Does core 2 quad Q6600 playable for currently / future games ?

yes Core 2 Quad is good to go but your gpu is weak. you wont be able to run latest games at high settings.

I got a Q6600 and have yet to play any DX11 Games like BG3, Crysis 3, Spliter Cell blacklist.

But I do play Borelands 1 &2, all Fallouts, Call of Duty up till the First Black Ops, Half Life series, Resident Evil, All Far Cry's, All Mass effects, All Bioshocks, All Max Payne's and much more on a Q6600 with a GTX 260 (5 year Old Card) With Medium-High detail on 1920x1200 without issue.

ACTUALLY I haven't really play any of the games except for Infinite and Saints Row 4 that are modern day games since i upgraded to the Q6600 a few months ago. I was using a Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4 Over clocked to 3.0. I did borrow my buddies GTX 660 to play Crysis 3 and even on the lowest settings it laaagggeeedd big time though. Not sure how the Q6600 would do but i would assume much better.

But the Q6600 will get you by. Don't expect a whole lot from it. a i7 4770k is over 3 times more powerful than this. You can overclock your Q6600 wuite a bit. people get them to 3.0 on air cooling without issue and up to 3.4-3.6 on water. I only got mine to 2.6. For some reason if i go anymore my system crashes like crazy but still its way more powerful than the E4600 I had. It does me good for the time being. Do want to get a DX11 card though. But then also thinking about just spending the money and getting a 4770k, mobo and some ram first.

The Q6600 is a little weaker than an Phenom II X4 940. For most games it will be just fine.

A CPU cannot bottleneck a card, it can only bottleneck a game. Most GPU dependent games will have no problems but CPU dependent games (like Civ-5) will be bottlenecked no matter what card you use because the Q6600 just isn't fast enough. The HD 7750 is not a monster by any means so I'm sure that you'll be just fine.

Don't expect miracles, Q6600 is an ancient technology by now. It will drag you by if you aren't picky about details and such.

I agree don't expect much, it's very bleh for new games, but if you only play on 720p resolution on low settings it'll get you by, but even upgrading to a cheap fx 6300 or an intel i3 would let you play on 1080p fine. You can even find the lower end locked i5's at a decent price. Any serious pc gamer should at least be on sandy bridge, or a phenom II, or FX

same sentimental reason is keeping me from throwing my q6600 away even after i bought a new processor 2 years back(i5 3570k).... Q6600 wont slow down a mere 7750... no way.... .

I just picked up a Q6600 for $36 that I am planning to use with a cheapo R7 240 I had sitting around doing nothing. I also have a HD 7950 Boost that I want to try with it. I'm planning on doing some benchmarks on Passmark Heaven and Valley and some FPS tests with some newer games like Far Cry 3, Metro LL, BF3, Saints Row 3, Max Payne 3, Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite. It is still in the mail atm. The CPU I currently have in this system is the E6320 C2D which is not bad for light gaming in 1080p. The only game I have finished DL on steam so far is Payday 2 and it runs real nice in 1080p on the R7 240 which is considered by many a waste of money (it came in a weird sapphire combo with the 7950 Boost for $250 - it was basically free since a 7950 is about that much on its own). It does have 320 stream processors which puts it at least slightly ahead of most current iGPUs. My motherboard is an Intel DQ965GF and the PCIe slot is only 1.1 which shouldn't matter much with the 240 but should affect the 7950 Boost a bit. I'll keep you posted on the results. I was also looking for some results on how current gen games will run on a Q6600 or Q6700 vs a C2D with a low end (by today's standards) GPU. Most of the info available comparing higher clocked C2Ds and lower clocked C2Qs is way out of date - like Unreal Tourney 04 out of date . Back then, the higher clocked Duos were actually faster than Quads because there were no games out yet that took advantage of more than 1 or 2 cores. On current games like Crysis 2 & 3, BF 3 & 4 and anything made in this decade a stock clocked Q6600 or Q6700 should kick the crap out of any dual core, 2 thread CPU no matter how high it is clocked when paired with the same GPU.

