intel chips though.
 
blade52x said:
I'm sticking with the Q6600 until... I have no idea to be honest. A few years ago when I bought the chip, I suspected it could last a really long time. I expected it would last until 2010. Well, 2010 is almost done and I done feel a single urge to put it behind me right now.

The system I have now is end-of-life, as in it has reached the end of its upgrade chain. The last one I made was actually 2 years ago when I got the GTX 260. I'm now just sitting back and waiting for something to actually give me a reason to upgrade. I'm think the 8GB of RAM I bought when DDR2 was dirt cheap was/is helping out greatly as well (no matter how much I stuff I load up, nothing ever seems slow).

I love my now apparently aging system. :D
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Yes the 8gb makes a big difference. I am in a similar boat, although when my fiance needed an upgrade a couple years back I gave her my Q6600 and sold my 780i for the cost of the p45 while picking up the Q9550. I'm holding for socket 2011 now, unless there are some crazy deals on 1155
 
blade52x said:
I'm sticking with the Q6600 until... I have no idea to be honest. A few years ago when I bought the chip, I suspected it could last a really long time. I expected it would last until 2010. Well, 2010 is almost done and I done feel a single urge to put it behind me right now.

The system I have now is end-of-life, as in it has reached the end of its upgrade chain. The last one I made was actually 2 years ago when I got the GTX 260. I'm now just sitting back and waiting for something to actually give me a reason to upgrade. I'm think the 8GB of RAM I bought when DDR2 was dirt cheap was/is helping out greatly as well (no matter how much I stuff I load up, nothing ever seems slow).

I love my now apparently aging system. :D
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I'm in the exact same situation. My last upgrade was an SSD and that alone made it feel like a brand new system. There is literally nothing for me left to upgrade on this machine. 8GB is my limit, a more powerful video card would be virtually useless paired with this CPU, i've got more then adequate power supply and of course, i've already got the SSD. I'm sure an i7 will crank out more fps in games like BC2 and encoding, but my performance is more than adequate. I don't foresee a new "build" anytime in the near future unless my board fries or something along those lines.
 
Yea I am trying to see how long I can go on my system. Only GPU upgrades I have done really. It seems to be doing me well and plays all the games ive tried at max or near max setting at 1920x1080. Although that is probably more dependent on my GPU. I am trying to hold out for what 2011 brings us.
 
I still have a deep love for my old q6600, but if the i5-2600k prices are good, it's going to be hard to resist shooting for 5 ghz on a H70. Just saying. ;)
 
I just noticed every year my temp with the q6600 is bumping up about 5-6 degrees every year
time for new case/ heatsink and fan
or just a new coat of thermal paste?
I just finished up some sc2 1 game
it got the 76 78 79 78c
wtf
 
umcpgrad said:
I just noticed every year my temp with the q6600 is bumping up about 5-6 degrees every year
time for new case/ heatsink and fan
or just a new coat of thermal paste?
I just finished up some sc2 1 game
it got the 76 78 79 78c
wtf
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I would say its time for a new layer of thermal paste along with a reseating of the heatsink/fan. I would also clean out/replace any case fans that are starting to die or are stuffed up with dirt.
 
that is some crazy temp I think
80c is the max for q6600 eh?
I am going to get some new layer of the thermal paste and reseat if that doesn't work I guess time for new heatsink/fan
 
Actually max temp is 72 for a G0 and somewhere in the low 60's for a B3, you should definitely reapply TIM and dust in there.

The G0 in my fiance's shuttle will hit 74c under full load at 3ghz at stock volts. I have lapped both the chip and heatsink to a mirror finish and applied IC Diamond 6, eventually I just accepted that this is the limit of that dinky 3 heatpipe cooler. Still, if I can keep it close to spec while overclocked using something that looks like a VRM cooler then anyone with a normal heatsink should be fine.
 
R-Type said:
Actually max temp is 72 for a G0 and somewhere in the low 60's for a B3, you should definitely reapply TIM and dust in there.
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sigh...

I remember the days of massive threads dedicated to "what the TJMax of the Q6600 is" and it ended with everyone agreeing with it being 100c. Where are you getting ~60-72c from? :confused:
 
Basalt said:
I still have a deep love for my old q6600, but if the i5-2600k prices are good, it's going to be hard to resist shooting for 5 ghz on a H70. Just saying. ;)
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+1 Heck, I'm having a hard time holding off a new i5 750 and MB upgrade NOW. :D
 
I am getting my temps on hwmonitor and coretemp
are they accurate
because when I was hitting numbers close to 80'c after I played 1 game of sc2 I asap shut down my pc
 
umcpgrad said:
that is some crazy temp I think
80c is the max for q6600 eh?
I am going to get some new layer of the thermal paste and reseat if that doesn't work I guess time for new heatsink/fan
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100c is the max for q6600, 80c is 'fine' for a q6600 at load and far away from the throttling point. try just blowing off the dust rom your current heatsink and fan. also if you are using a push pin mount, try switching to a x-brace mount for better contact (only about $6).


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I can get my Q6600 only to 3.0ghz and 50C on prime :(
I even turned my fans to minimum, there's no point in cooling it to 40C when it doesn't clock higher due to my G31M-ES2L motherboard.
 
criccio said:
sigh...

I remember the days of massive threads dedicated to "what the TJMax of the Q6600 is" and it ended with everyone agreeing with it being 100c. Where are you getting ~60-72c from? :confused:
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I was just giving the official Intel temp limit, of course they keep operating beyond that but if you are hitting temps above that it would be wise to invest in some better cooling.
 
RamonGTP said:
Do you have a link to these official limits?
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Sure thing, its in section 5 of the Intel datasheet for the Q6xxx quads and the relevant charts for the B3 and G0 steppings are on pages 74 and 75. As you can see here, Intel is recommending 62C and 71C respectively.
http://www.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/315592.htm

At the moment the majority of my job is sourcing high end SMT components and cpu's like the Q6600 are simply very advanced IC's. The temps listed on the datasheets are the manufacturers guaranteed range, and the majority of chips will have at least a 20-30% safety factor built in. As a result you can exceed these conditions pretty reguarly but the chips are NOT binned for this and the MTBF at these temps is not guaranteed. With hundreds of aftermarket HSF units available that are able to keep the chips well under these temperatures, why would you even risk stepping beyond them?
 
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