What's your upgrade plan?

[Deadtrees]

Ever since i7 came out and prices of DDR3 ram has gone down, I had this strong urge to let go of my Q6600 @3.2 ~ 3.6Ghz. This is not because Q6600 is a bad performer but the performance of i7 920 and its overclockability looked just way too great for me to pass.

I was on the verge of selling Q6600 system until the i5 news came along. i5 got me thinking, recent news about SATA3 and USB3 got me thinking more. Had it not been SATA3 and USB3, I might have gone down the road of i7. For now, I'm just wating to see what the future holds. In a way, I think I should wait for i7 860(s). In a way, I think I should forget about it all and wait for 32nm Sandy-Bridge.

It's a tough decision. It's tough because I'm not in a hurry and Q6600 works well though I wish for more. It's tough because this Intel roadmap is damn complex. It's tough because I always find the best time to upgrade.

Anyway, what do you think and what are your plans?


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[Axon]

Waiting for a little more info on the various i5 chips, but I'm almost certainly going that route late this year/early next year. Like you, I like my system just fine but have an itch for more. It's been almost a year now, so I suppose I understand why I want to upgrade, even if there is no real portion of my system I am dissatisfied with. I even went so far as to buy an i7 920 from Microcenter because the deal was so good, but I could not justify spending approximately $300-400 more on a motherboard and Ram alone.

It's hard to say exactly what Intel is going to do, but I believe the 1366 socket will become the option for the more expensive, "extreme" cpu chips, while the 1156 will house the more reasonable mainstream/high-end mainstream chips. I cannot stomach paying $350+ for an i7 860, and I think going into 2011 the 1366 chips will just get more expensive from there. That is why I hesitated to pop in that 920, which, in my younger days, I would have done in a heartbeat. I just don't want to be changing sockets again in a year when a baller 1156 i5 comes out...of course, the converse could be true, and I may regret my decision. Having seen preliminary performance benches on the i5, however, I feel confident in my choice.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Was in the same boat as you except I had a q9400. I went ahead and upgraded when I saw microcenter had their $199 i7 sale. I ordered a open box i7 for $159 but I got there and they didnt have the open box one so I got a new D0 for 159. On top of that I found a new in the box dx58so intel x58 board for sale on this forum from one of the mods for $180 shipped. Also on this forum found 6gb corsair dominator ram 1600mhz for $120. Total cost $460. I doubt youll be able to get i5 for that much this year so Im glad I upgraded.

 

[RussianSensation]

I would only upgrade if it doesn't cost a lot (i.e. $200, after selling your system). Otherwise your Q6600 @ 3.2ghz+ should probably last another videocard generation. Considering the fastest dual core is 3.33ghz and I dont recall that many games where Core i7 crushes Q6600 OC, it would just be $$ wasted.

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17023/4

Core 2 Quad 3.2ghz is still in the top 3 fastest processors for gaming. Obviously you can overclock the Core i7 to 4.0ghz or so but next videocard generation will likely give you 50%+ performance increase compared to what 15-20% (prob less) from a core i7 OCed?

As Conroe was such a breakthrough from Prescott, major performance upgrades for the next 12 months will mostly come from SSDs and videocards imo.

 

[aigomorla]

according to that chart im already on the highest platform.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

More power to Aigomorla, for living on the bleeding edge.

Right now, for me, it's about my money. Like Danny DeVito says in "Heist" -- "That's why they call it MON-EY!!"

I only stumbled into the nVidia fold because I liked the graphics cards and wanted to have an SLI option. So there I am: an (old) 680i board with Q6600, and a (last year's) 780i board with a nicely over-clocked E8600.

Just dumping the 32-bit XP OS on the Q6600 and replacing it with 64-bit VISTA makes me think a delay in building a successor machine is quite possible.

Perhaps, to stay in the hott-dawg-club, I should've sold the board, processor and RAM a year ago and "stepped up." But this is about a machine that I "use," and I'm not that eager to swap configurations as fast as my father traded in for a new car in the '50s.

I could get a Q6700 G0 (the only stepping for that core) for maybe $175 + tax. But it's STILL a 1066-FSB core. That's a short-run upgrade of possibly little consequence, although a year ago, for that price, I would've done it.

So barring further developments, I might have my eye on Aigo's motherboard, a triple-channel RAM kit and an I7 -- but no inclination to make the big jump for at least six months or longer. By then, the options may have changed considerably.

When I go to a club meeting tonight at a restaurant, will I order an appetizer or a full dinner? These days, I like ending the month with extra coin in the pocket. . . .

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck

I could get a Q6700 G0 (the only stepping for that core) for maybe $175 + tax. But it's STILL a 1066-FSB core. That's a short-run upgrade of possibly little consequence, although a year ago, for that price, I would've done it.

Why would you get a Q6700?

Microcenter has Q9550 2.83ghz for $170. You can probably take that guy to 3.8ghz.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck

I could get a Q6700 G0 (the only stepping for that core) for maybe $175 + tax. But it's STILL a 1066-FSB core. That's a short-run upgrade of possibly little consequence, although a year ago, for that price, I would've done it.

Why would you get a Q6700?

Microcenter has Q9550 2.83ghz for $170. You can probably take that guy to 3.8ghz.

This is no revelation to me, but your point is valid.

I can't use the Q9550 in a 680i motherboard. If I want to "upgrade" to Yorkfield, I'd either swap my 780i motherboard from my over-clocked gamer box -- not something I want to do -- or replace the motherboard with either (a) 780i, 790i (requiring no OS reinstallation and only minor chipset driver upgrade), (b) an Intel chipset like P45 -- which would require it, or (c) jumping into a Nehalem/I7 configuration (which means not only a new processor, and/or new proc and mobo, but new proc/mobo and RAM).

