Q6600 paired with a 5870 ?

I agree... if you can get an OC to about 3.2 you will see a significant improvement from the 5870

Yes you will have to overclock to 3.0 or higher, or you will be bottle necking the 5870.

My q6600 was the bottleneck for my gtx 285, until around 3100ghz.

^ How would that work? Nvidia's slower memory latency?

Probably yes.

Most pre-made pc's have locked bios, so most likely not.

I have a Q6600 @3.4 with a 5870 it runs good

I have a q6600 its easily overclockable to 3ghz.. most get to 3.2+

on my motherboard i basically bumped all the voltages up 1 notch..
and changed the FSB from 266 to 400 and the multiplier from 9x to 8x

been rock solid at 3.2ghz for over 2 years now. Max overclock i did was 3.6 but i had to bump the voltage too much and I didnt like it going to 88C on prime95

also make sure you have an aftermarket cooler.. the stock q6600 retail box cooler kinda blows. although even with the stock cooler you should be able to easily hit 2.8

finally, are you sure its your video cards bottlenecking? some of the newer games arent 4 thread friendly... those video cards were pretty beast in the day.. might want to just OC the processor and wait abit for 6xxx ati series. or a pair of 460's


ps. the q6600 isnt really bad, although for games that use 1.2 cores it needs a hefty OC to be competitive.

if there are no OC options you are better off selling that computer and building a new one.

^wow based on that link, it holds up better than I expected against the i5.

BTW they use a GTX 280 for their benchmarks.

So I agree that the Q6600's low clockspeed will be what will hold you back in games. However, that said, upgrading to a 5870 will still certainly increase your FPS and gaming ability.

That said, If you intend to keep the computer setup for a long time, I would recommend getting overclocking or getting a new CPU/motherboard/RAM. This all depends on your budget. I believe a new 5870 will be worth the price regardless if your CPU holds you back some. That said, if you want to keep your system more balanced, you could opt for a cheaper GTX460 1GB.

Regardless of what route you choose, since you have an OEM machine, you almost certainly will need a new and better power supply to support the 5870, unless you already upgraded the power supply to support your dual 3870s.

^he's running a 3870x2 so I think he'll be ok with power.

GTX480 is a single card. Still, I agree it draws too much power. 2 3870s are 210W TDP.

Nope, they haven't. The GTX480 is a stripped down version of their originally intended single graphics chip card. Because of heat and power issues. Alone, the GTX480 has a TDP of 250W. The dual chip 5970 draws under 300W. No way Nvidia could get dual chip into the power limits of PCI-e with two 6pin power adapters.

It only "holds up better" because of the 8MB L3 cache. Besides that, any overclock applied to the Q6600 can be applied to opposing processor and still hold a ridiculous lead. While the Q6600 might be able to hit 3.4, a 920 will be able to hit 4.2. You do the math - its already faster stock vs. stock.

How is that relevant?

Could you please stop b$ing 'bout the entire C2Q series??? Especially 'bout the Q6600.

A C2Q is still a pretty solid processor, my C2D E6750 isnt struggling yet (OC to 3.5). But I havent played high end games in a few months.

^ And I guess you're Q6600 hata,

@pjmelect please check your PM? Thanks

empirical evidences suggest otherwise. either you're dumb, or you're just dumb. i'll let you choose.

oh and btw this is the biggest BS i've ever seen:

barely huh?

Here is my point:

When this processor was released - there was no reason to get it other than running some kind of server or rendering machine. It came stock at a weak 2.4 gig, 65nm power hungry processor. This purchase was justified for gaming because it would be more 'future proof'. People spent money aimlessly on this low clock speed crap processor for no apparent reason. I made the claim that by the time games were parallel processed as in mainstreamed multicore computing, that the Q6600 would be outdated by a big margin.

Guess who was right?

Future proofing a concept that is not mainstream is a STUPID idea. I don't care how many of you noobs in here disagree. The fact of the matter is many people do NOT overclock their CPUs and are left with a shitty stock 2.4 gig processor. Instead of going this route, they should have went with a higher clock speed dual core, but alas, didn't listen and they eventually made a switch to a modern quad core that has a much better IPC and lower power consumption.

You may say that they would have made the switch anyway, to that I go back to point 2: low clock speed = low clock speed.

I didn't wake up one day and go "Gee I should hate on the Q6600 for "x" reason"
I took the facts objectively and looked to see what people were buying and for WHAT REASON. The Q6600 was a dumb buy for anyone looking for anything but server/rendering at the time. Get over it. For the money people spent on buying a crappy quad core they could have invested in a premium dual core and had a much better level of game play and switched right about NOW when games are becoming multi-core.

Oh well - logic escapes some, right? I mean if "Q6600 is an awesome future proof CPU" is said enough on TOMS forums it MUST be true right? Just like how killing jews in 1940s was said enough times it must be for the greater good, right?

Wake up noobs - do your research. Don't spout out crap heard on these forums verbatim because you think its right. Think for yourself.

Well not everybody buys a new PC every 2-3 years.
2.4GHz crap in 2007/08??? The Core 2 architecture was way better than Phenom 9xxx, Pentium duals (i'm talking 'bout Pentium duals BEFORE the E5xxx series) and Athlon X2 5xxx and the 6000+.
Yes the Q6600 is outdated but not by a big margin. The Q6600 was a budget quad, so you should compare it to a PII X4 955 or a Core i5 750/760, not an i7 980x.
It is power hungry, 65nm, but in terms of performance, it's still a good CPU.

Well when it came out, second half of 2007 (correct if wrong), people were mostly buying it for Crysis, they thought it would use quad CPU's, not for COD4, NFS ProStreet. The real benefit from this chip in 2007 was seen if you were running Vista 64 bit (and 4 gigs of RAM), playing Crysis and have dozens of apps running in the backgroung. Soon in early 2008 it became an affordable quad core chip and any serious multitasker has grabbed one.

And overclockers liked it alot cause it OC's like mad.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey