Q6600 or wait for Penryn?

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
There was one individual (IP35-E review thread) with Q6600 @ +4.0GHz on air. He's moving to water soon. CPU heat is his #1 problem. PWM @ 62C with 3.7-3.8GHz core speed. The key is to get your hands on that magic CPU. 45nm Peryn should break the 450MHz FSB with ease.

4.0ghz...

450x9 = 4.05ghz

hmm...

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: ViRGE
There's nothing wrong with 7.5x, that's 2.5ghz @ 1333mhz FSB. The P35/X38 can hit a 1600mhz FSB in their sleep for a 3ghz CPU clock speed, so it would be an easy replacement for the Q6600. The only problem would be if you wanted to go past 3ghz (assuming you can) and don't want to pay for DDR2-1066 or DDR3 (what's the lowest divider for DDR3 on a P35/X38 anyhow? 1:1?).

You don't think there's anything wrong with a 7.5x multi, and a 400 mhz/800 DDR/1600 Mhz Intel stock FSB*? I definitely do.



*That's assuming that the numbers we've been hearing are correct.

Huh? 1600mhz isn't an officially supported FSB yet, and it won't be for some time from the looks of it (x48 and the successor to P35). All of Intel's new chips will be on a 1333mhz FSB (or lower). 7.5x is being used on 2.5ghz chips, not 3ghz chips.

 

[bryanW1995]

follow that wikipedia link that I set up. Q1 08 they'll have a QX9770 that is 3.2ghz (8x400).

here it is again in case you missed it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...Core_2_microprocessors

btw, they already have xeon 1600fsb cpus out.

 

[cmdrdredd]

To the OP. If you need a Quad now the Q6600 G0 is fine for quite a while. If you can wait for a slightly better performing CPU (per clock) then I would wait.

The determining factor IMO is whether you really would/could use a Q6600 now.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Huh? 1600mhz isn't an officially supported FSB yet, and it won't be for some time from the looks of it (x48 and the successor to P35). All of Intel's new chips will be on a 1333mhz FSB (or lower). 7.5x is being used on 2.5ghz chips, not 3ghz chips.

Yeah, it is, and the successor to the P35 chipset is already available today, the X38. You're right, though, I had confused the higher speed chips from that link with the cheaper chips, as far as their stock FSB's.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
There was one individual (IP35-E review thread) with Q6600 @ +4.0GHz on air. He's moving to water soon. CPU heat is his #1 problem. PWM @ 62C with 3.7-3.8GHz core speed. The key is to get your hands on that magic CPU. 45nm Peryn should break the 450MHz FSB with ease.

4.0ghz...

450x9 = 4.05ghz

hmm...

I am sure he can boot up into windows at 4.0Ghz... But I would have a hard time believing the chip could pass the first Orthos self test... Who knows, maybe he was lucky, but then again... who knows, he has a magic chip if it is true, but I have one heck of hard time believing it... But cool if so!

 

[SerpentRoyal]

If I can boot into windows and run SP32M, then I'm within 20-50MHz of Orthos stability.

His CPU and PWM temps look good. I think he will do at least 3.9GHz on water (Orthos and S&M heat).

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Huh? 1600mhz isn't an officially supported FSB yet, and it won't be for some time from the looks of it (x48 and the successor to P35). All of Intel's new chips will be on a 1333mhz FSB (or lower). 7.5x is being used on 2.5ghz chips, not 3ghz chips.

Yeah, it is, and the successor to the P35 chipset is already available today, the X38. You're right, though, I had confused the higher speed chips from that link with the cheaper chips, as far as their stock FSB's.

X38 is the successor to 975X, not P35. P35's successor hasn't been announced yet. X38 doesn't support a 1600mhz FSB anyhow, that'll be X48, which may actually be released this year if Intel quits screwing things up. Besides, the first 1600mhz FSB processors will be QX parts; I haven't seen anything to indicate the cheap Q-parts will be going to a 1600mhz FSB for at least another 6 months.

 

[bryanW1995]

hmmmm, I wonder if 1600 fsb will magically become "officially supported" once there are chips out there that utilize it? I'm betting it will. Is there a p35 mobo ANYWHERE that can't run at 1600fsb? What about X38? Intel has these artificially low fsb's because amd hasn't challenged them in 16 mos and, sadly, it doesn't look like they will for the forseeable future, either.

 

[hans007]

i honestly doubt that 1600mhz bus will really filter down to mainstream ever.


x48 is a super high end chipset and wont be out till nov/dec. they wouldnt bring it down to mainstream unless they could step up the enthusiast clock more. which isnt likely. and by then nehalem chips will be in the pipeline (which intel would probably love everyone to switch to, sine with their onboard ddr controllers would probably have less cache and cost less to make etc)

 

[isandu]

Sorry I couldn't answer sooner, I was really busy this weekend. Thank you all for your answers.

