Q6600 vs i7 920?

[IronWarrior]

I know there are many other topics and forums that have debated this and I have read a few, but they was a few years old when the i7 was new and personally, want a fresh view on it.

My current system is the following.

Q6600 OC'ed to 3.1GHz with an Thermalright Ultra
Asus P5K motherboard
8 GB RAM OCZ Reaper HPC
MSI 6950 Rev 1 GPU (Unlocked shaders and OC'ed to 6970 speeds)
Also have an X-Fi sound card and a few HDD controller cards.

I play most games at 5760x1080 (soon 5760x1200) these range from L4D2, BFBC2, BF3, Dirt 2 and whatever else can run at this resolution.

I can play BF3 at Ultra at this resolution but AA/AF is off/x2 and I get roughly 25-40-80 FPS. BFBC2 is a lot better, that hovers around 30 to 80FPS at max settings AA is x2 and it's totally playable, never skips or anything unless a mcon is armed... I'm pretty sure I could get a lot more FPS if I had a better CPU or just a better average FPS.

So, the three main things I do with my PC is Game, watch media at 1080p and normal internet stuff.

Is it worth upgrading to this for £200 plus whatever a PSU I need to purchase to power it all, I want to go CrossfireX one day, so the PSU has to be good.

i7920 D0 (3.8 Ghz @ 1.18v, 81C Prime95)
6gb Patriot RAM
Gigabyte EX58 UD5 (F12 BIOS)
Noctua NH-U12

What you think? If it's worth while, how much do you think I could sell my old system for? I brought my old system second hand for just £220, had to purchase a PSU as well, that brought it up too £290. I know for £200 it's a smashing price, but money is tight as always but I could do it.

Any advice is most appreciated and welcome.

[kalniel]

The hardware hasn't changed so the old reviews are still valid for the most part, and basically no, it's not worth upgrading for that price to be honest. Go for second hand sandy bridge components instead. (i5 2500k, p67/z68, 4gb ram)

[Phage]

<ahem>
Do you have to add W7 ? Also the SB bundles are >£200. A better question may be what else can I get for £200 all up.

[kalniel]

A better question may be what else can I get for £200 all up.

That wasn't the question the OP was asking. If you're starting from nothing and had an absolute limit of £200 then that bundle might be worth getting. But for gaming it's not much of an upgrade from an overclocked G6600, you need to go to a 2500k or so to get a meaningful upgrade.

[Terbinator]

I'd just O/C your Q6600 some more as the three of the games you've aren't favourable to AMD hardware anyway and the other, L4D, sees more from the CPU.

[Phage]

Obviously I have a vested interest but the i7 is ~25% faster than the Q6600 - including in games.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=53
L4D shows a 20% increase in FPS. I would say that was a meaningful upgrade.

You won't get SB at this price point, certainly not with W7 or USB 3.0.

See this. SB will be >£300 Quote lifted from AN OPther site for reference.

"Gaming Rig for sale, now splitting "

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Bascially the rig in my sig.

1. Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail = £158
2. XFX HD 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card = £120
3. Corsair Professional Series AX850 High Performance 850W Modular '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply = £110
4. Corsair Graphite 600T Midi Tower Case - Limited Edition White = £110
5. Asus P8Z68-V (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - £100
6. Asus VH242H 24" Widescreen LCD Multimedia Monitor - Black (no dead pixels) = £95
7. OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (will be wiped) = £60
8. Corsair Hydro H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) = £50
9. Samsung DVD-rw/BD-rom = £30
10. 12gb (3 x 4gb) Corsair XMS3 CMX4GX31M1A1600C9 = £13 PER STICK