E6600 -> ?

[konceptz]

Hi all, new to these boards and happy to introduce myself as a mid-level-Help-desk-bored-at-work-man.

Have a question on upgrades which I see has been somewhat answered via a quick forum search.

I've been holding off buying the Q6600 (and you all know how hard it is to hold off buying when you have the $$), mainly because of the Q96XX drop in upgrade.

I have a Cheapie Gigabyte DS3L Motherboard, which is supposed to work with the 45nm quads with a Bios update (F6).

My question is:

Should I buy the Q9450 as soon as it becomes available, or wait for the (possible)frenzy price spike to end and pick up another mobo? Considering I wouldn't mind building a second system to give to my gf (if I had one).

-OR- Buy the Q6600 now and craiglist the E6600, anticipating the industry-wide price inflation that I'm smelling?

Thanks and nice to meet you all.

 

[Lionblade]

If you can, buy now. I doubt price gouging will go down anytime soon after their release. Look at the current Core Duo Procs. E6750 is a better model then most and yet older versions are still selling for more.

 

[21stHermit]

Welcome to AT.

If it were me and I had an E6600 system running at 3.2, I'd sit tight for Nehalem. You appear to have the itch. At least wait for 45nm, the power reduction alone is worth the wait. Regardless, you'll see little performance gain unless you're doing encoding.

 

[konceptz]

Thanks Lion and 21, nice to meet you both.


It's true, I itch because of a recent lan party where a friend with a Dell Q6600(g0) "Multi-media-pc" just passmark'ed the crap out of me.

I was amazed to find his Q6600@2.4 crushed(20%-40% >) my E6600@3.2 in synthetic bench's AND SupremeCommander FPS. (We have similar gfx cards)

That aside, it seems like opposite opinions so I hope for some more advice. I think I'm leaning towards waiting for the 45nm, cause it sounds sexy.

 

[DSF]

Supreme Commander is one of the few games that actually takes advantage of four cores. I would think your framerates on an overclocked E6600 would've been perfectly playable though, right? If so, I wouldn't spend money just raise my Passmark score, but hey, that's me.

 

[Miramonti]

My general rule for hardware upgrades is - when in doubt, hold out.

If you can be patient, wait for the new releases, you'll be darn glad you did. The last thing you need is to upgrade now, only to have your friend buy a 45nm when it comes out, and immediately kick your @ss again.

 

[Martimus]

Even if the prices do go up (As they probably will) on the Penryn Quad Core chips, the prices on the Q6600 will go down when they come out. Pure supply and demand, only the Penryn Chips will be what everyone will want then - so the Q6600 will naturally come down in price. For that reason it still may behoove you to wait until they are released, unless you really can't stand not having the best SupCom computer amongst your friends.

 

[AmberClad]

It'd be a lot cheaper (free), just to find some single-threaded benchmarks and games to show your friends, if you're just after better synthetic scores or higher FPSes that aren't noticeable anyway...

 

[konceptz]

Lol!

Point taken, and taken.

Thanks for the reply's. The doubt in my head comes from the upcoming market change rather than a need to bench/fps better than friends.

@Mart, good points. I'll wait.

@Amber, true! But I'd feel all dirty inside. Besides, we currently love (and are in love) with SupCom.

I'll wait, thanks for taking the "click" out of "check-out" for me today.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: konceptz
Lol!

Point taken, and taken.

Thanks for the reply's. The doubt in my head comes from the upcoming market change rather than a need to bench/fps better than friends.

@Mart, good points. I'll wait.

@Amber, true! But I'd feel all dirty inside. Besides, we currently love (and are in love) with SupCom.

I'll wait, thanks for taking the "click" out of "check-out" for me today.

No problem. I have wasted too much money recently making impulse buys on computer parts in an attempt to extend the life of my 3 year old computer. Heck I don't even have a working computer now because of it, and it isn't easy to find replacements for a S939 Computer, as it uses an old socket and old memory (DDR1). I just hope that you find what you want, but don't worry about the prices of the Q6600 going up any further. If anything, you will probably be able to get one for under $200 once the Penryn chips hit the market.

 

[Cheex]

Originally posted by: konceptz

Should I buy the Q9450 as soon as it becomes available

Yes.
That's what I want to do (as long as I have the money).



PS:
Welcome to AT!!
:thumbsup:

 

[TC91]

id try oc'ing that e6600 a little more if you were itching for more performance. otherwise i would wait, im waiting on for nehalem or k11 or whatever next gen there will be. if you needed a quad core, i would wait for the 45nm quads, but you would need a great motherboard to get em to 4ghz since the highest multiplier core 2 quad 45nm penryn is 8x, which would require 500mhz x 8 to achieve 4ghz, but 3.6ghz or so on it should be guaranteed pretty much.