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
To the OP. If you need a Quad now the Q6600 G0 is fine for quite a while. If you can wait for a slightly better performing CPU (per clock) then I would wait.

The determining factor IMO is whether you really would/could use a Q6600 now.

No, I don't really have a use for Q6600 now. But, I do need a new processor this week, and I'm not willing to spend more than 266$ on it (yes, i know this is not the street price, I'm talking about Intel's price). Even if I wait, I'll buy a Q9300, and I'm not convinced that it will be better than Q6600. Q9450 is a lot more interesting, but it will be too expensive (plus the added cost of a cheap dual-core like E2160 which I would have to buy until then), and it will make me regret buying it later. I know people that a year and a half ago spent more than 266$ on a Pentium 4 with HyperThreading. Look at what it's worth now!

Honestly, I don't see many reasons to wait for Penryn.
I think I'm gonna to go for Q6600.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
hmmmm, I wonder if 1600 fsb will magically become "officially supported" once there are chips out there that utilize it? I'm betting it will. Is there a p35 mobo ANYWHERE that can't run at 1600fsb? What about X38? Intel has these artificially low fsb's because amd hasn't challenged them in 16 mos and, sadly, it doesn't look like they will for the forseeable future, either.

I'm not aware of any board that can't do 1600mhz, without at most a 0.1v bump to the MCH. However the same thing can be said for the P965 and 1333mhz, and that chipset never got official 1333mhz support.

The far more interesting thing will be half multipliers. Current boards don't support them, I'm not sure how Intel will be pulling that off.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: MDE

Originally posted by: aiya24
i went for choice 3 and also considering a Q9300.

it really comes down to what your gonna be using your computer for. if you game at high res (1920x1200 and up), you need a fast cpu yes but cache doesn't mean much if any, it all becomes gpu dependent. in this case, core speed is king.

if you do things like photoshop, video encoding, etc. then the extra cache be more beneficial.

i game and do dvd encoding but gaming is more important to me so i don't really mind the less cache compared to a Q6600. i will be overclocking too so it should be fun to see how far one can push a 45nm Quad on water

Did you read AT's UT3 preview? Cache size is a huge factor in performance.

Who plays games at 1024x768? I sure don't.

 

[isandu]

Originally posted by: aiya24
it really comes down to what your gonna be using your computer for. if you game at high res (1920x1200 and up), you need a fast cpu yes but cache doesn't mean much if any, it all becomes gpu dependent. in this case, core speed is king.

What is the connection between high resolution and the CPU? Because I don't really understand... Maybe some games have some LOD systems which scale world geometry together with the screen resolution... I don't know... but otherwise, I see no reason why you need a faster CPU for a higher resolution. Actually, it's quite the opposite, when using higher resolutions fast CPU's will make no difference because the bottleneck will be your video card. The CPU just tells the GPU "draw me these polygons at these coordinates". The resolution at which those polygons are drawn is something which only regards the video card, not the CPU.

...or maybe I'm missing something?

 

[Denithor]

If the programs you run don't take advantage of quadcore why pay for it now? Buy an e4400 and OC to 3GHz which should be good enough for most anything for the next year.

Buy Nehalem next year a month or two after launch when the prices settle down.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
hmmmm, I wonder if 1600 fsb will magically become "officially supported" once there are chips out there that utilize it? I'm betting it will. Is there a p35 mobo ANYWHERE that can't run at 1600fsb? What about X38? Intel has these artificially low fsb's because amd hasn't challenged them in 16 mos and, sadly, it doesn't look like they will for the forseeable future, either.

I'm not aware of any board that can't do 1600mhz, without at most a 0.1v bump to the MCH. However the same thing can be said for the P965 and 1333mhz, and that chipset never got official 1333mhz support.

The far more interesting thing will be half multipliers. Current boards don't support them, I'm not sure how Intel will be pulling that off.

I'm sure that will be a simple bios flash.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
hmmmm, I wonder if 1600 fsb will magically become "officially supported" once there are chips out there that utilize it? I'm betting it will. Is there a p35 mobo ANYWHERE that can't run at 1600fsb? What about X38? Intel has these artificially low fsb's because amd hasn't challenged them in 16 mos and, sadly, it doesn't look like they will for the forseeable future, either.

I'm not aware of any board that can't do 1600mhz, without at most a 0.1v bump to the MCH. However the same thing can be said for the P965 and 1333mhz, and that chipset never got official 1333mhz support.

