As a gamer, to hexa or not hexa...(q6600 upgrade)

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CHAoS_NiNJA

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I'm looking to upgrade here very soon and the new 1090T certainly has my eye. I'm mainly a gamer, but also a general power user and try to use every thread I can. I'm not a complete upgrade freak, hence still having the Q6600, which means I'd like the system to still hold its own in the future as I don't plan to freak over for every new CPU...but I wonder, would I be better suited with a 965/955 or a 1090T?

The hexacore certainly has my mouth watering and I'd like some "futureproofing" (such a bad term) as well as performance. As I said before, I currently rock a Core 2 Quad Q6600 OCed from 2.4GHz to 3.2GHz, what kinda of performance increase can I see from going full AM3, included the obvious pushing of a Black Edition chip? I pray for 4GHz+ :)

I simply can't decide, help me [H]!
 
I'd say no to 6 cores. Why? 1. most games either don't or barely take advantage of 4 cores.

2. You haven't really mentioned what you do with your PC. If it works fine for what you want it to now, I wouldn't bother. Wait as long as you can and upgrade when you really feel like you'll benefit from the extra performance. For example, you want to play game X, but your current setup is not cutting it for some reason or another.

However, seeing that you already have a Q6600 at 3.2, I'd assume your CPU is not holding you back. If you want to spend some money anyway, I'd say get a video card except that you've already got 2x 4850's. In lieu of that, I'd say get an SSD.

OTOH, you could sell your Q6600 and motherboard and probably almost pay for a 1055T(AR) and an AM3 motherboard. I don't know though, for that I'd almost rather go for an i5 750 for gaming. You'll still see a boost from threaded apps because the 750 is faster per core and it also has HT, so....

in any case, that's my 2 cents and I'm sticking to it :p
 
honestly, i would say dont in your case, go and grab a x4 955....will suit you better, and have as good of an OC(4 GHz range with adaqute cooling).....from the sounds of it your wasting money....if you do folding when inactive, video ripping/encoding and the like, then id say yes


if you want to stay intel the 750 will be as good of an upgrade, considering in gaming with a good GFX they dont differ much in FPS....
 
Well performance alone isn't what I'm worried about (although is obviously a large part of it), actually my main concern would be future upgrades. I've pondered long and hard about going i5/i7 but with the news those sockets are going to be dead in a years time I seriously can't bring myself into buying into it. I'm coming off an EOL socket as is, I certainly don't want to buy one that already has its tombstone chipped out.

My full plan is to buy into AM3, 4GB DDR3 1600, and a HD5850 to replace my two HD4850s, and later buy a second 5850 to boost my graphics performance. Do you guys think its not worth the effort of buying a BE chip, Hex or Quad, and pushing it to 4GHz+? Am I really ok where I am? I really feel like I've fallen behind in power and modern hardware. :D And while this isn't the GPU forum, would I see a real drop from going 2x4850s to a single 5850?

Insula Gilliganis said:
I just finished writing up a comment at http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1514795 that pertained to the X6 and gaming which you might want to check out (the gaming discussion is in the 2nd half of the page). Plus I posted summaries of what 19 websites each thought about the X6 that you might also want to peruse.. http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035646233&postcount=87

Hope this helps you out!
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That certainly does help, a hex isn't what I'm looking for in a pure gaming standpoint...hmmm....but I do wonder what it could do for me in the future. Perhaps I should wait on a hex until that future comes?
But then how could I brag I'm running 6 cores? :D
 
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if your going for 4 GHz+ a BE is the best/easiest/most time saving way of doing it....and honestly if you can afford it, grab the hexa core now, since you dont upgrade often it may pay off if programs(games) get mroe multi thread friendly, worst case you can run three instances of WoW :p or a bajillion tabs in chrome and another bajillion in firefox :p
 
The no arguments are funny in a history-repeating-itself way. Remember when the same was said about quad core CPUs? :p

To someone who upgrades all the time (me: guilty), it doesn't really matter much. The price premium for the lower speed X6 isn't enough to rule it out when considering an upgrade. If you were deciding between a 965BE and 1090T, I'm not sure the almost 50% price premium ($130 price difference @ newegg) is really worth it, since that is in i7 930 price territory (inb4 "expensive" MB costs... the x58 is a premium chipset, comparing prices now to 890 AMD chipset boards is a lot closer than before: a $50-$70 difference, not $200). If you can find a deal on the 1090T to decrease the price difference vs 965BE, it is a worthy consideration IMO.
 
