Q6600 vs i7 920

You gave bad (read: WRONG) advice.

i7 > Core2Quad in Photoshop...every site has shown this.

The fallacies first came into play AFTER your bad post.
You couldn't rebuttal, so you resorted to fallacies...pure smoke&mirrors to hide your piss-poor advice in conflict with reality :rolleyes:

I really don't want to have to read through another one of his flame posts, but I had to post this in case he really couldn't find where he had stated it. Granted he said he was using smoke&mirrors to hide his poor advice, and not that the advice itself was pure smoke&mirrors, but it was the same flamebait to flesh out more arguments, so it really doesn't matter.

Anyway, I've been contemplating the same change, Q6600 -> i7. So far have held out, but the upgrade urge keeps hitting me, but I've been strong so far. To be honest I turn the desktop on less and less as time goes on. I guess my laptop can do just about everything I need from it aside from gaming, encoding, ripping (at an adequate speed), and large photo work.

You've already got your hands on a good i7 board, so at this point go for it!
 
Bahaha, I didn't want to point that out because Atech already hates me. :p

Pretty sure he just hates anything resembling logic...

As far as whether the upgrade is worthwhile to you the OP... On the basis of price/performance alone, probably not; unless the video encoding you're doing is part of your job or you do a massive amount of it on a daily basis... Same for photoshop. But there's intangibles to consider, most of us are just geeks, we love playing with new stuff, heh, that alone may be enough of a reason for ya. Or maybe you're thinking of going SLI/CF soon, X58 boards give you more options (as P45/X48 will only do CF obviously).

Just be aware of exactly what you're paying for and how much, and that i5 and cheaper P55 mobos will eventually make their way to market at the end of the year. I'd hold off personally, DDR3 prices keep falling and i7 920s are already pretty cheap, but X58 boards are still kinda pricey (though you do get a lot for the $), that's where P55 should come in and change things up. Then there's 32nm parts looming further down on the horizon, which might or might not need board revisions (though they should use the same socket as i7).
 
Anyway, I've been contemplating the same change, Q6600 -> i7. So far have held out, but the upgrade urge keeps hitting me, but I've been strong so far. To be honest I turn the desktop on less and less as time goes on. I guess my laptop can do just about everything I need from it aside from gaming, encoding, ripping (at an adequate speed), and large photo work.

You've already got your hands on a good i7 board, so at this point go for it!

Came for the flame bait, stayed for what ended up being good advice and kinda helped me out.

I, too, am a current owner of a Q6600 and while I have been looking at i7s, I havent been seriously looking at them. I keep an eye on how much CPU my games and daily activities use and I am lucky if I break 75% for more than the nightly virus scans or the rare .rar I unpack. When gaming on COD4, my cpu runs about 30-50% depending.

I cant in good faith recommend i7s to anyone already running a quad-core unless their work depends on it or they have the cash to just throw around. I recently upgraded my 8800GTS to a GTX260 and had some buyers remorse, but not enough to worry me to the point of returning.

All in all, current quad cores just arent enough to entice me from leaving my current. Until it dies or something truly better comes along, I will stay with my Q6600.
 
All in all, current quad cores just arent enough to entice me from leaving my current. Until it dies or something truly better comes along, I will stay with my Q6600.

My thoughts exactly. I've never owned a CPU/mobo for over 2 years that I actually didn't have a need to upgrade. It feels.......weird. :p
 
Oh good grief boys, play nice.... you can agree to disagree :rolleyes:

I went from a Q6600 to a Core i7 920. I do video encoding, photoshop CS3 Master Suite and game. Saw huge improvements in PS and Video encoding and in some games a large amount of difference and some games not a lot.
 
I went from an E6600 to a Q9450 and noticed a decent difference in the things i normally do. Looking at all the benchmarks and whatnot, I do not believe I would see a big enough difference to go from my 9450 to an I7. The only thing that's really killing me is that my mobo doesn't support PCI-E 2.0. :(
 
"Worth" is relative to you and you alone. Only you know if the cost is worth it to you. If you want it and can afford it then one might argue it is worth it.
+1. People can tell you (based on the info that you have given) whether you'll see performance gains or not, what the price difference would be, and whether it is worth it to them. Unfortunately, as you have seen, it ends up being less like a poll and more like a joust.
 
My thoughts exactly. I've never owned a CPU/mobo for over 2 years that I actually didn't have a need to upgrade. It feels.......weird. :p

I know what you mean, I feel like I am behind the times with the newer cpus coming out.

Oh good grief boys, play nice.... you can agree to disagree :rolleyes:

I went from a Q6600 to a Core i7 920. I do video encoding, photoshop CS3 Master Suite and game. Saw huge improvements in PS and Video encoding and in some games a large amount of difference and some games not a lot.

In your position, I would have probably upgraded as well. I just dont do enough encoding and photo editing to make it worth the cost upgrade.
 
I don't want to get into the itty bitty details. If you encode or run VM's, there is no excuse.

