To Quad or not to Quad?

projectmayhem

Just wondering if anyone has experience upgrading from C2D (I've a pretty old 6300 2.0Ghz one) to Quad?

I'm upgrading at the moment for the sole purpose of gaming really, as I've a mac for everything else... is it a good investment to get a quad CPU or is there more bang for my buck with a higher spec dual-core unit?

Cheers...

Anti

tbh no. its not really worth it. A faster dual core will be better for gaming then a quad in 90% of the games out there. But that could change is patches are brought out for games to allow native quad support. If you can afford it and wont miss the money go for a nice Q6600 or better.

Kenny_D

The q6600 is very easily overclocked. Clock it to 3.0ghz on air and it will be just as good for gaming. Then you also have the extra cores for other processes

daveharnett

How often do you upgrade your machine? If you are using it exclusively for games, and you will be buying again in 2 years time (or sooner), i'd say dual core.

I can't see a significant number of games being cpu limited by a fast dual core in that time frame.

OK-Cancel-Apply

I heard the Valve games like HL2 and TF2 only use 1 core, is that true?

Shiny

yeah, if you are doing alot of gaming then a high clock speed
dual core would be best.

Although if you are doing alot of processing with images, video
compression, decompression etc, then the extra cores will come
in handy. Just ordered a Quad system from ankermann myself last
week. Hasn't arrived yet.

Cuddlesworth

OK-Cancel-Apply wrote: »

I heard the Valve games like HL2 and TF2 only use 1 core, is that true?

No they have 2 versions of the Source Engine in use, one is single core and the other can use multiple cores. Most have been moved and some are going to be moved to the multi core version. It doesn't scale well past dual core though.

TerrorFirmer

Don't bother upgrading at all - an 6300 is still more then enough for any game, assuming you're over-clocking. Even an E2140 is enough for any game right now in that regard. Put it into a better card, it'll make a large difference, the quad will offer you, in the vast majority of games, 0% increase in performance.

Anti

I dunno, ive been using the 2140 for a while now, swapped it for my e6600 last night and i notice a fair difference in frame rates.

TerrorFirmer

At what speed is that though? I mean, if you're not overclocking, of course at stock an E2140/E2160 is going to be much slower and it does have far less l2 cache. I meant if you're overclocking, from a purely games point of view, any intel dual core (aside from the Celeron DC) is more then enough. It doesn't necessarily mean hardcore overclocking, at 2.3/2.4Ghz that's enough. For example when you look here you can see that the E2160 is a little slower then X6800 (2.93) at 3.15Ghz, keeps up and actually exceeds in some apps but loses a little in games because of the 1mb l2 but overall, still incredibly fast. And of course let's not forget the OP has the 6300 with the higher L2 anyway, not the E2160. If you look at COD4 benchmarks for various dual cores too, it performs almost the same on 2.2Ghz-ish as it does on 3Ghz.....it's all about the video card for most games once your CPU is at least in the balllpark of that speed you're fine. An 6300 is what I would consider 100% perfect in a modern gaming machine if you know even the fundamentals of overclocking. In fact if anyone wanted my quad I'd be happy to return to a low end dual core, this thing is 100% wasted in my machine! For 0% gain in my day to day routine I'm getting 75% increase in temperatures.

Anti

id happily swap out my e6600 for a quad tbh. Ill need it as im now running 2 or 3 instances of wow at a time !!

projectmayhem

OK gents I picked up a Q6600 because I got it on the cheap from work brand spanking new... But my rig has now encountered an issue, that ironically it had before but fixed itself.

It's a new relatively new rig, but every single thing I do manages to throw up some sort of issue. It's put me off PC's to no end, especially with the lack of "official" support, but that's another rant altogether.

Basically, yesterday the same machine with the a different CPU was doing this same thing, but it fixed itself and I had everything running (drivers installed and the whole shebang)... Basically she was good to go.

So with the new CPU I've got this issue again. Basically the machine starts up and shuts down before it even has the chance to get past the Vista loading bar. I've tried to re-install vista but it can't get past the bar for the install files to load. It just craps out. As I said, the issue was prevelent before but managed to fix itself somehow. Sometimes it'll shut down even looking at BIOS settings, so I can't imagine it's Windows.

Any ideas? Or is this a "go to the professionals" situation because I'm at a loss...

CPU: Intel Q6600
Mobo: MSI P35 Platinum
GPU: ATi HD2900XT
RAM: 4GB Corsair 800mhz PC6400
PSU: OCZ 600W
Sound: Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty

Everything starts up fine and passes tests et al.

Now that I have the rig per se, I'm just cheesed off I can't get the thing to run smooth.

(if it makes any difference I am getting the known issue with the MSI p35 boards double-starting after it's initial hardware checks)

daveharnett

Not having any knowledge of that particular board, the first thing that I would suggest is to test the memory using a bootable diagnotsic disk. A single bad sector in one of the sticks can cause all sorts of wierd and unpredictable problems.

projectmayhem

daveharnett wrote: »

Not having any knowledge of that particular board, the first thing that I would suggest is to test the memory using a bootable diagnotsic disk. A single bad sector in one of the sticks can cause all sorts of wierd and unpredictable problems.

Nah the memory seems fine. Everything does. I'm completely lost. I tried moving around the SATA cables, checking jumper settings etc., and all seems fine. When it's booted up long enough, the BIOS reports everything as there and in good condition.

The furthest point I've gotten to is the Vista login screen. As soon as the mouse appears it's gone... safe mode or otherwise. It couldn't be overheating as it's never on long enough to overheat.

It's potentially the most frustrating thing I've ever come accross...

EDIT: OK I just had a notion that maybe heat could be an issue, checked the thermal paste (stock on the unit out of the box etc.) and it's applied very badly on 3 sections of the processor. Hopefully this is what's wrong...

Ishindar

projectmayhem wrote: »

EDIT: OK I just had a notion that maybe heat could be an issue, checked the thermal paste (stock on the unit out of the box etc.) and it's applied very badly on 3 sections of the processor. Hopefully this is what's wrong...

lol common enuf problem and its most likely the cause...

projectmayhem

Ishindar wrote: »

lol common enuf problem and its most likely the cause...

Well it makes sense because the machine will shut down faster on a second boot-up and run longer when you leave it alone (off) for a while. Booting down as soon as Windows appears could be a coincidence, or just it shutting down because that's when it needs to start doing work

ballyrick

just get a new ram