Worth upgrading from a Q6600 G0?

[samuraiweasel]

Was wondering and thought that maybe someone here has done so already, is it worth upgrading from a Q6600 G0 (Very overclockable) to say an i5 or go straight to an i7 or is the performance difference negligible given my rig?

Q6600 G0
8GB DDR2
GTS 250 1GB
22" 1680 x 1050

Mainly DOTA 2 and WoT, with a side of singleplayer fps stuff and Starcraft 2

[badass]

I had a Q6600 B3 with 8GB DDR2 and a Radeon 6870.
The only 2 reasons I had to upgrade were the new virtualisation instructions on later processors (which is only relevant to virtualisation) and that I needed more than 8GB RAM.
Since the upgrade, yes the CPU is more than twice as fast however the only area I have actually noticed that extra performance is video encoding. No games seem faster including the latest and greatest. Benchmarks may be a different story, but who notices the difference between 120 and 200 FPS when your monitor is limited to 60 FPS?
I'd wait until you notice the CPU is holding you back gaming wise then upgrade. You'll get more for your money then. At a guess that will be over a year from now.

[samuraiweasel]

Thanks mate, it's always better to get the opinion of someone who's actually had similar hardware, slightly more realistic view than getting benchmark numbers thrown at me.

[Caveman]

Hey Samuraiweasel,

I asked the same question about a month ago, read this hopefully it will help.

[Divino]

For WOT it surely worth it. This game eats even 4,5GHz 3570/3770K, from that freq no drops lower 40fps. Not on the 250gts, of course..

[quady]

Possibly wait for Haswell in June. Upgrading in a predicable manor is better than waiting for the 5 year old kit to go pop and die on you randomly.

[jigger]

The average overclocked q6600 G0 will be plenty fast enough for even the most high end cards at your resolution. Even if you was GPU top heavy at 1680x1050 you could max out all settings and have a very constant frame rate.

Your GTS250 will be a major bottleneck.