Best way to upgrade my '09 Q6600 build to take me through the end of the year?

S

semisonic9

Gawd
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May 2, 2005
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I've got a 2+ year old rig that's starting to bog down. I'd like to put $200-400 into it to increase performance as much as possible to carry me through the end of the year. At which point I will probably convert this rig into a media center PC and retire it to the living room.

I'm hoping the [H]ardforums can help me figure out what my bottlenecks are and how to most wisely allocate my time and funds.

Note: I work at a NOC for a web-hosting company, and can purchase non-graphic related hardware (HDs, RAM, probably CPUs) at a significant discount. Also, as a student. Upgrading to Windows 7 would be free.

Specs:
* Q6600 lightly OC'ed to 3.4ghz
* Biostar Tpower I45 Mobo (socket 775)
* 4gb G.Skill DDR2 1000
* EVGA GTX260, 216 variant running at stock.
* Windows Vista x64

Possible options:
* RAM upgrade: 4gb -> 8gb
* CPU swap. OC'ed Q6600 -> ??
* Graphics card: GTX260 -> GTX460 1gb?
* Vista x64 -> Windows 7

Pick one (or several). I'm looking for zippier performance all around, plus the ability to play this years big gaming titles (Deus Ex 3, Crysis 2, and Mass Effect 3) @ 1900x1200 on at least medium (if not high) settings. I also dabble in video editing.

With that in mind, I figure I'm probably looking at least a graphics card swap and probably more RAM. Not sure OS or CPU upgrades are worth it. Do I need more RAM? Will my system even use 6-8gb of RAM?
 
Last edited:
I'm no expert so others may have more valuable info.

My first thought when you mentioned "zippier performance" was a SSD for ~200-250 and then W7 x64. But then you mentioned new games coming out. I don't play alot of games so I'm not sure if your current graphics card/cpu can handle the newest titles. Maybe get the GTX460 and a smaller volume SSD for at least the OS and a game or 2.
 
450 said:
With 400 dollars to spend I'd just go 1155.
Click to expand...

$400 is a serious outer limit. I'd be much more comfortable around $200, +/- $50 and further complicated by the fact that I have $75 in gift cards to Best Buy that have been sitting around for months. I never shop there, and can't imagine what else to spend them on.
 
The optimum return is to bump the video card to an ATI 5870 (~$200) and a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit. Any other expenditure is futile for that platform.

Sell or give away the Best Buy gift cards.
 
I'd do nothing.
I didn't have any problem in playing ME2 1920x1200 on GTX 260 last year so ME3 should still be fine (console port)

Wait till 28nm refresh on GPU cards in winter than either get cheap 6870/470/570 etc when they are in bargain sales at Black Friday or new cards (depending on price).
 
SSD and a new vid card, along with the upgrade to win7 would be your best bets if you needed to spend money right away. Right now the ati 6850 is probably the best card ~$160-170. But that price range for vid cards aren't going to give you stellar results @ 1920x1200 with all the eye candy cranked. Usually need to shoot for the $250 range for great 1920 gaming.

I'd almost think about standing pat with what you have, then upgrade down the road. I made the jump to a 2500k in Jan and I'm very happy with the new rig, but I didn't have your budget constraints to worry about.

And I wouldn't spend any money on more memory unless you have applications that are going to put it to use.
 
Video Card & windows 7 For sure.. SSD Would be a good buy as well. But dont do anything that cant go with you to a newer platform (ie avoid ram & CPU)
 
wait a week and get one of the new C400 drives. You can keep it through several upgrades.
 
A Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz should not seem "slow" for the most part.

"Starting to bog down" usually means that there is too much stuff running in the background. There could also be some spyware/malare on your system that is causing it to slow down.

Over about 60 services on XP and 80 on Vista and 7 is when you should start looking at why there is so much crap running in the background, especially for a home machine.

Some(most paid for and some "free") Anti-Virus software can spawn 10+ services.

How many services are running when you first boot the computer and let it finish loading up? Are any of them constantly using CPU cycles?

When was the last time you defragmented the hard drive?

Here are some steps you can use to bring it back to that "just installed" zippyness.

