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

[sammorris]

Sandy bridge looks pretty disappointing to me IMO, 10% gain per-clock, and no overclocking unless you buy a K-type CPU. That said, the K-type CPUs aren't much more than the normal chips at least, and the TDPs are good at 95W max, even for the hyperthreaded top i7s, which also retain the lack of chipset and IGP. I perceive it as more of a refresh of i5/i7 which is fine for now but I have concerns about its competitiveness against the upcoming AMD Bulldozer CPUs.

[format]

I'm still on a Core2Duo!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm still on a Core2Duo!

I am still on PCI-E 8X for my main PC!

[matty-hodgson]

My Q6600 is still going strong .

Looking to replace it shortly though I think.

[Terbinator]

Wish i still had my Q6600 tbh although I expect this (i7 860) to last for gaming purposes at least until around 2013/4.

[sammorris]

format: Although I run an i5 in my main PC, I still use an E5200 on a regular basis in my fileserver, and do just as much with that. It's a fine enough CPU for run of the mill stuff, and it even gets used as a gaming PC when people borrow it
CAT: Technically so do I, I run 4 GPUs, but off a 16x controller, so they get 4x each. It really makes very little difference to performance, PCIe link speed is very much over-rated.

[[GSV]Trig]

Swapped mine when I got a good deal on an i7 860/H50/Board/RAM...
Altho the RAM didnt end up being as good as it was meant to be as it was miss advertised as normal DDR3 but was infact laptop RAM...

[badass]

With Sandy Bridge being released in January are any of you intending to replace your Q6600??

TBH,hopefully I can get another year out of mine!

Sandy bridge is too slow to bother with. It seems that on average it is less than twice as fast as a Q6600 that was released 4 years ago!
I'll keep mine until bulldozer/ivy bridge at least or possibly haswell if ivy bridge is nothing special.
It looks likely that my CPU will outlast 2 GFX card upgrades!

[matty-hodgson]

It looks likely that my CPU will outlast 2 GFX card upgrades!

I've had an 8400GS, then an 8800GT, then a GTX260, then a 4890 and now finally a GTX275. Will be moving to a GTX570 in a couple of weeks too .

All on a Q6600.. Absolutely amazing little processor tbh .

[Terbinator]

Sandy bridge is too slow to bother with. It seems that on average it is less than twice as fast as a Q6600 that was released 4 years ago!
I'll keep mine until bulldozer/ivy bridge at least or possibly haswell if ivy bridge is nothing special.
It looks likely that my CPU will outlast 2 GFX card upgrades!

Won't ivy Bridge just be a 22nm shrink of SB, though?

[sammorris]

badass: At 3.3Ghz a Sandy bridge quad should be about 2.1x the speed of a Q6600. Still, not a huge amount given 4 years of development I agree.
This said, per-core the Q6600 is only about 2.0-2.5x as fast as an Athlon XP Throughbred from 4 years before it. It just has more cores.

matty: "little" CPU, lmao. 8800GT to GTX260 I get [shame on you for buying the 8400 ], but GTX260->HD4890>GTX275? What on earth?
As for the GTX570 I highly suggest waiting to see what the HD6950 is like. I think it's going to look quite considerably better than the 570.

[LuckyNV]

Won't ivy Bridge just be a 22nm shrink of SB, though?

Essentially yes, however the extra pins allow more memory channels and more CPU cores (think upto 16 cores apparently) amongst other things.

I think some people are going to be disappointed at the difference between SB and IB for 4core/8thread comparisons.

Apparently SB will allow up to 8cores.

As for myself, I went from Q6600@3.3GHz to i5-750@3.8GHz (late 2009 Scan MSI mobo deal snagged me), difference was immense in anything CPU intensive and even offered most games a boost.

99% certain I'm not going to change to SB and wait to see how IB turns out. (Personally I think any upgrade to SB from high clocked quad i5/i7 won't be very high in the value for money stakes).

[Terbinator]

Hopefully Ivy Bridge will retain socket compatibility with 1155/2011.

[sammorris]

Q6600 2.4->3.24 at the end of August 2008, to make actual use of the 4870X2 I'd recently bought.
After discovering I'd got a poor overclocking batch:
Q9550 2.83>3.65 in November 2008, I actually bought off ebay in the US to guarantee an E0 stepping. Not that it mattered as the X38 board was also a relatively poor clocker, and adding the second X2 only made things worse. Nonetheless, the Q9550 was a fair bit faster than the 6600 per-clock too, so it was a reasonable buy.

In February 2010, i5 750 2.66->4.12. No overclocking disappointments here at all, the 16x PCIe bandwidth makes no difference to performance, and it's ludicrously fast by comparison. CPU overheads of crossfire considerably reduced.
Nonetheless, intending to finally retire the 4870X2s in favour of 6970(s) in the new year, price-depending.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anyone still intending to keep their Q6600 into 2012??

[jonathan_phang]

Anyone still intending to keep their Q6600 into 2012??

I'd have to say yes to that. Its mainly a games machine for me, so I threw another 5850 at my rig as the last major upgrade, and I'm very happy with it - even though they only run at x8 PCIe. The CPU seems to be adept enought not to bottleneck feeding both those cards, which was a worry of mine before, but one card vs whole architecture seemed a better bet money wise. There isnt anything that I cant run with that combination at the moment (at 1920x1200), so unless there is a steep increase in requirements for the CPU (I'm thinking physics/AI heavy) then its going to be fine for a good while.

That said, its only running at 3.2 so was thinking that I might get some 1066 DDR2 to use instead of the 800 that I have, and maybe that might eek out some more OC potential - though Im not sure I can be bothered with the change/test/change/test rigmarole any more, at least until I really cant game at 1920x1200

Great processor - long live the Q6600