I had a Q6600 and a GTX 260 which ran most games at 1200P just fine if they settings weren't maxed out. Games like Dead Space 3, Bioshock Infinite, Borderland 2 ran great. COD Black Ops ran just as good with my C2D E4600 @3.0GHZ.

I now have a Q9550 @ 3.5 GHZ and a GTX 480 which i want to try Crysis 3 out which is probably one of the most GPU/CPU demanding games I have right now. Might try that tonight actually.

On my setup. FarCry 3. 1920x1200 Detail on High settings. Runs smooth as a babys bottom. The main difference between the Q6600 and the Q9550 is 1) FSB which can make a big impact and 2) more Cashe on the CPU. If you can get the Q6600 a good over clock to like 3.0 GHZ it should keep you in the game for a little longer

Looking at the standard CPU mark bench, the Q6600 which scored a 2,976, is 2nd only to the 8350 when we are talking price to performance ratio - and that is assuming the Q6600 costs $90. When you consider that you can easily get one for $50 now and as low as $36 then it should be the best bang for your buck. The Q9550 is still going for $90-100 for 2nd hand examples on ebay. As it scores a 4,074, it is still in the "High End" PassMark CPU chart while the Q6600 has dropped to the "High to Mid-range" chart. I wasn't even planning on buying a C2Q since the motherboard/CPU/RAM combo that I bought a few weeks ago for $42 was supposed to be a cheap HTPC/DVR rig that I was going to use in my living room. After finding out that it supports a 1,066 MHz FSB C2Q CPU and finding one for $36 I am now seriously considering using it as a budget gaming rig with my 7950 Boost. The 8MB cache is quite a bit and the 12MB cache on the Q9550 puts it in workstation territory. It is too bad that my little Intel uATX board can't overclock or support anything higher than a 1,066 FSB CPU or else I probably would have bought a QX6700 or something like the Q9550 CPU if they ever drop under $100. But at current prices it is probably better to just get a DDR3 platform like an LGA 1156 or a low end Sandy Bridge 1155 and a similarly priced i5. Not to mention the better upgrade potential vs a LGA 775 platform. Some i5 7xx series CPUs have dropped to well under $100 for 2nd hand examples and the motherboards are almost as affordable as LGA 775 ones like this 2nd hand Dell for example which supports the i5 but cannot overclock. Similar deals can be found on Sandy Bridge parts as well. Although i5 2xxx CPUs are still priced quite high, SB motherboards are dropping in price especially on H61 and H67 chipsets. One plus about the 775 platform is the DDR2 RAM is much more affordable per GB than DDR3.

Even though this is an old topic I thought I'd comment again and say that I've too thought about how these old cpu's could still hold up. I have a core 2 quad system sitting in the closet with 4gb ram, core2quad q9300, and 8400gs....wonder how a gtx 750ti would breath new life into the system and to slowly add more 2gb ram sticks for it's max total of 8gb. DDR2 has jumped up in price alot.

For as cheap as the core 2 quads are on ebay, if you can find a mobo, it's worth a shot, but, I think a modern APU setup would be better.

I also thought about getting the very cheap i7 920 off ebay, but 1366 motherboards are expensive as hell. The 1156 was an option I considered, their i7 860s are ~100ish last time I looked, and the motherboards decently cheap.

I actually created a topic on here awhile back asking if these old cpu's were viable but nobody bothered to ever answer me sadly...

the piledriver IPC is roughly on par with the old i7 920 I'd estimate, so, if you can clock these old intels high enough they would at least be on par with the new AMD stuff and might beat it >_>