I say go for it. The overclocking potential of Thuban, especially the 1090t, eclipses that of any other AMD chip to date. I hate to use the term, but it's also pretty future proof as well.

I should be getting a 1090T next week.
 
pxc said:
The no arguments are funny in a history-repeating-itself way. Remember when the same was said about quad core CPUs? :p

To someone who upgrades all the time (me: guilty), it doesn't really matter much. The price premium for the lower speed X6 isn't enough to rule it out when considering an upgrade. If you were deciding between a 965BE and 1090T, I'm not sure the 50% price premium ($130 price difference @ newegg) is really worth it, since that is in i7 930 price territory (inb4 "expensive" MB costs... the x58 is a premium chipset, comparing prices now to 890 AMD chipset boards is a lot closer than before: a $50-$70 difference, not $200). If you can find a deal on the 1090T to decrease the price difference vs 965BE, it is a worthy consideration IMO.
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The 890FX boards fall into the same price category that the 790FX/SB600 and the 790FX/SB750 boards did with the exception of the Crosshair IV Deluxe which isn't available yet.

If crossfire isn't something that's needed you could easily pick up a 870 board, and there's also a ton of 880 boards on newegg as well.

If you don't need crossfire you can find a perfectly good thuban board for ~$150. I would rather have a 1050T than a 965BE based on the simple fact that's it's better silicon and if you pick the right motherboard you won't have an issue clocking the 1050T to 4.0ghz+ even with the locked multiplier.

The IMC in Thuban is improved over the 965 C3 and 2000+ memory speeds are attainable, as well as higher cpu-nb clocks which improve overall efficiency clock for clock. I say the 1050/1090 are a win win, especially when overclocked.

All of these boards will work with Thuban out of the box. All of them have sata 6.0g/USB 3.0 and the price ranges from $85 to $220.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...SB850&bop=And&Order=PRICED&PageSize=20&Page=1
 
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+! to Blue, the 890FX took over the 790FX price area.....the Crosshair is the exception(always has been, always will be, so long as it keeps hitting mass overclocks :p), not really sure where you get that the mobos are about the same?
 
TheBlueChanell said:
The 890FX boards fall into the same price category that the 790FX/SB600 and the 790FX/SB750 boards did with the exception of the Crosshair IV Deluxe which isn't available yet.

If you don't need crossfire you can find a perfect good thuban board for ~$150.
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That's exactly my point. :p There are several "perfectly fine" x58 boards now for under $200, which including the CPU, makes a newegg-priced 8x0 board + 1090T CPU only around $25 cheaper than a x58 board + i7 930 CPU. Right now at least, the platform costs have virtually been leveled. Of course sales and cheaping out on something that merely supports what you want to run, or finding deals can change things a bit, shifting favor for either platform. IOW, for a performance platform, 1366 is no longer automatically ruled out because of cost.

edit: TBC & W: please re-read my post. I didn't say it was equal, I stated that the price difference was no longer $200 between the x58 vs AMD boards, but more like $50-$70 when comparing the flagship chipsets (890 boards vs x58 boards). There are price outliers on both of course, but I am not talking about those.
 
The problem is that most games aren't threaded for 6 cores, so higher core clock is better than more cores, to a point. I'd go with the fastest triple or qaud core AMD setup or one of the Intel recommendations above.
 
nonameo said:
OTOH, you could sell your Q6600 and motherboard and probably almost pay for a 1055T(AR) and an AM3 motherboard. I don't know though, for that I'd almost rather go for an i5 750 for gaming. You'll still see a boost from threaded apps because the 750 is faster per core and it also has HT, so....

in any case, that's my 2 cents and I'm sticking to it :p
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The 750 does not have HT.
 
Agent_N said:
The problem is that most games aren't threaded for 6 cores, so higher core clock is better than more cores, to a point. I'd go with the fastest triple or qaud core AMD setup or one of the Intel recommendations above.
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technically the X6 1090T is going to end up being your fastest chip(has better silicon and from all preliminary reviews has no issue hitting 4.0 GHz on any of the 5 reviews I read....), if you overclock, otherwise it will do the same as a 955 at stock clocks in a badly coded game/program
 
pxc said:
That's exactly my point. :p There are several "perfectly fine" x58 boards now for under $200, which including the CPU, makes a newegg-priced 8x0 board + 1090T CPU only around $25 cheaper than a x58 board + i7 930 CPU. Right now at least, the platform costs have virtually been leveled. Of course sales and cheaping out on something that merely supports what you want to run, or finding deals can change things a bit, shifting favor for either platform. IOW, for a performance platform, 1366 is no longer automatically ruled out because of cost.

edit: TBC & W: please re-read my post. I didn't say it was equal, I stated that the price difference was no longer $200 between the x58 vs AMD boards, but more like $50-$70 when comparing the flagship chipsets (890 boards vs x58 boards). There are price outliers on both of course, but I am not talking about those.
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I agree with you for the most part. The only thing is, 6gb kits are more expensive than 4gb kits so the overall cost of a 930/X58/6gb kit is more than a 1090/50/890FX/4gb kit. I'm not arguing which is better, and I don't think you either, I'm just stating that you can get yourself a 6 core AMD setup for far less coin than i7/x58 setup.

That being said I'm upgrading from my 790FX to an 890FX when I pick-up my 1090t because of SB850. SSD raid loving. :D
 
TheBlueChanell said:
That being said I'm upgrading from my 790FX to an 890FX when I pick-up my 1090t because of SB850. SSD raid loving. :D
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Awesome. :D I'll probably get an X6 when Fry's does a combo sale on it. Already have an 890/SB850 board.

Memory prices are ridiculously high right now, so yeah that does factor in too, although an extra DIMM per channel 1) adds more memory & bandwidth, and 2) doesn't change the price *that* much overall. The silver lining right now is that you can sell off old DDR2 memory and upgrade to DDR3 pretty cheaply. That's what I did. Besides the HP tablet which isn't getting any further memory upgrades anyways, all my systems use DDR3 now.
 
pxc said:
Awesome. :D I'll probably get an X6 when Fry's does a combo sale on it. Already have an 890/SB850 board.

Memory prices are ridiculously high right now, so yeah that does factor in too, although an extra DIMM per channel 1) adds more memory & bandwidth, and 2) doesn't change the price *that* much overall. The silver lining right now is that you can sell off old DDR2 memory and upgrade to DDR3 pretty cheaply. That's what I did. Besides the HP tablet which isn't getting any further memory upgrades anyways, all my systems use DDR3 now.
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Yeah I sold off my last ddr2 kit, which was 4gb of dominators, a couple months ago for more than I paid for it. I felt bad doing it but I priced them a lot cheaper than they were retail and it was still more than I paid back in 07.

I'm just waiting for the Vertex 2's to hit the egg and I may just order it all together.
 
here's the rule I generally go by:

buy used

50-75 for a motherboard

50->100 for a CPU

up to 100 for a graphics card

Favor performance over capacity for HDD, spend less than 75$, unless you're going to get an SSD(this is new).

RAM is a wildcard, there's no telling how much it's going to cost.

spend as little as possible on things like optical drives and bells and whistles

find some way to get an OS for cheap(linux, FS/T, etc)

reuse cases as much as you can

Don't overclock unless necessary.


It's easy to overspend on computer components as they lose value pretty quickly. Pick up parts as they're going out of style they sell cheap when people are getting rid of them, but they'll retain value when they go out of production, especially CPUs if you bought at the top of the maximum for the platform.

Basically, the tail end of the budget enthusiast is the sweetspot for me. It will do everything pretty well for a while, and won't break the bank.
 
I don't think he could find parts that could be considered an upgrade with those prices.
 
nonameo said:
I'd say no to 6 cores. Why? 1. most games either don't or barely take advantage of 4 cores.
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I absolutely +1 this statement.

There are very few games where the 4th cores gets used much. The 'sweet spot' for gaming is a 3 core cpu right now but a quad definitely doesn't hurt. The cost of a 6 core cpu is simply going to be way to high for the use you will get out of it. Go quad, then take the rest of the dollars you would of spent on the 6 core and buy a larger monitor and gpu than you were original going to.
 
If you really must spend money

1. Sell Q6600 + motherboard to recoup cost
2. Buy a proper CPU heat-sink
3. Buy Thuban 1055T overclock 3.8-4.0GHz + Thuban-compatible AMD 770-chipset/SB710-southbridge/DDR2-based motherboard + reuse your now expensive DDR2-1066MHz RAM

You should be fine for generic gaming/multimedia-encode/decode for extended time. For further upgrade, wait until SandyBridge/Bulldozer become affordable.
 
lightp2 said:
If you really must spend money

1. Sell Q6600 + motherboard to recoup cost
2. Buy a proper CPU heat-sink
3. Buy Thuban 1055T overclock 3.8-4.0GHz + Thuban-compatible AMD 770-chipset/SB710-southbridge/DDR2-based motherboard + reuse your now expensive DDR2-1066MHz RAM

You should be fine for generic gaming/multimedia-encode/decode for extended time. For further upgrade, wait until SandyBridge/Bulldozer become affordable.
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Or take it a step further and sell off your current memory to help pay for that DDR3 1600 memory kit.
 
I absolutely plan on selling my CPU/Mobo/RAM, all part of my plan. :) I just fear pushing a locked CPU would be so much harder then an unlocked, I haven't OCed AMD since my 939 4000+, so I'm not as in the know. If I got a new CPU, I'd want it to be BE just to make sure I could push it to its absolute limit.

Another part of the plan would be getting AM3/DDR3 to make sure i'm nice and modern. The big question is how much performance increase can I see from going 3.2GHz Q6600/DDR2-1066 to 3.6-4GHz 9x5/1090T?
 
CHAoS_NiNJA said:
I absolutely plan on selling my CPU/Mobo/RAM, all part of my plan. :) I just fear pushing a locked CPU would be so much harder then an unlocked, I haven't OCed AMD since my 939 4000+, so I'm not as in the know. If I got a new CPU, I'd want it to be BE just to make sure I could push it to its absolute limit.

Another part of the plan would be getting AM3/DDR3 to make sure i'm nice and modern. The big question is how much performance increase can I see from going 3.2GHz Q6600/DDR2-1066 to 3.6-4GHz 9x5/1090T?
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overall I think you are just wasting your money. if you are going to upgrade anything it should be your gpus. after that if you want to upgrade your cpu then go ahead and get the i5 750 and overclock it. even at stock speeds the i5 750 will be just as fast or faster in gaming and cheaper to boot.
 
I just upgraded to the following:

x4 965 BE $165 oc'd to 3.9 on a $15 aftermarket cpu cooler
4gb ddr3 1600 $105
MSI 770-c45 $60
Asus 5850 $265

from they following:

Q6600 oc'd on $15 aftermarket fan to 3.0
4gb DDR2 667
XFX 5770


and overall I'm pretty happy. I could've waited for the Thuban, but I think I'll wait until they drop in price even more to just an upgrade from the 965. By that time there may be a newer game or patches to utilize more than 4 cores to make the upgrade more worthwhile.
 
bigdogchris said:
I absolutely +1 this statement.

There are very few games where the 4th cores gets used much. The 'sweet spot' for gaming is a 3 core cpu right now but a quad definitely doesn't hurt. The cost of a 6 core cpu is simply going to be way to high for the use you will get out of it. Go quad, then take the rest of the dollars you would of spent on the 6 core and buy a larger monitor and gpu than you were original going to.
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I dunno. I don't play a whole lot of modern PC games these days, but both that I am actively playing right now are using 4 cores very actively as per my Rainmeter gauges / googled info - Dragon Age and Team Fortress 2.

