PC upgrade, wait for Ivy Bridge?

Doctor_Socks

Hi,

I'm thinking of upgrading my system, at the moment its current spec is:

Intel Q6600, little guys powered through so much!!
Radeon 4850
4gb RAM

Haven't a clue what the rest of the system has! All I know is that its finally in need of an upgrade as its starting to feel the pressure from new games. I was thinking of upgrading to the Intel 2500k i5 but with Ivy Bridge coming out next year I was considering holding off until then, although then i'll probably convince myself to wait for PCI-ex 3.0 . Does anyone here have opinions on this?

af_thefragile

If you feel you need a new pc then go for it. Thete will always be new stuff coming out and you cant always be waiting for it. Also when ivy bridge will come out it'll probably be pretty expensive too so you'll again wanna wait a while till it gets cheaper. Also the current 1155 chipset mobos will support ivy bridge so you can get the i5 now and then if you feel like it get the ivy bridge next year or the year after...

So if you feel your pc is pretty outdated and hopeless, i'ld say don't bother waiting till next yeat for ivy bridge and get the i5 2500k. Its still an excellent cpu for gaming...

Monotype

Some of the Asrock boards have PCI-E 3... Asrock Gen 3 boards, I think. There were at least two of them. They should be out soon.

Does your board support overclocking that Q6600? If it does, I don't think it's really necessary to switch just yet for games. A graphics card upgrade to something like a 6950 or 560ti would give you a very nice increase.

Where did the system come from? You can download CPU-Z which will tell you your motherboard model if you don't know.
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z/versions-history.html

Tea_Bag

just a note about Monotypes post,
there is an Asrock z68 Extreme4 gen3 and an MSI z68 gd65 gen3 both of which support PCIe 3.0 (but only with ivy bridge CPUs)

neither of which are stocked by HWVS though..

uberpixie

Doctor_Socks wrote: »

Hi,

I'm thinking of upgrading my system, at the moment its current spec is:

Intel Q6600, little guys powered through so much!!
Radeon 4850
4gb RAM

Haven't a clue what the rest of the system has! All I know is that its finally in need of an upgrade as its starting to feel the pressure from new games. I was thinking of upgrading to the Intel 2500k i5 but with Ivy Bridge coming out next year I was considering holding off until then, although then i'll probably convince myself to wait for PCI-ex 3.0 . Does anyone here have opinions on this?

1) what power supply do you have?

2) What case (is this a stand off the shelf pc or is it a custom build)

3) what resolution is your monitor and what size is it?

Honestly you can upgrade the gfx card to something more modern and get plenty of life out of your current pc.....

My Q6600 is currently clocked to 3ghz with 4 gig of ram and a radeon 6950 2 gig. Plays games fine @ 1650 x 1080 @ high settings. The auld pc is running well especially considering the cpu & motherboard are 4 years old! I am getting good performance and see no reason to change cpu for another little while just yet.

I won't be upgrading until ivy bridge is out a couple of months and prices have fallen a little and the motherboards have had the initial bugs ironed out.

shinfujiwara

I am an owner of both Q6600 and I5 2500K so maybe I can help.

On games, depending the resolution you use and the game, it can change drastically. In rare cases, 2x more FPS (really). That's how amazing it is.

If you use something like 1920x1080 I would suggest for you to buy a better GPU and wait for Ivy. I play on 1920x1080 and I didn't wait. Kept my GTX 460 and upgraded. That was because my Q6600 was having problems.

That's gaming. Where CPU usage rarely goes more than 50% for me. Now, if you do anything else, anything that utilizes the full power of the 2500K, not the power of the GPU, like video encoding, the performance change will be unbelievable. Q6600 can't compare at all IMHO.

You can check it on the web on websites like these:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/16

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833-17.html

It is a huge jump. But if you are playing a game like Crysis 2 don't expect HUGE performance gain. It will change, though. Mainly the minimum FPS which is something really important. Everything I've played so far I noticed the difference.

Biggest difference I've seen: Rift (MMO)
This game has serious performance problems and everyone complains about it. If you play it and care for it, the only choice you have to play it well ATM is buying a high-end CPU.

FPS was as low as 10-20 on crowded areas on Ultra Settings. Now it is 25-45. Same GPU. CPU OCed to 4.5ghz with after-market cooler.

Lowest difference I've seen: Heaven Benchmark 2.5
This is obviously REALLY graphically intensive and, believe it or not, I barely could see a difference between the two CPUs. It's all about GPU here.

FPS? Virtually the same. You will never notice the difference. Something like 0 FPS here, 2 FPS there... really impressive. CPU usage goes reaaally low, maybe 8% or so. It even downclocks to 1.6ghz at this point. It doesn't care.


Edit:
If you play games on low resolutions, mainly 1400x900 or lower, your best bet is to upgrade the CPU right now.