That Q6600 came in a few days ago. I swapped out the C2D with it and also added 2 more GB of 800 MHz DDR2 and a Samsung 840 SSD. All the WEI scores on Win 7 64 jumped 2 to 3 points. The CPU score went from a 5.1 to a 7.1. The 7950 boost GPU got a 7.9. I am guessing that since the Sammy 840 is running on SATA II that is the reason for the 7.1. The lowest score is the RAM @ 5.9 which isn't that bad considering the 2GB module that came with the combo is 667 MHz. The CPU, of course, is running at 1,066 MHz separate from the RAM and is running at its stock clock of 2.4 GHz. I know these scores aren't very useful but they do show the difference between a 1.8 GHz C2D and a 2.4 GHz C2Q. Running some OCCT tests with the Hyper 212 Evo, the Q6600 did quite well and never went over 60c. It does idel quite high, though, at nearly 40c on core 0. The other 3 cores idle at under 35c. As for gaming with a Q6600 + 7950 boost using PCIe 1.1 x16, I am able to run every game I have on Steam (and Origin) in 1080p with the maximum detail settings and when applicable in DX 11. This came as a bit of a surprise to me since the PC that I had just recently sold, a 3770k (OC'd to 4.5 GHz) + Sabertooth Z77 + GTX 660 SLI + 2x 8GB Corsair Vengeance was not able to max out some of these games without some noticeable stutter and framerate drop. I had always assumed it was an SLI thing but it could be that the single 7950 boost (which I did not have with that rig; I sold all those parts a few months ago for almost $1000 on ebay) is simply superior since it has 3GB of 256-bit GDDR5 vs the 2GB of 192-bit GDDR5 the GTX 660 SLI has. The fact is that I am not able to tell the difference between my old $1200 PC and this PC, which, for the CPU, motherboard and RAM only cost me less than $80. That is exactly 4x less than what the $320 3770k cost alone (I was able to sell it for $300 as a 1.5 year old used part). None of the games I tried (Saints Row 3, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Payday 2, Max Payne 3, LA Noir, GTA 4, Call of Duty: BO, Hitman Abs., Biohshock Inf., Borderlands 2, Dead Island, DI Rip BF: BC2 and BF3 plus a bunch of much less demanding games such as TWD, Portal 2, GTA 3, Limbo, Bioshock 1 and 2, etc. etc.) ever dropped under 30 FPS and they were all maxed out in 1080p on a single monitor with a cap of 60 FPS. Many of these more demanding games could easily go over 60 FPS if I wanted. This should prove that an aging platform like the LGA 775 with an aging CPU like the Q6600, even at stock speed, can still handle any modern game that is thrown at it as long as you pair it with a decent GPU. It should make an awesome budget gaming rig for anyone who is happy playing in 1080p on only one screen. It also proves that the tech found on most LGA 775 motherboards such as DDR2, PCIe 1.1 and SATA II are still not as huge of bottlenecks as many people perceive them to be. I am estimating that the 7950 boost is only losing 1 or 2 FPS due to it vs if I had PCIe 3.0 x16 and less than that if I had PCIe 2.0 x16. For a single mid to high end GPU this system is the perfect blend of cheap and powerful. It is just old enough that not many people (elitists ) would consider them over newer platforms like 1155 and 1150 and powerful enough to run any new game out with perfectly acceptable framerates - if you are content with single monitor 1080p gaming @ 30-60 FPS and can live with a little extra heat produced by the 65nm, 105c TDP CPU. This system is obviously not going to win any benchmarks or even impress your 12 year old friends who would all say "you should upgrade to a hexa-core 2011 rig" or "upgrade to a $2500 4770k with a 780ti SLI" when, if you are only using a single 1080p monitor, will make little or no difference. I am perfectly content with this little rig that costs less than a a couple of new release Xbox One or PS4 games and rivals them in terms of performance. Hopefully these 775 parts will last me several years and by then I might find a crazy deal that I can't pass up on one of those 2011 hexacores and 8GB of DDR3 for under $100.

There are some drawbacks besides the obsolescence and poor upgrade potential of the platform. For one it is produces quite a bit of heat. The Hyper 212 Evo cooling my previous CPU, a 3770k, was cool to the touch even under a 100% load during stress testing. The same CPU cooler on this Q6600 runs slightly warm to the touch even at idle and heats up to low burner stove top-like temps when under full load. Also, despite it being the "G0" stepping "SLACR" revision of the Q6600 which is supposed to use less power and thus have a higher OC headroom than the original "B3" stepping, it is still using a massive near 160 watts of electricity at IDLE. When playing a demanding game it can get close to 200 watts. Of course, those idle power usage figures are when the CPU is at its stock clock speed of 2.4 GHz. If Speedstep is turned on the clock drops to around 1.5 GHz and should decrease the voltage and power consumption significantly although I am not sure by how much. It is still a power hog compared to my old 3770K and my current laptop's 3210M which both use less power combined assuming that the HD4000s are not running at full blast. Combine that with the even more power hungry HD 7950 boost and I have a very, very non-eco friendly PC that I probably have to buy carbon credits to legally use in some countries. Since I have an Ivy Bridge laptop still for all my non-gaming computing needs and only turn on the Q6600 + HD 7950 for gaming I am willing to accept the fact that it is a big fat power hungry power hog.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2303/2

