q6600 users ?

[himti]

Anyone who has Q6600 processor playing Crysis or LockOn?
How does it perform on your system? What video card?

[Buckshot]

The Crysis demo ran perfectly on my Q6600 (8800GTX video)

Running Vista 64 OS

[Playloud]

The only Q6600 I have is running Folding@home 24/7.

I will probably build a quad core gaming rig when Fighter Ops is released.

[Afterburner]

Softwares must be threaded or else you would be using only 1 out of the 2 or 4 cores depending if its a Dual or Quad core. I'm not sure about Lock On, Crysis uses all 4 cores but not as much or as optimised as we would like it to unfortunately. Call Of Duty 4 on the other hand uses Quads quite effectively. I got NFS: Pro Street installed last night and both the cores on my E6600 are maxed out @ 100% sustained which shows its threaded which is great ! Am waiting to pick up a 45nm Quad next year after Intel's delay is over.... :bigsmile:

[Afterburner]

NFS: Pro Street uses Speedtree and it looks awesome ! :smile:

I was too BZ zooming by to notice until I saw the startup screen of the game... :lol

[OneShot]

Haven't installed LockOn again, but the Crysis Demo runs absolutly smooth on my Q6600 @ 3Ghz with a GF8800 GTS 512 on all High with FSAA 2x (slows down with FSAA 4x)

[himti]

Thanks Guys...
l am an AMD guy but all the reviews i have read states that Intel Quad is the way to go and that it had Phenom beat.
I have to upgrade my system and i think that i will have Q6600 with ATI 3850.
Everyone who has q6600 is using NVIDIA 8800???

[Buckshot]

Yeah, I've flipped between ATI and NVidia a couple of times now, but Nvidia seem to be generally better than ATI as far as drivers go (although the 8800 seem to have had some teething issues), also right now Nvidia has quite a lead over ATI with the 8800.

[SUBS17]

Anyone who has Q6600 processor playing Crysis or LockOn?
How does it perform on your system? What video card?

LO doesn't support multi-threading.

[Afterburner]

Thanks Guys...
l am an AMD guy but all the reviews i have read states that Intel Quad is the way to go and that it had Phenom beat.
I have to upgrade my system and i think that i will have Q6600 with ATI 3850.
I was using the AMD A64 3000+ before switching to Intel E6600. Some Intel staff admitted the A64s were great CPUs for their time. Phenoms were found at the last minute to have a TLB bug in their shared L3 cache. The workaround via the Bios is causing the lower performance. According to AMD, Q2 2008 is the earliest they will have the problem solved. Having tested both 38xx and 8xxx, my advice is get a 3870 or 8800GT, the 3850 will not cut it. If we talk about Crossfire/SLI, the 38xx series scales much better then the 8xxx series. Single card perf however, the 8800GT is almost king of the hill... :smile:

[himti]

Thanks Afterburner....... great post.

[Afterburner]

Welcome... :smile:

[Playloud]

Always good to hear from Afterburner when asking about computer hardware. Now if I could just convince him to use all that hardware to fold for the Fighter Ops Folding@Home Team :evils:

[Afterburner]

Do I have a fan...? :tongue:

I would if I had my own place dude... :evils:

Dad's still in the Army (30yrs and counting) not the kind of home you want to Fold in and he's a hardcore Warrant Officer to boot :lol

[Playloud]

I hear ya. I had to move back in with my folks when I moved back into the area. Rent is just to darn expensive here. I could get by, but I would never have any money.

[Afterburner]

As for myself I have plans to migrate or else I would have stayed in the Air Force, gotten an apartment and a small car and live miserably ever after... :blank:

[Pacman]

At the moment I'm running an E6600...would it make much difference to go for the Q6600?

What is the performance difference in overall gaming between the 2?
Talking about the current games. (COD4, flightsims,...)

Dirk

[PiF]

It depends of games, recent with multicore support, will run smoothly, when with older games you will not win perfs at same frequency with Both Dual & Quad Core.

Also Games like Crysis, COD4 have multi-thread, and then multi-core support.

With time, the interrest of multicore will grow but when native quad-core will be there (beginning of 2009) we would have made a step forward.:smile:

[Afterburner]

Dear Dirk,

You will not notice any difference between the two if you are using your system for basic stuff. Once you start multi-tasking, say for example, encoding a file, extracting a file, burning a disc all at the same time the Quad will start to pull ahead. There are some titles that are threaded namely, Falcon 4 Gold, Crysis, World In Conflict, Unreal Tournament 3, NFS Pro Street, Quake 4, Call Of Duty 2, Call Of Duty 4, Hellgate London, Half Life 2: Episode 2, The Orange Box. As far as I know Crysis (poorly), UT3, Call Of Duty 4, HL2:EP2 and The Orange Box make use of Quad Cores. Future titles Far Cry 2, Fighter OPS (sounds familiar :tongue:) and Alan Wake as well. You are are bound to see a boost in COD4 say, 30% - 50% if not more. I dont have a Quad to test so I cant give specifics in boost (unless Buckshot volunteers to ship his Quad to me :lol). LockOn, MS:FSX, Xplane 8 are not threaded so you will not see any increase of performance, not sure about Xplane 9 though. Stick to your E6600 for now which is what I am doing, a good time to get a Quad is next year, the 45nm versions known as Yorkfield that run much cooler and uses less power and are up to 40% faster (at same clocks). Below is an example that shows the difference between the two, stock and overclocked... :smile:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/benchmark.jpg

[Afterburner]

Some words on Intel's 45nm process:

For the first time in over 40 years, Intel has significantly changed some of the basic components used in transistor fabrication. Hafnium dioxide (HfO2) has replaced SiO2 as the gate dielectric material, along with other carefully chosen new metals, for use in the formation of gate electrodes in both PMOS and NMOS transistors. These new materials, along with the right process recipe, have cut gate leakage by a factor of more than 10x while simultaneously delivering an astonishing 30% decrease in transistor switching energy. The result is a cooler running, more energy efficient, and high-performance processing powerhouse.

[_Big_Mac_]

Some words on Intel's 45nm process:

For the first time in over 40 years, Intel has significantly changed some of the basic components used in transistor fabrication. Hafnium dioxide (HfO2) has replaced SiO2 as the gate dielectric material, along with other carefully chosen new metals, for use in the formation of gate electrodes in both PMOS and NMOS transistors. These new materials, along with the right process recipe, have cut gate leakage by a factor of more than 10x while simultaneously delivering an astonishing 30% decrease in transistor switching energy. The result is a cooler running, more energy efficient, and high-performance processing powerhouse.

Impressive! Any predictions regarding pricing?

[Playloud]

The only one out at the moment (QX9650) is only $1100! :bigeyes:

[Afterburner]

Yup..... :lol

Basically thats the reason I didnt mention or recommend it. The other reason why it is so expensive, its the Extreme Edition of the 45nm Core 2 series hence the QX9xxx designation, the normal ones are known as Q9xxx. Do take note the 45nm launch has been delayed so the Jan 08 date is void. Here is what you can expect.... :smile:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Penryn.jpg

[Playloud]

As none of them have the lower 1066FSB, they will not be as easy to overclock as some of the 65nm chips. My Q6600 OCs to 3.0ghz by ramping up the FSB to 1333mhz. These chips start at that FSB, and you would need more expensive RAM (or a MB that supports a 1:1 memory divider) to OC them.

[Afterburner]

My take....

The Q9450 (12mb L2 cache) @ $316 is PERFECT !!! :thumb:

p.s: I will update you guys as things unfold.

[Playloud]

The Q9450 will be the new Q6600. I agree.

Again, be sure you buy a MB and RAM that allow for good Overclocking though. The 1333FSB makes it more important to choose the other components with care.

[Afterburner]

Playloud,

How about updating your Rig specs. A board with an Intel P35 chipset is the minimum a Penryn will run in. These chipsets have no probs running @ 1600mhz and beyond. 800/1066/1333/1600 refer to the FSB speeds that the chipset will run, always remember that they are quad pumped so...

800 : 800 divided by 4 = 200mhz
1066 : 1066 divided by 4 = 266mhz
1333 : 1333 divided by 4 = 333mhz
1600 : 1600 divided by 4 = 400mhz

The underlined refer to the default Bus speeds in the motherboard Bios. Depending on your CPU, these are the values you will start with if you so choose to overclock. Intel P35 chips are known to hit Bus speeds in excess of 500mhz which is 2000mhz (2Ghz) FSB and beyond let alone the higher end chipsets. As for memory, there is no need to buy new ones especially with ridiculous DDR3 prices. Lets say you are using DDR2 800, suppose we overclock the FSB of a E6600 (2.4Ghz) on a P35 to 400mhz (1600), up from its default of 266mhz (1066) while retaining its stock clock and ram speed. By increasing overall system FSB, overall system performance will increase considerably. There are three things that can be overclocked, CPU, FSB, RAM. I am using FSB only increase as an example...

Stock E6600: 9 x 266mhz = 2400mhz
FSB enhanced E6600: 6 x 400 = 2400mhz

To acheive this, I dropped the multiplier to 6 while pumping the Bus speed to 400mhz (1600) which still results in a 2.4Ghz chip. The RAM divider is set @ 1:1 which results in 400mhz speed of system memory. RAMs run in dual channel mode so 2 x 400mhz = 800mhz which is the rating for DDR2 800 memory. You maintain complete system stabilty while increasing performance. The higher end your ram, the higher you can run 1:1 with the Bus speed (some high end DDR2 can do in excess of 1400mhz [700mhz]) or else do not worry as you can use the 1:1, 4:3, 2:3, 5:4 dividers to keep things in control up to a certain extent. Overclocking is subject to your hardware of course. Hope this helps... :smile:

[Afterburner]

This is a screenshot of my Rig. This is a FSB enhancement + mild Overclock. Multiplier is set to 7. I am awaiting my radiator so I can assemble my watercooling loop and whack the hell outta my E6600 and RAMs... :evils:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/screen.jpg

[Playloud]

The rig specs is my sig are accurate. My gaming rig is a P4 3.4.

I recently build a dedicated Folding@home rig based on the Q6600 (and damn does it finish those work units fast!). I am currently running my folding rig at 333x9 (3.0ghz). My motherboard is a Gigabyte G33 board, and the RAM divider will only go do 4:5,. That makes my RAM overclocked from 400 MHz (800 MHz effective) to 416.25 MHz (832.5 MHz effective). I would like to run my system at 400x8 (3.2 GHz), but I need the 1:1 RAM divider setting, which would run my RAM at 400 MHz (800 MHz effective). Unfortunately, I didn't know enough about overclocking when buying the system to check on this in advance.:mad:

[Pacman]

I have the same CPU as Afterburner. Mobo: GA-965P-DQ6 BIOS: F11
Gotten it set to:

Core speed: 2400.5
Multiplier: x6
Bus speed: 400Mhz
Rated FSB: 1600.3

My memory is max 5 latency though so I couldn't tune anything there.
My DC mode is set to symmetric here though. Anything I can/ need to change there?
And the system is set to 32-bit, don't have a 64 bit OS so I don't think it would make a difference.
Runs stable as far as I can tell for the moment.
Can't wait for my 8800 GT to arrive.

Dirk

[Deckerd]

...MS:FSX, Xplane 8 are not threaded so you will not see any increase of performance, not sure about Xplane 9 though.


X-plane 9 is threaded. I'm running beta 13 now and the boost in performance is breath taking.

[Pacman]

It seems that Windows doesn't like my current settings. Is that possible? All of a sudden it won't launch anymore. Goes to the slider where it stops after going left to right about 3 times.

[Afterburner]

Yes, that perticular setting is unfavourable to Windows. I suggest you revert all settings back to default in the mean time till I can point you in the right direction... :smile:

[himti]

Afterburner...if you can point me in the right direction.
How can i begin OC my AMD system.....is there any utility that you recommend.

[Afterburner]

Dirk and himti......I apologize for my absence, been pretty BZ sorting some personal issues.

You will find everything you need here (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/index.php) and more... :smile:

[Pacman]

Thx,

I think I'll simply ask them how it comes that my system scores so low in the benchmarks? And what I can do about it.

[Afterburner]

There's is a thread in XS Forums under the Intel sub section regarding Gigabyte boards.... :smile:

[Maple]

Just got a Dell 720 with the Q6600 Dual 8800GTX's
What Ram should I be getting or upgrading to, I have 2 G's now 800MHZ.
Thanks!

[Playloud]

Your RAM seems fine to me. Unless you are planning some large overclocking, the RAM you have is probably fine. Depending on the memory divider you have, you should be able to OC the CPU to 3.0ghz (333x9) or 3.2ghz (400x8) without much difficulty (assuming there is nothing in the Dell BIOS that prevents overclocking).

Then again, I would assume Dell went cheap on the heatsink, so I don't really know what you can OC to. My folding rig (Q6600) is OCed to 3.0ghz, and it would do 3.2 without trouble if my BIOS allowed better control of the memory divider (or if I went with faster than 800mhz RAM). However, this is with a Thermalright Ultima-90 heatsink (just look at all those heatpipes).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/playloud/Ultima90-1.jpg

I am sure Dell didn't put such a hefty heatsink in you system.


Are you planning on Overclocking the system?

[Afterburner]

*Observing* :tongue:

[Maple]

*Observing* :tongue:

got any pics of your system? intrested in your cooling system you have.

[Afterburner]

I dont have updated pics yet as I might be relocating to Australia in the near future, here are some from my previous before I took it apart.... :smile:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Rad%20Box/3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Rad%20Box/4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Rad%20Box/5.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Rad%20Box/6.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Rad%20Box/7.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Rad%20Box/9.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/Reheat/Rad%20Box/10.jpg

[Afterburner]

^ All parts are in the pics except both the Alphacool stuff which are new :smile:

[Maple]

Gosh I love my new system!!

[Afterburner]

Feels good doesnt it..... :evils: :tongue: