Q6600 to i3 or i5, Worthwhile upgrade?

[chavo]

Hi,

Thinking of moving my Q6600 (OC to 3.4ghz with water) to my HTPC and buying a new processor, looking at a chip for under £200 board and Ram at about £200 also.

Would this be a worthwhile upgrade or will performance gain be negligable?

[Tattysnuc]

Personally, with that overclock, I think you'd be hard pushed to justify the upgrade. Especially on a HTPC

You can get some bargain i7 systems if you shop around, but I'm not sure of the size of the case, whether ITX or mATX is the rpeferred form factror.

If it's ATX or EATX, Scan usually have bundle i7 deals on on an almost daily basis which would be a good place to start looking if you do.

[Fraz]

I wouldn't bother, especially since exciting new things from intel might be coming in only a couple of months!

[ajones]

I wouldn't bother either.

It's hard to beat tha Q6600 without spending a small fortune.

[chavo]

Interesting. sorry i dont think i explained myself properly.

I have a Q6600 in my main rig but i am thinking of relegating the q6600 to the media center and buying the i3/i5/i7 for my new main PC.

If it was an i7 it would stretch the budget and would probably be the 930. i know this would be an improvment but would it be noticable?

I want a PC for the media center that is capable of unzipping LARGE rar files (GBs) with some speed, and also Quick Paring with speed. also playback of HD content.

ITs a tricky decision. Thinking now maybe a decent i3 or a entry i5, 6 gig of ram maybe? this would make the process quicker? and the whole thing would be cheaper. had the q6600 for a while but it still does the job!

[Pob255]

I didn't think multiple cores are used when uncompacting rar files

Going on an i3 will be a step down as it's a dual core cpu and with that overclock i5 will be more of a sideways step.

For an HTPC one of the fast Phenom II x2 would probably be best http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238325...edium=products
team that up with a 785g or 880g motherboard and you've got the core of a very solid HTPC

[abaxas]

Power consumption - yes.
Processing power - no.

Stick with what you have and wait for the next (or even the one after) generation from intel.

[d3fiant]

I recently advised someone to hold fire on a very similar upgrade, they didnt listen and have been totally underwhelmed in going from a Q6600 to an i7 950 although the later is still at stock. Strongly suggest you hold fire and see what the new year brings with the next gen CPU's

My 2p would be to invest in an SSD, it made the single biggest impact to my build

[chavo]

Ok,well i need to make a purchase either way as my current HTPC (E8400 3ghz) has been attacked by my very heavy 50 inch plasma resulting both ending up in the waste bin.

I think i may just try and get a single or dual core again with a high clock speed with as much RAM, and a SSD. i think this will improve things for me as my biggest woe is boot up times!

What about something like this...(all prices from scan)

AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition, Callisto Core, S AM3, 3.3GHz, 7MB Cache, HT 4000MHz, 80W, Retail £80
Asus M4A87TD/USB3 AMD 870 AM3 Motherboard £70
Corsair Memory XMS3 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 7 XMP Dual Channel Desktop ££70
60GB SSD Corsair Force Series Solid State Drive £90

That would make a decent little HTPC, dont you think? are there any glaring errors in there? something you wouldnt get?

[czos]

If you are going to work on large files better to invest in some hard drives. Invest maybe in sata or sas raid. This helps a lot. If you where to upgrade your cpu go only for i7- 950. Not many programs using more then 4 cores.

[Fraz]

Ok,well i need to make a purchase either way as my current HTPC (E8400 3ghz) has been attacked by my very heavy 50 inch plasma resulting both ending up in the waste bin.

Ouch.

[chavo]

Ouch.

yes long story short, 30kg 50 inch plasme fell landing on new onkyo amp and HTPC, all now need replacing... home insurance job. thank god i got the accidental damage.

not had a tv for 4 days now though starting to be a bit lost!

[chavo]

Ok,well i need to make a purchase either way as my current HTPC (E8400 3ghz) has been attacked by my very heavy 50 inch plasma resulting both ending up in the waste bin.

I think i may just try and get a single or dual core again with a high clock speed with as much RAM, and a SSD. i think this will improve things for me as my biggest woe is boot up times!

What about something like this...(all prices from scan)

AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition, Callisto Core, S AM3, 3.3GHz, 7MB Cache, HT 4000MHz, 80W, Retail £80
Asus M4A87TD/USB3 AMD 870 AM3 Motherboard £70
Corsair Memory XMS3 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 7 XMP Dual Channel Desktop ££70
60GB SSD Corsair Force Series Solid State Drive £90

That would make a decent little HTPC, dont you think? are there any glaring errors in there? something you wouldnt get?

any thoughts on this spec?

[Terbinator]

any thoughts on this spec?

I've got a Sempron 140 AM3 for sale in Classifieds - without the cooler.

[chavo]

looking for a bit more power, i have a spare baby dual core (c2d) which is sat in the box, its like a 2300 or something but it frustrated the hell out of me. need alot more ummph than that! sorry! i want to be playing 3d blu rays on this pc so processing wise i want it to have the power and i will be ripping blu rays so again, the speed at which it carries this out is important.

[badass]

I didn't think multiple cores are used when uncompacting rar files

WinRAR can definately use 4 cores but it won't max them out.
7Zip only uses 2 cores max but is open source and free. Plus the 7z format is even more efficient than RAR.