How long do you intend to keep your Q6600 until??

[Will404]

I expect to keep it until it starts to struggle, which I expect to be l8 2010 to l8 2011, depending on what I am using it for. In that time I will probably upgrade the GPU once, to a HD68xx, or Ndiva equivelent. I will keep my HD4850, and then when I decide the CPU is holding me back, probs July 2011, I will Move the newish HD68xx to a new PC, and put the HD4850 back in the Q6600 machine, and pass that down to a family member, or media PC.

[Voxination]

I'm a Q6700 user, does that count? (It was cheaper than the Q6600 at the time)


I will most likely head off of it and flip over to i7 on the LGA1156 platform based on what reviews say, the thought of CrossFireX or SLI on the same board (Albeit not at the same time) sounds tempting, but X58 was just to expensive at the time I bought up.

[malfunction]

I'm keeping my Xeon X3210 quad core (which has been running @ 3.2GHz since the first day or so) until at least 2011. Might upgrade my GFX before then (currently have a 512MB Radeon 3850) though I don't play games on the PC much these days and I'm sure I'll end up buying a new HDD and / or SSD before then too. Have just upgraded the RAM to 8GB and installed Windows 7 RC on it to really get used to it before I get my retail copy delivered in October (had been running it on my netbook only so far).

[ed^chigliak]

Forever but what does that mean?

ZX81 to Q6700

Museum in progress.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems quite a few people are happy with the performance of their Q6600 it seems!!

[jonny4288]

Dont intend to upgrade either my pc or buy a new laptop for the forseable future,

pc spec: athlon xp 3200, 2gb ram,

laptop spec, c2d 2ghz, 2gb ram,

both do me fine for day to day stuff, use the console for gaming these days, too expensive to keep a pc up to spec when a console plays anything you throw at it,

[sammorris]

Even though you pay a premium of at least £10-£15 extra per game - I keep a console for the console-only exclusives but the mediocre graphics plus having to use a control stick for some games (RTS+FPS in particular) is enough to justify having a gaming PC.

[ajones]

I feel the itch to waste money on a water cooling setup before I blow it on a new system, for no other reason that I've never done one before

[GaryRW]

I take the view that saving/waiting for an SSD is likely to have a far bigger impact now, and probably will stay that way for quite a while.

& I'm assuming that as more and more software becomes properly multi-threaded, it'll seem like I'm slowly getting a better CPU anyway

[davidcrofter]

Well tbh I don't think the i7 and forthcoming i5 chips are that great an improvement if you already have a Q6600 (for most tasks anyway). So until Intel bring a Core 2 Quad Killer Chip out then I don't think the upgrade is a great idea other than some E-Peen Growth. I dare say lots of people have got to have the latest chips though no matter the cost ... they probably change their graphics cards every 6 months to boot.

So be 2011 at the earliest for me and hopefully AMD will be giving Intel something to really think about by then.

[shadowmaster]

I take the view that saving/waiting for an SSD is likely to have a far bigger impact now, and probably will stay that way for quite a while.

& I'm assuming that as more and more software becomes properly multi-threaded, it'll seem like I'm slowly getting a better CPU anyway

I'm thinking along the same lines as well. I've pre ordered windows 7 and I'm hoping to get an SSD along with it as well. Hopefully by October they should be a little cheaper then they are now.

[sammorris]

a 9550/9650 is a pretty sizeable step up from a 6600, obviously not a vast improvement, but a noticeable impact for a fair few things.

[dangel]

Is it? Or are you just thinking at stock?

[jonathan_phang]

Not for while really. I use my rig mainly for gaming, and its not exactly proving to be a bottleneck. If performance does start to head south, then the next upgrade will be the GPU, as I've only got a 8800GTS G92.

The way the prices are a the moment, really tempted to grab one, but maybe I'll wait a bit more until the next gen comes out, to push prices lower. Like I said, in the games that I play dont really experience frame probs, and the CPU has a lot of headroom, so I can see me keeping my rig for a good few years really...

[sammorris]

Both...

[dangel]

I can't say I agree - and hence i'm sticking with the Q6600 for the forseeable future (especially as at 3ghz it's still got a lot more to give if and when i need it). Certainly my planned SSD and (inevitable) graphics card upgrade later this year will have far more impact than a full rebuild. Big res gaming is rarely cpu bound.