I think the PII-x4 and x6 (and unlockable x2/x3) are a no brainer for anyone on C2D / DDR2 setups, especially now with an x6 upgrade path, rather than paying the big price for a Q6600. It was a great upgrade from my e4500.

But for a Q6600? No. I'd continue waiting if I was you. Or spend the money on an SSD. Man I love that thing.
 
Hmmm, after reading through this thread I'm kind of pondering going for a new case, Hanns-G 28" and 5870 instead...C2x and PhII do seem to be pretty close in performance I suppose, although I didn't realize it was quite THAT close. Are my Crossfired cards really a bottleneck, and would a 5870 bring me more performance over a complete changeover to AM3 + 5830/MAYBE 5850? :confused: Seems more cost effective plus I can get a 28" LCD to go with my 37". :eek:
 
going to a 5870 would raise your graphics power a bit, though your more performance increase over all is an AM3(hexa) + 5850......though i would suggest a 28 inch monitor + 5870, then make a transition if it seems right at the time....as of now your Q6600 should do fine(as long as you dont have an upgrade itch :p)
 
I say get the new 6 core so you can do video encoding while you game... Now that would be a cool benchmark.
 
For those who argue that games don't use more than 4 cores, what was the argument last time? Games don't use more than 2 cores? I bet that those Q6600 ealy adopter made the right choice last time around and the Q6600 is still a good CPU now. What were the advantages of the Q6600 last time?

1) Cheap with more cores
2) Easily overclockable

It looks like the Thuban has the same characteristics and I bet that choosing a six core CPU over a quad core would be better in the long run if you are buying a new system right now.

Upgrading from a quad core to the Thuban is another thing, if you have a 45nm quad core overclocked to at least 3.5GHz then upgrading to Thuban makes less sense but from a Q6600 3.2GHz to the Thuban, I think that it will be a good upgrade since at stock, the 1090T has a clock speed of 3.6GHz when only 3 threads are used.

Even without the turbo speed, the 1090T at stock is better than the 3.2GHz Q6600 since the PII has about the same performance clock for clock as the earlier Core 2 architecture. You will have a comparable performance and two extra cores. The 1090T is an unlocked chip so overclocking it would be easy and hitting 4.0GHz Turbo speed doesn't look hard at all.
 
alg7_munif said:
For those who argue that games don't use more than 4 cores, what was the argument last time? Games don't use more than 2 cores? I bet that those Q6600 ealy adopter made the right choice last time around and the Q6600 is still a good CPU now. What were the advantages of the Q6600 last time?

1) Cheap with more cores
2) Easily overclockable

It looks like the Thuban has the same characteristics and I bet that choosing a six core CPU over a quad core would be better in the long run if you are buying a new system right now.

Upgrading from a quad core to the Thuban is another thing, if you have a 45nm quad core overclocked to at least 3.5GHz then upgrading to Thuban makes less sense but from a Q6600 3.2GHz to the Thuban, I think that it will be a good upgrade since at stock, the 1090T has a clock speed of 3.6GHz when only 3 threads are used.

Even without the turbo speed, the 1090T at stock is better than the 3.2GHz Q6600 since the PII has about the same performance clock for clock as the earlier Core 2 architecture. You will have a comparable performance and two extra cores. The 1090T is an unlocked chip so overclocking it would be easy and hitting 4.0GHz Turbo speed doesn't look hard at all.
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dont be ridiculous. the X6 already loses basically every gaming benchmark to the i7 as it is. in gaming scenarios it is no better than the X4 that already loses to the i7. hell my E8500 dual core still matches or beats the fastest X4 in all but 4 or 5 games. by the time some games start needing 6 cores to have an advantage over 4 the Thubans performance will be almost laughable compared to what ever cpus are out at that time.
 
alg7_munif said:
Fixed.
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point still stands. the X6 is slower than better quads and does basically nothing for gaming. upgrading to it for gaming purposes only is absolutely foolish because there are better gaming cpus. again by the time a 6 core cpu will have an advantage in gaming we will already have much newer and improved cpu architectures.
 
my vote is wait. I currently rock a Q6700 and a 5870.

