E6600 upgrade to Q6600 worth it?

[Boon72]

as it says in the title, would it be worth the £160 upgrade.

the rest of my system should be along side this

[shaithis]

Are you going to use the extra cores?

[Boon72]

i mainly use the pc for gaming - Crysis and COD4 at the moment

[PenguinJim]

It's on my mind, too, as you'd get about £80-100 for the old CPU on eBay.

But I don't think it's yet worth it. I'm holding out for a nice 45nm quaddie in the New Year.

[Blitzen]

as it says in the title, would it be worth the £160 upgrade.

the rest of my system should be along side this

Not in the slightest. Especially not the Q6600.
You wont see a difference in gaming between C2D's and Quads for a long time yet as there are no games around that are made for quads.
TBH...there isn't that much designed for C2D's either.

[RRRuss]

Wait for a QX9300, should be about £150ish?

[Typhoon2000]

You may need a new MB to the run the Penryns. If your into overclocking, you may be disappinted with the Q9300 due to its low multi, and the Q6600 whould probably clock better with decent cooling.

[Agent]

You wont see a difference in gaming between C2D's and Quads for a long time yet as there are no games around that are made for quads.
TBH...there isn't that much designed for C2D's either.

You what? (Hey look, we went back to disagreeing again )

Most of the newer games certainly do make benefit of dual core, and a quite a few quad core. After all, if you're doing multi-threaded code, its not much harder to make it take advantage of a quad system, if the power can be used.

Bechmarks:
AnandTech: Unreal Tournament 3 CPU & High End GPU Analysis: Next-Gen Gaming Explored
X-bit labs - Multi-Core Confrontation: Core 2 Quad Q6600 vs. Core 2 Duo E6850 (page 8) (which shows quad beating dual core in most situations, even though the clock speed is slower!)

Quad-core is here and it will only get used more in upcoming releases. Saying there isn't much designed for C2D's is just wrong!

Now, if its worth spending the investment in an upgrade is a different matter....

Crysis also has good gains from quad core IIRC, but I can't find a good benchmark showing the difference between dual and quad core on the same system

[Blitzen]

The difference isnt that great if anything.
Im not say the cores arent used. Im saying that games are specifically designed for them, especially quads.

Its going to be the middle of next year at least before these Quads really start showing what they can do as the coders will start making software to actually use them to their full potential.

[acrobat]

I read somewhere that my E6600 was not fully used in Crysis, when you have an 8800GTX. So its the GTX which is holding the game back. I never bothered testing that though.

But I agree with what PenguinJim said. I think there are some games that will give you a speed boost with a Q6600, but it would be quite a small increase, and not worth the price difference - even if you did get £80 odd quid for your existing chip on EBAY.

So I would wait until next year for the new quads to roll out. Thats what I will probably do.

[JamesD]

I would imagine you'd see a big performance increase within the desktop if you're running resource-hungry applications such as design programs, CAD and music production suites. Whether there'll be a difference in games I'll have to agree with the above posts! So if its mainly gaming you do, then I'd wait

[EarlGrey]

If you were to overclock the q6600 to 3.2GHz (You'll struggle to get a lot faster than that) You will see improvements in a few situations. Unless you are doing encoding/3D rendering/physics calculations - then you won't get a massive boost.
I think the quad helps in Supreme Commander, in other games whilst 4 cores might be being used, it's not necessary. I doubt you'd even being taxing your E6600 at 3.2GHz.

You won't lose by getting it, but with a fast processor already I think you'd be best served waiting a bit, especially if your motherboard can take 45nm CPUs

[chis]

i mainly use the pc for gaming - Crysis and COD4 at the moment

You won't see much of a difference. Both games, but especially Crysis, are GPU gobblers. Even an 8800 Ultra Geforce isn't enough to run Crysis at full detail, 16xAA at particularly fast frame rates. Save your money for a better graphics card.

[moogle]

Wait for a QX9300, should be about £150ish?

whens that?

i suppose lets see a e6600 is what £90 new right? a q6600 has 2 of those for less than 2 x 90 = £180 so I suppose its a good deal if you use the cores and you can sell off your old cpu. I don't think it's worth the upgrade if you aren't maxing your E6600 yet.

[fathazza]

holy thread revival batman...

im looking to upgrade my e6600 to a q6600 just cos im bored and have upgradeitis.

how much can i expect to get second hand for my E6600?

[this_is_gav]

holy thread revival batman...

im looking to upgrade my e6600 to a q6600 just cos im bored and have upgradeitis.

how much can i expect to get second hand for my E6600?

£60, perhaps £70. Maybe £90 if you stick it on Ebay and the idiots get into a bidding frenzy, but I don't expect so given there must be plenty on there already from others doing exactly the same.

Looking to move to a quad myself, but I'll be sticking the E6600 in another machine if I do. Wouldn't bother if I didn't do a lot of video editing though. It would just sit there using up more electricity 99% of the time. Worthless upgrade. A better plan would be to wait on Nehalem and do a full overhaul then if you've no genuine use for the 2 extra cores at the moment.