Swapping Cores only

[vincent.m]

I have a PC with an E6600 in, want to put a Q6600 to replace, would this be possible? i am worried that windows will not allow it as its a new CPU.
can i do a direct swap with no changing the bios etc.

[Jay]

depending if your board has the correct BIOS you won't need to reinstall, I did the exact same upgrade with no issues.

[scaryjim]

You can swap CPU pretty much as often as you want, so if your board supports the Q6600 you should have no problems...

[Flash477]

The only issue you might have is if your Windows is OEM, in which case it might think that it is a different computer

[circuitmonkey]

I had a slight problem when I moved to my q6700
Although everything booted and worked fine, task manager wasn't showing all my cores and device manager showed a mix of my old CPU (e4300 I think) and Q6700
Can't remember exactly how I fixed it, think I had to uninstall the cpu's (via device manger) and then reboot.
Like I said, just slight problem, but something to look out for.

[jim]

The only issue you might have is if your Windows is OEM, in which case it might think that it is a different computer

Even if it does, it's fairly easily rectified with a phonecall to the automated activation line.

[Jay]

The only issue you might have is if your Windows is OEM, in which case it might think that it is a different computer

doubt it, its more a motherboard / BIOS that the OEM is locked to.

[jim]

doubt it, its more a motherboard / BIOS that the OEM is locked to.

It's done it to me for all sorts of reasons, even very minor hardware changes sometimes sets it off. I had to reactivate my Vista install at least 2 times - and I think one of them might've been adding an extra hard drive.

As far as I know it takes information about various components, and then has an algorithm that decides how much change is too much, and then it kicks up a fuss.

[vincent.m]

thanks for the replies. i bought the q6600 for 10, just thought i may as well upgrade lol.
its not OEM, its a retail version. i guess if anything goes wrong just reverse the action.
a little silly question, is there even much point in me changing it? all i do it surf the net, watch videos, convert the odd tv show to mp4 (to watch on ipod) and a lot of music. will all 4 cores even be used or will it even increase efficiency/decrease loading times? if not then i will probably not even bother until there is an actual use for 4 cores.

i just felt that i may as well upgrade my "cores" because there is a 6 core cpu right? (i7)

[Ulti]

Surfing the net - No
Watching video - No
Converting videos - Yep, I'm not sure how much faster it is but it definitely is faster
Convering music - Yep again

Not sure what you mean by loading times but if you mean application etc then it won't really feel much different as it's usually limited by the hard drive speed AFAIK.

[jim]

Converting stuff should improve a lot on a 4 core processor.

Other thing to remember is that a lot of software these days will be built for dual-cores, even if not four.

So whilst they run on two cores, with a quad you've still got 2 spare cores to run your OS, music stuff, so on so forth. It's definitely a worthwhile upgrade in my eyes.