1. Do a "disk cleanup" in the boot hard drive properties window.
2. Use CCleaner to clean out more junk and to get rid of bad registry entries.
3. Clean out your c:\windows\temp and c:\windows\prefetch folders
4. Disable indexing on your hard drives - indexing in XP and Vista can get all screwed up and cause things to slow down quite a bit. (Right click on your hard drive and select properties. The index check box will be near the bottom of the window that pops up.
5. Disable hibernation.
6. Disable System Restore.
7. Clean out the Windows update cache folder:
http://www.question-defense.com/201...dows-update-cache-purge-windows-updates-cache (This is XP instructions, but it is the same for Vista and 7).
8. Disable the swap file - over time it gets fragmented and will cause things to slow down. You will re-enable it after defragmenting the drive.
9. Run a chkdsk /f c: from the command prompt. It will tell you that it can't lock the drive and asks if you want to do a scan when the system reboots.. select y. The pre-boot chkdsk is a whole lot better than the in-windows disk check.
10. Once it reboots, defrag the drive(s) with the windows defragmenter. It defragments some files that thrid party programs genrally can't.
11.Then, use MyDefrag and run a monthly System drive defrag on your boot drive and a monthly Data drive defrag on the rest of your hard drives: http://www.mydefrag.com/
12. After all the defragging is done, you can re-enable your swap file, then hibernation file, and then System restore.

You will also want to go into the device manager and make sure that none of your drives have dropped to a lower tranfer rate. Sometimes Windows can drop the transfer rate, and it will cause the system to use more CPU cycles and also slow down transfer rates quite a bit. It is genrally a simple fix. Just remove the drive(s) from the device manager and reboot. If the transfer rate is still at a lower rate then it should be, remove the drive AND the drive controllers from device manager and reboot. Once it reboots it should re-detect things properly.
 
I'll add to the post above me, whenever I encounter an older computer that someone says is feeling sluggish. I load up Start > Run > msconfig

Check out the startup tab, and 99% of the time I will literally "Disable All"

Boom - PC feels good as new to them, lol.

That stops just about every program from running at the startup, major resource hog, and half the shit they don't even know is running. May be worth a check, if it went overlooked.
 
Also, one other thing I forgot to add.

On LGA775 setups FSB is king for getting more performance out of them.

When i was running my Q6600 at 3.84Ghz, I was running a 480FSB and 8x multiplier. It was noticeably faster than at 427x9.

I am assuming that you are probably running the default multiplier of 9 with a bus speed of ~377 for your 3.4Ghz.

Bumping up the bus speed as far as you can (lower the multiplier down as well as the memory divider to find the highest FSB you can run) and then bumping the CPU and RAM speed back up should give you a very nice performance boost.
 
Newegg is having a sale on RAM. Any reason I can't mix and match the following two?

2x2gb DDR 2 1000
CAS Latency: 5
Timing: 5-5-5-15
Voltage: 2.0-2.1V

2x1gb DDR 800
CAS Latency: 5
Timing: 5-5-5-15
Voltage: 1.8-2.0V

I can only buy the top in 4gb lots, for about $80 shipped. 2gb of the DDR 800 will set me back $34, shipped.
 
They should run ok together, but I personally wouldn't do it because that would limit you to DDR2-800 speeds.

You would see more of a performance boost by upping the FSB as far as you can and running the RAM at a 1:1 ratio.
 
semisonic9 said:
Newegg is having a sale on RAM. Any reason I can't mix and match the following two?

2x2gb DDR 2 1000
CAS Latency: 5
Timing: 5-5-5-15
Voltage: 2.0-2.1V

2x1gb DDR 800
CAS Latency: 5
Timing: 5-5-5-15
Voltage: 1.8-2.0V

I can only buy the top in 4gb lots, for about $80 shipped. 2gb of the DDR 800 will set me back $34, shipped.
Click to expand...

Your gain isnt worth the cost..
 
Thanks for the detailed post, Cyclone! Some of your suggestions were new to me. Some I do already.

cyclone3d said:
How many services are running when you first boot the computer and let it finish loading up? Are any of them constantly using CPU cycles?
Click to expand...

~65. Only things eating CPU cycles are firefox and dropbox.

cyclone3d said:
When was the last time you defragmented the hard drive?
Click to expand...