Yea I think people don't realize that even though paper tells you otherwise these older C2Q can still kick some serious butt! Even since i upgraded to my Q9550, GTX 480 and a 240 GB Crucial M500 SSD I feel like with what i do, I won't have to upgrade for a while. Most of the time I'm not a 100+ FPS guy when it comes to games but my combo does it pretty well. I know at least with CPU intensive stuff like Rendering in 3DS max there is a HUGE difference beween my E4600 and my Q9550.

I just around to reading your post cub_fanatic and it's nice to see the older CPUs still holding up even though many people are snobby and look down upon them just because they're older. Just like People will snob the old Phenom 965 but yet it's IPC was better than bulldozer and on par or better than Piledriver. Or how people snob AMD in general. I saw first hand when I played BF4 with a gtx 660ti on my bro's pc (A10-5800k) and his FPS matched my 3570ks on the maps I played on 1080p ultra. Didn't even overclock his cpu either. On Shanghai his dipped to 35fps at the worst though and my worst was about 40ish or 45fps.

Mine certainly wasn't worth triple the price his cpu would cost if I were to buy it now (essentially an Athlon x4 750k and it costs ~$75 when my i5 costs ~$220) . I guess you live and learn though. I honestly feel guilty spending all the money on my intel build when for my needs an AMD would of been fine. I really don't play CPU intensive stuff like MMOs or RTS, and I'm sure a lesser cpu would certainly be playable. I've thought of building a little mini itx Kavari setup or something to see how it fares.

I should of got more opinions before I built my pc. GPU is more important than spending so much on a CPU, providing you don't play CPU intensive stuff. Things like Mantle improve FPS now too on a lesser cpu.

@WhiteSnake91: yeah, those new APUs are very underrated. If you look at a lot of the posts regarding gaming CPUs on here and elsewhere on the web, most people who have never seen a late model A-series APU let alone tested or even owned one are quick to dismiss them and go straight to FX-8xxx and 6xxx series parts. Even without a discrete GPU, those APUs can run some of the most demanding games in 1080p off of just the iGPU. The A10-6800k by itself can run Skyrim and BF4 in 1080p and medium detail at an avg. of 20 FPS without the help of a dGPU. Not bad for a CPU and GPU that costs about $130. A lot of people would immediately write 20 FPS off as unplayable but don't realize that almost every gaming console is capped at 30 FPS. My laptop can barely run most newer games at 20 FPS and even at 15 FPS some games are playable - not the smoothest - but still playable. Adding a $60 to $70 dGPU to an APU in "dual GPU hybrid" CrossFire can almost double the FPS on most games. For example, the newer A10-7700K ($150) goes from 20 FPS to 40 FPS in BF3 when it is paired with a $60 R7 240 and even higher with the $80 R7 250. Adding a mid to high end dGPU like a 270X or 770 would make those APUs real beasts although at $150 it would make more sense to go with an FX hexacore since you won't be using the iGPU in the APU. But, if your goal is low noise, low power consumption and a small form factor from a light gaming rig, then the the APU would be the way to go.

I'm not a expert but old cpus are actually really kick ass my current rig is a c2q Q8300 overclocked to 2.7ghz paired with a gtx 460 msi 1gb cyclone overclocked about 20-30persent I havnt noticed any bottelnecking of the sort I am currently playing games like cysis 2 ,dead island, rage,saints row4, blackops 2 all on max with nothing lower that 30fps on any of them I really like my old gaming system and it serves me well !

You have no idea how much worrying this saved me. I have a Q9550 on a busted mobo and a Q6600. I'm always a bit sketchy with swapping out CPU's for fear of busting the motherboard, but as of now it seems it needs to be done for the boost I need. Thanks much.