I have a Gigabyte DS3 Rev1.0. I am running 1600MHz FSB and have been since day one with no voltage boost at all on the MCH. The CPU voltage is bumped up a bit (1.340v) but that's it. This MB has been a gem since the get go. :gift:

Not a Photochop

 

[aiya24]

Originally posted by: isandu

Originally posted by: aiya24
it really comes down to what your gonna be using your computer for. if you game at high res (1920x1200 and up), you need a fast cpu yes but cache doesn't mean much if any, it all becomes gpu dependent. in this case, core speed is king.

What is the connection between high resolution and the CPU? Because I don't really understand... Maybe some games have some LOD systems which scale world geometry together with the screen resolution... I don't know... but otherwise, I see no reason why you need a faster CPU for a higher resolution. Actually, it's quite the opposite, when using higher resolutions fast CPU's will make no difference because the bottleneck will be your video card. The CPU just tells the GPU "draw me these polygons at these coordinates". The resolution at which those polygons are drawn is something which only regards the video card, not the CPU.

...or maybe I'm missing something?

with today's gpus, the cpu is still holding them back. even if you have the highest stocked clocked C2D/Q. so you'll want to have the fastest speed possible so you can feed as much data as you can to your gpu so you overclock. there are articles on AT that show the difference @ 1600x1200

here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...owdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=15

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: isandu

Originally posted by: aiya24
it really comes down to what your gonna be using your computer for. if you game at high res (1920x1200 and up), you need a fast cpu yes but cache doesn't mean much if any, it all becomes gpu dependent. in this case, core speed is king.

What is the connection between high resolution and the CPU? Because I don't really understand... Maybe some games have some LOD systems which scale world geometry together with the screen resolution... I don't know... but otherwise, I see no reason why you need a faster CPU for a higher resolution. Actually, it's quite the opposite, when using higher resolutions fast CPU's will make no difference because the bottleneck will be your video card. The CPU just tells the GPU "draw me these polygons at these coordinates". The resolution at which those polygons are drawn is something which only regards the video card, not the CPU.

...or maybe I'm missing something?

The short answer is that at higher resolutions the GPU is doing more work (while the CPU remains constant) meaning you're more likely to GPU limited. So when you want to test just the impact of the CPU you need to turn down the resolution so that the bottleneck shifts to the CPU.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
There was one individual (IP35-E review thread) with Q6600 @ +4.0GHz on air. He's moving to water soon. CPU heat is his #1 problem. PWM @ 62C with 3.7-3.8GHz core speed. The key is to get your hands on that magic CPU. 45nm Peryn should break the 450MHz FSB with ease.

4.0ghz...

450x9 = 4.05ghz

hmm...

I am sure he can boot up into windows at 4.0Ghz... But I would have a hard time believing the chip could pass the first Orthos self test... Who knows, maybe he was lucky, but then again... who knows, he has a magic chip if it is true, but I have one heck of hard time believing it... But cool if so!

I was just pointing out that even if it is stable, it's not in excess of 450fsb.

 

[FreedomGUNDAM]

I'm sitting tight with my E4400 and waiting for Penryn (probably Q9450)

 

[jjanders]

I'm also trying to decide what to do. I don't really game or overclock, so I'm not sure there is any reason for me to wait, I might pick up an E6750. At the same time it'd be nice to be as future proof as possible. If I wait though, I'm not sure how long until a mid-range Penryn is out and reasonably priced.

 

[The-Noid]

If you need a processor now, you will be very happy with the current 65nm C2D offerings.

If you can wait you will also be happy getting another 5 or so % from the 45nm C2D offerings.

It all depends on how much you want it.

 

[kknd1967]

If you need the computing power, no need to wait at all.
I have a Q6600 B3. it just feels so snappy that I can run two Matlab simulations while watching HD video on projector.
How much would I care for 5-10% performance difference and some extra heat? None! If I do, I'd worry about the 8800GPU more than my Q6600.

If only I can have a chance to install two discrete sound cards, I may also play games on the LCD while my wife is watching movies on the projector

 

[isandu]

Well... my argument was, that even IF I wait, what can I get more for 266$? I really doubt that Q9300 will have more value than a Q6600. Q9450 is going to be better than Q6600, even if it has a lower multiplier, no doubt about it. But it's price will also be ~20% higher (316 vs 266), and I don't think that the new processor will be 20% faster on average than a Q6600 (except in applications which use SSE4, but I don't have much use for those). Some said that the price of Q6600 is going to go down. I for one really don't see why it should. I think it would eclipse both Q9300 & Q9450 if it would. So my guess is that Q6600 is simply going to be discontinued.

And, even if Phenom is going to be better than Core 2, I think AMD will try to sell it for the highest price that it can, to make up for all it's losses in the last year; so I don't think that will affect Intel's prices.