I can play any game on maxed settings except crysis. I play BF BC2 at max 1920 1200.

When the "next" big intel cpu comes out, I will get that (about 9 months?)
 
cannondale06 said:
point still stands. the X6 is slower than better quads and does basically nothing for gaming. upgrading to it for gaming purposes only is absolutely foolish because there are better gaming cpus. again by the time a 6 core cpu will have an advantage in gaming we will already have much newer and improved cpu architectures.
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Exactly the same thing was said during the Q6600 days and look where the Q6600 is now, at the bottom of the quad core line up but it is still a good CPU today. Would you say the those people who bought the Q6600 back then made a mistake?

Btw who cares if it is slightly slower in older games, instead of 120fps, you will get 100fps but in latest games, having a quad core would mean that you can go from unplayable to playable compared to dual cores now.
 
alg7_munif said:
Exactly the same thing was said during the Q6600 days and look where the Q6600 is now, at the bottom of the quad core line up but it is still a good CPU today. Would you say the those people who bought the Q6600 back then made a mistake?

Btw who cares if it is slightly slower in older games, instead of 120fps, you will get 100fps but in latest games, having a quad core would mean that you can go from unplayable to playable compared to dual cores now.
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try and pay attention. the Q6600 was just as fast as anything on the market when it came out. even in things that used only 2 cores overclocking it removed any advantage the faster dual cores had in most cases.

as for as the X6 goes its NO faster than the X4 in gaming which is already MUCH slower clock for clock than the i5/i7 quads. come back to reality and get though your thick skull that the X6 is based on old architecture.

no matter how many cores you throw at it it will still be slower than the i5/i7 quads in gaming. hell RE5 can use more than 4 cores but the X6 is STILL SLOWER so stop using that lame excuse.

do you want a cpu that dominates NOW and can give the best experience for the foreseeable future or do you want to pretend that just because it has 2 more cores that X6 will somehow magically be faster in those future games?

AGAIN by the time the X6 may have an advantage in some rare case in the future we will have newer cpus with better architectures anyway.:rolleyes:
 
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cannondale06 said:
try and pay attention. the Q6600 was just as fast as anything on the market when it came out. even in things that used only 2 cores overclocking it removed any advantage the faster dual cores had in most cases.

as for as the X6 goes its NO faster than the X4 in gaming which is already MUCH slower clock for clock than the i5/i7 quads. come back to reality and get though your thick skull that the X6 is based on old architecture.

no matter how many cores you throw at it it will still be slower than the i5/i7 quads in gaming. hell RE5 can use more than 4 cores but the X6 is STILL SLOWER so stop using that lame excuse.

AGAIN by the time the X6 may have an advantage in some rare case in the future we will have newer cpus with better architectures anyway. :rolleyes:
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harsh but true
 
I was wondering same thing and really apart from e-penis factor of owning 6 cores running at 4 Ghz it seems X6 wouldn't be that much of upgrade through folding@home would certainly show some improvements :)

Hmm but if you can get 1055T with one of those uber hot deals at <150 bucks and then pair it up with cheap 870G mobo you would have to spend probably less than 100$ for cpu+mobo after selling q6600 and stuff but you also have to factor DDR2 to DDR3 upgrade cost.

You have to ask yourself if this spending is worth getting slightly faster cpu on core vs core basis with 2 additional cores and running more or less same power consumption as overclocked q6600 also you would get native usb 3.0 ports.
 
Well boys and girls, I've decided to keep my Q6600 for now and instead go for a 5870 and a 28" LCD to use as my secondary. PhII and C2x performance is just to close for me to do anything, and the i7/i5s aren't a choice because they're gonna be EOL in half a year. Thanks for the input. :)
 
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