SmartDefrag runs once every two weeks. Two drives. Both defragged on the 9th of this month. Ran it again last night just for kicks.

cyclone3d said:
2. Use CCleaner to clean out more junk and to get rid of bad registry entries.
3. Clean out your c:\windows\temp and c:\windows\prefetch folders
4. Disable indexing on your hard drives - indexing in XP and Vista can get all screwed up and cause things to slow down quite a bit. (Right click on your hard drive and select properties. The index check box will be near the bottom of the window that pops up.
7. Clean out the Windows update cache folder:
http://www.question-defense.com/201...dows-update-cache-purge-windows-updates-cache (This is XP instructions, but it is the same for Vista and 7).
8. Disable the swap file - over time it gets fragmented and will cause things to slow down. You will re-enable it after defragmenting the drive
9. Run a chkdsk /f c: from the command prompt. It will tell you that it can't lock the drive and asks if you want to do a scan when the system reboots.. select y. The pre-boot chkdsk is a whole lot better than the in-windows disk check.
10. Once it reboots, defrag the drive(s) with the windows defragmenter. It defragments some files that thrid party programs genrally can't.
11.Then, use MyDefrag and run a monthly System drive defrag on your boot drive and a monthly Data drive defrag on the rest of your hard drives: http://www.mydefrag.com/
12. After all the defragging is done, you can re-enable your swap file, then hibernation file, and then System restore.
Click to expand...

Completed. Though I'm partial to SmartDefrag, unless there's a reason to switch.

cyclone3d said:
6. Disable System Restore.
Click to expand...

Not comfortable with this until I install my new backup drive and get it working. Next week or so. Work is selling me the certified refurbs we get for like $10. I did erase all but the most recent restore point.

PrometheuSBoxeR said:
...whenever I encounter an older computer that someone says is feeling sluggish. I load up Start > Run > msconfig

Check out the startup tab, and 99% of the time I will literally "Disable All"
Click to expand...

Done. I didn't kill everything, but there were a few services running that I was able to throw off the bridge.


cyclone3d said:
You will also want to go into the device manager and make sure that none of your drives have dropped to a lower tranfer rate. Sometimes Windows can drop the transfer rate, and it will cause the system to use more CPU cycles and also slow down transfer rates quite a bit. It is genrally a simple fix. Just remove the drive(s) from the device manager and reboot. If the transfer rate is still at a lower rate then it should be, remove the drive AND the drive controllers from device manager and reboot. Once it reboots it should re-detect things properly.
Click to expand...

I'll have to check into these tomorrow.
 
cmanser said:
C400 is up for sale here:

http://www.superbiiz.com/query.php?categry=0&s=c400

Shows they ship in 1-2 days. You will LOVE you Q6600 maching again with one of these and you can keep it through several upgrades.

128GB C400 SSD for $244
Click to expand...

WOW.. Those prices are WAY lower the the intel & corsair drives using the same controller. Very Very impressive. Maybe this time there going to price themselves to being top dog. Because it looks to me that if those prices hold they will be within dollars of 2nd gen prices.
 
cmanser said:
C400 is up for sale here:

http://www.superbiiz.com/query.php?categry=0&s=c400

Shows they ship in 1-2 days. You will LOVE you Q6600 maching again with one of these and you can keep it through several upgrades.

128GB C400 SSD for $244
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that! I'll look into them.

I'm surprised people think the hard drive will make such a difference. Is the 64gb drive worth it at all? I could at least run the OS, a few games, and select programs off it.

bastage said:
Maybe this time there going to price themselves to being top dog. Because it looks to me that if those prices hold they will be within dollars of 2nd gen prices.
Click to expand...

What do you mean?

I've been out of the computer hardware scene for awhile. Not following SSDs at all. Can I trouble you for a brief update?
 
semisonic9 said:
What do you mean?

I've been out of the computer hardware scene for awhile. Not following SSDs at all. Can I trouble you for a brief update?
Click to expand...

I mean those prices for the c400's are way cheaper then its real competition being the intel 510 series & the Corsair Performance 3 series.

128 gb c400 = 245
120 gb Intel 510 = 290 - 310
128gb Corsair p3 = 320

Puts the c400 with a serious price advantage. (prices were either superbiz or newegg. I didnt shop around)
 
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