Well, I sold off all my C2Q rigs, bought an i7 rig, bought another C2Q rig, sold it again, and bought a second i7 rig. Let's say I see the difference.
 
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This thread is from May. Times have changed, as the new LGA1156 CPUs have been released.
 
I went from a OCd Q6600 to an OCd i7.

Q6600 @ 3.6 vs i7 @ 4.0

Pretty massive difference for rendering my raw files in photoshop, I'd say about half on some things. Though some of that I'm sure is placebo.
 
Sorry folks, both your Q6600 and i7 is totally PWNED by my iPhone! And Yes that is with Adobe Photoshop for the PC as well :)

Seriously, I'm mocking and yet I'm completely honest. I can run your Photoshop on my iPhone and outrun your system.

:)

How....

WIth the Citrix iPhone receiver and a Citrix XenApp server with multi-proc Quad core Xenon processors of course.

Otherwise, I'm also still quite happy with my Q6600 for gaming. When I need high performance computing, I let the server farm take over.
 
Frankly, I'm amazed about the arguing going on here. As I had understood from the original poster, who neglected to let us know if $ is a factor, if upgrading from a Q6600 to an i7 would be a good upgrade.

As many pointed out, without getting mean, the i7 does have a nice boost on several items including several games that enjoy the new i7 arc. However, if not that much of a boost in pure clock cycles (if one gets a low end i7) and one plays the games from the reviews that garner more from the onboard cache then the benefit it is lower.

If money is burning a hole and you need to have a reason to buy, then by all means get that i7 rig with the faster of the i7 procs that OC real well and have fun!

If however you are more frugal and want to wait for even more of a performance boost (like Core 2 tech compared to Pentium 4), then waiting even longer is good as well. Your system certainly wouldn't be a "slouch", but it wouldn't be a "barn stormer" either.

For those that always must upgrade to the latest tech, even if sometimes that may only yield even a 5% boost (not saying the i7, but some upgrades in the past have been that range) they treat all "naysayers" just like the animosity between the PC and MAC crowd.

Hence..... My thin client iPhone still PWNS yah!
 
There have been a few instances where I wish i had more power than my Q6600 @ 3.2GHz provides. Well, only one instance really and that's HD encoding. However, I encode MAYBE 1 HD movie a month at the most, so for "ME" an upgrade is not worth it.

With the 5870 in my rig, i'm probably CPU limited in just about every game I have except for Crysis, but all that means is that I'm getting 80-100 fps instead of 100-120 in those particular titles.

I see myself going with a SSD drive before upgrading to a faster platform.
 
Holy shit people, this thread is OLD, lol. Drop it already.

Still relevant tho.

Upgrade, I did, would do it again. Forget the hype, its just great to have a new core and you will notice subtle differences.

OC is too easy.

Chip is very stable.

For your apps it will help. Every little bit faster means you have more life time to do other things :D Or sumthin like that..

Good luck

:Luca
 
L0LOMFGZ I get 2000 framez in ph0t0shpzorz!

The upgrade isn't worth it if you're interested in enhanced productivity. An SSD would probably make more sense. A faster video card would make more sense for gaming. Even the Phenoms are fine for gaming.

People tend to think "Hey, the i7 is like 20% faster so I'm gonna spend 20% less time in 3D studio blah bla blah".

At the end of the day, unless you're investing in a rendering farm, the amount of time YOU as a human interacting with the software, is going to remain the same, and the largest amount of time spent producing a rendering is interacting, not waiting for renders to complete. For example, if you spend 8 hours a day doing 3D modelling, and two hours of that is waiting for renders to complete, then you're only going to save 20% of 30%, which is an overall improvement of only 6.6%....

A bit of pragmatism goes a long way in making these decisions... and not "OMG I CAN HAZ THE LATEST AND GREATEST".
 
Comon guys...The guy wants some advice and how are you guys disprespecting him :confused:
 
Before I moved from Jamaica my work computer at home was an Intel Q6600 system OCd to 3.4 ghz rock stable. (Sadly had to sell it before I moved) Shortly before I left we got a Core i7 system at work for Photoshop related tasks. From a photo editing standpoint the stock i7 seemed slower than my OCd Q6600, and of course I couldn't OC that one because it was a work system at the office.

It just doesn't seem like a worthwhile upgrade at this point in time unless you are running a pretty high end SLI setup for gaming or do REALLY REALLY hardcore video encoding.
 
what if you're looking at putting a new system together though?

Essentially scratch except for case power supply nic cd.

Worth paying extra for the i7 and it's respective hardware at that point?
 
what if you're looking at putting a new system together though?
Essentially scratch except for case power supply nic cd.
Worth paying extra for the i7 and it's respective hardware at that point?
I've found the i5 750 to be a real sweet spot for price performance - <$200 chip, $100 motherboards, <$75 for 4GB RAM, makes it all very sweet. It's hard to recommend anything else for the average enthusiast wanting a kick ass system.
 
