Should I really upgrade from a Q6600?

[Delikatessen]

I'm going to build a new system some time after Christmas, probably early next year. The one thing I'm sure is still working perfectly is the Q6600. I compared benchmark scores to one of my friends, and this six year old processor actually outperformed his Phenom X4 II 965.

 

But there is a major problem. Not with the CPU, but with the motherboard. The newer GPUs use PCI-e 3.0, whereas my motherboard only supports PCI-e 2.0, and SSDs use SATA III and my motherboard only supports SATA II. I do realize that these are backwards compatible with each other, but the PCI-e 2.0 slot would cripple a PCI-e 3.0 card, leaving it no room to frolic freely and happily, and the SSD would be shackled to the data transfer technology of 2008. In computer years, four years is like a really long time.

 

The only thing I could really see benefiting from a CPU upgrade is video editing, which I don't do, or software synthesizers.

 

Is there a suitable replacement for gaming?

 

Edit: I accidentally pressed Enter when I was editing the subtitle, resulting in just "It'". Please ignore the seemingly inane subtitle.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Delikatessen

[FiftyTifty]

Bottlenecking a PCI-e 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot is impossible. Even with the GTX 690 and HD 7990.

 

Sata II's bandwidth is topped at 300MB/s. Only a few high end SSDs even come close to saturating that bandwidth. Unless you plan on doing RAID, ofcourse. But then you'd be paying too much for something that won't have any perceivable difference in performance.

 

The Q6600 beating a 965 BE? He must have had cool 'n' quiet enabled. The 965 BE trashes the Q6600, and is neck and neck with the Q9650, whilst pulling ahead by a fair margin in certain tasks, such as gaming.. Benchmark here.

 

But really, your processor is good. My 965 BE only reached around 70% load with 32 dragons and 25 draugr attacking me.

 

Your really just better off getting a new graphics card.

 

If all you play is Skyrim, the AMD 7000 series is your best bet. They don't perform that well in DirectX9 games or older, but they tank in DirectX11, which Skyrim utilizes.

 

7750 GDDR5 if your budget is £80, 7770 GDDR5 if your budget is £90.

[dthumb]

Based on the tidbits I've read, there is very little performance difference right now with PCI-E 2 & 3. You can even use a GPU 3.0 on a 2.0 mobo (or some of 0.1 I've heard, personally never tried it).

[Delikatessen]

Bottlenecking a PCI-e 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot is impossible. Even with the GTX 690 and HD 7990.

 

Sata II's bandwidth is topped at 300MB/s. Only a few high end SSDs even come close to saturating that bandwidth. Unless you plan on doing RAID, ofcourse. But then you'd be paying too much for something that won't have any perceivable difference in performance.

 

The Q6600 beating a 965 BE? He must have had cool 'n' quiet enabled. The 965 BE trashes the Q6600, and is neck and neck with the Q9650, whilst pulling ahead by a fair margin in certain tasks, such as gaming.. Benchmark here.

 

But really, your processor is good. My 965 BE only reached around 70% load with 32 dragons and 25 draugr attacking me.

 

Your really just better off getting a new graphics card.

 

If all you play is Skyrim, the AMD 7000 series is your best bet. They don't perform that well in DirectX9 games or older, but they tank in DirectX11, which Skyrim utilizes.

 

7750 GDDR5 if your budget is £80, 7770 GDDR5 if your budget is £90.

 

I don't think I worded my original question well enough. I know that there are no cards that benefit from PCI-e 3.0 yet, but future cards will. Also, the benchmarks I was referring to were gaming benchmarks. Since we have practically identical systems (the only difference is the motherboard, CPU and the fact that I have 4GB of RAM while he has 3GB, but they're the same speed), we compared framerates playing at the same resolution and settings. Skyrim ran 10FPS higher for me. But Skyrim and some older games (pre-2009) are the only games that I can run better than him. Battlefield 3 runs like molasses (12-25FPS) on B2K maps on my computer, while he gets 10FPS more in the same situations. Since we have the same card, I really suspect it's the CPU. Which is why I asked about a replacement for the CPU.

 

So really, I'm going for a system that will be ready for future components, not something that just accommodates current components.

[Dan3345]

I don't know how much having the latest thing matters to you, but in April (or around April) Intel is releasing a new chip called Haswell which will be on a new socket all together.

 

Something to think about it. Might want to wait a bit if you are upgrading soon.