I've found the i5 750 to be a real sweet spot for price performance - <$200 chip, $100 motherboards, <$75 for 4GB RAM, makes it all very sweet. It's hard to recommend anything else for the average enthusiast wanting a kick ass system.

I thought the same thing, until the P55/Foxconn issue reared its ugly head. Since then I've gone 1366 and haven't looked back.
 
I thought the same thing, until the P55/Foxconn issue reared its ugly head. Since then I've gone 1366 and haven't looked back.
I don't know how far that issue reaches though. I purposefully yanked out my CPU just to double check, since I did have an "affected" motherboard model, and all pins were making contact. Either way, most manufacturers have released new revisions of motherboards that have been QA'd for this problem.
 
L0LOMFGZ I get 2000 framez in ph0t0shpzorz!

The upgrade isn't worth it if you're interested in enhanced productivity. An SSD would probably make more sense. A faster video card would make more sense for gaming. Even the Phenoms are fine for gaming.

People tend to think "Hey, the i7 is like 20% faster so I'm gonna spend 20% less time in 3D studio blah bla blah".

At the end of the day, unless you're investing in a rendering farm, the amount of time YOU as a human interacting with the software, is going to remain the same, and the largest amount of time spent producing a rendering is interacting, not waiting for renders to complete. For example, if you spend 8 hours a day doing 3D modelling, and two hours of that is waiting for renders to complete, then you're only going to save 20% of 30%, which is an overall improvement of only 6.6%....

A bit of pragmatism goes a long way in making these decisions... and not "OMG I CAN HAZ THE LATEST AND GREATEST".

I don't think it about the latest and greatest.. its more about a solid choice.. I mean shit.. the latest and greatest would be the i7975 wouldn't it?...

And that 6.6% is nearly fourty minutes.. so say you do shit like that alot, then that 20% of 30% adds up, but then weigh that up with the time at work to earn the money to buy the new chip minus the money you would get from selling your old chip adding again the time that it takes to crap on about crapping on and crap crap crap crap..

Bro.. if you feel you must have the i7 and 'you' would like it, you will notice a slight difference depending on the task at hand 'I' 'think'.. but its not a difference thats gonna blow your testicles off your body.

I bought the i7 because I felt, after alot of research, that it was a smart upgrade, and because 'I' wanted it, it was never the latest and greatest, it is a great chip at a great price and will last solidly... but in saying all that... so was/is the Q6600 ;)

Confused yet? Well ya fucken should be :D

Here is the best advice 'I' can give..

No matter where you ask.. some will always be for, and some against.. if you can't decide, let it be for a while and come back to it, and if you can't let it be... then buy it, its not worth losing sleep over (and its not going to be a step backwards is it?)..

:Luca
 
20% of 2 hours is 24 minutes. It does add up, but only 6.6% overall.

Maybe some of the guys who are heavily into 3D modelling could give some indication of their usage patterns.

I think I'm going to start a separate thread.
 
It takes the Q6600 @ 3.6 to compete with the i7 920 @ 2.6 stock. So if you overclock a bit you can save your cash. The eight cores is more hype then anything. Heck you barely get to use 4 cores now. Save your cash buy something else. Video card, ram, bigger monitor. Take your girl friend/wife and kids {if you have any} out and have a good time, the money would be better spent that was in my honest opinion.
 
No, No, No, and No. Only upgrade you need to be concerned about is your GPU. Why waste $400-500 for an i7/x58/ mobo when you can buy two 5850s and own all the i7 noobs who only have one 5850 because they spent too much on their cpu. :p
 
If you're looking to upgrade, which it seems you're at least thinking about it. Go for it, regardless of the arguements people are chucking your way, at the end of the day it's a much better processor, it overclocks beautifully and plus you'll be set for upgrading in the future.
 
actually save your cash and buy something else...go buy yourself an aluminum jon boat and go boating in a lake...more relaxing....your Q6600 will do fine NOW and in 2 years as well... dont let anyone fool you!! All you will have to do probably is get some more memory or a new videocard...
 
I upgraded from a Q6600 to an i7/RAM/mobo system a few months ago. At first, my system "felt" faster. After about 3 three weeks, the mobo fried out so I returned it and reinstalled my Q6600 stuff. I honestly could barely tell the difference and decided to return the 17/RAM, too. Now, I don't do much heavy multitasking - actually, none at all - so my uses don't really require what the i7 delivers. I'm very content to stick with my Q6600 for the foreseeable future. The $700+ I spent on the i7 looks a lot sweeter in my checking account.
 
I loved the difference a SSD made to my system (would be worth it just for improved startup time to me). I don't see the improvement necessary to invest in a new processer and MB when the Q6600 is still a solid performer. Makes more sense if doing a new system build.
 
i7 destroys q6600 !!

lies! my q6600 is still alive! it will never be found! i7 is windows7 without the wndows.. it will be broken! it will fail.. you will see!

Anyway, I'll keep my q6600 for a while until one of you sells your i7 setup for $100. Yeah, I'll wait.
 
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