Right now, without providing the details for these summer months, I won't spare the change for any of it -- not for the Q6700 or any better option.

Better to do nothing until the ducats are available for the most ambitious of plans.

 

[hclarkjr]

i am keeping my Q6600 for at least another year as it does what i want and is super fast for me at 3.2ghz and when that gets to slow i will then look at something new. i may buy a 45nm chip down the road as i have a P45 board here along with my P35 board which will run the 45nm also. so no new socket for me for at least 2 years

 

[StinkyPinky]

No plan to upgrade my Q6600 until probably 2011. Maybe xmas 2010.

Will see what's on the market then. I want USB 3 for a start.

 

[Stumps]

I had thought about ditching my Q6600 for a higher clock dual core, mainly for the 4ghz+ e-peen factor, but after testing my rig with a 4.5ghz E8500, I wasn't impressed.

I'll probably just hang on to my Q6600 for awhile...

 

[PianoMan]

Got a Q6600 in my main computer and a Q9550 in the gaming machine/video encoder. I've considered upgrading to an i7 in the past, but held back since there was a dearth of mATX i7 boards back then. Now that more have come out, I've looked more intently at an upgrade, but the new roadmap has me balking.

The Q9550 is plenty fast, even at stock speeds for what I use it for. That's the machine I'd upgrade to get faster encoding times. The Q6600, however - that's gonna stay around for awhile. It's a good chip, goes up to 3.0Ghz without a sweat. I may now wait for the next revolution in chip architecture.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Does my Q8200 allow me to be in the thread? Its pretty close!

On topic, I don't see a reason to upgrade. At the absolute very least a decently overclocked s775 quad will be just as good as the midrange i5 quads. Especially in multithreaded applications the overclocked S775 quad will show better performance as Turbo mode does not apply. However, in games the i5 (w/ turbo) will render us extreme performance compared to this generation of quads.

It sounds crazy to think about, even though Q6x00/Q8x00 processors are relatively dated (2 1/2 years) their performance certainly doesn't show it. Video upgrades would be better for most of us. There is no reason to upgrade our CPUs.

One note for anyone, I wouldn't sell your quads once you become done with them. These are pretty much the second coming of the Pentium 3's which will last as an office/work CPU for another decade.

 

[Axon]

You guys are all making me want to buy a quad

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Looking at the first link, going from Q2 2006 to Q4 2006 we went from a 3.73ghz Pentium 4 (shit CPU) to a QX6700, which is still a fast CPU at stock settings.

That was a HUGE jump in consumer hardware.

 

[evolucion8]

Yeah, a much bigger jump that jumping from Penryn to Nehalem. I upgraded recently from a Pentium M @ 2.70GHz which gave me excellent gaming performance equal to the Athlon X2 5200+, to the QX6850 which I sold later and bought my current CPU since I was dissatisfied with the thermal dissipation of the QX6850 which did a great job as a room heater at 3.60GHz. The encoding performance of this CPU is just astonishing, and its thermal dissipation. I will upgrade to the next radically different architecture, like in 2011 or later. If I need more performance, I will simply overclock further

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Scholzpdx
It sounds crazy to think about, even though Q6x00/Q8x00 processors are relatively dated (2 1/2 years) their performance certainly doesn't show it. Video upgrades would be better for most of us. There is no reason to upgrade our CPUs.

One note for anyone, I wouldn't sell your quads once you become done with them. These are pretty much the second coming of the Pentium 3's which will last as an office/work CPU for another decade.

I totally agree with your observation. My QX6700 served well for 2.5yrs and I can't make a price/performance (or just absolute performance) argument yet to replace my Q6600's.

I suspect the plateau or lull in performance increments since fall 2006 is due to phenom having turned out to be less than phenomenal, Intel had little reasons to push hard on ramping clockspeeds and instead had the luxury to focus on improving performance/watt in the meantime.

Don't get me wrong, i7 975 delivers markedly better performance and performance/watt over a 2.5yr old QX6700 but its nothing like upgrading from a single core P4 (as I did) to a QX6700 or a 2.4GHz X2 to a 2.67GHz quadcore Core chip as we had the opportunity to do in 2006.

 

[ilkhan]

true, but in that transition intel went from WAY behind to WAY ahead in the performance AND performance/per metrics, giving TDP room for the high speed duals and quads. That kind of performance delta doesn't happen very often.

 

[gramboh]

No plans to upgrade until another generation or two of video cards come out. I built this system with 2GB DDR2, 8800GTS640 and an E6600 @ 3.2GHz in April 2007, upgraded to a Q6700 G0, GTX280 and 4GB last summer.

I doubt I would see any real gaming performance increase from going i7 since I play at 1920x1200 high detail. I don't do any real encoding so not much reason there, pretty much just play games and light media work.

At this point the only thing I really desire is to build a 4-6TB NAS for 1080p movie storage, but I can't stomach how much 4-5 bay gigabit NAS devices cost given what hardware they use.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
Don't get me wrong, i7 975 delivers markedly better performance and performance/watt over a 2.5yr old QX6700 but its nothing like upgrading from a single core P4 (as I did) to a QX6700 or a 2.4GHz X2 to a 2.67GHz quadcore Core chip as we had the opportunity to do in 2006.

Yeah that pretty much sums it up. I had a s939 system which was fast, but I still had the upgrade itch. I went from a 3500+ to an X2 4200+ (exactly two 3500+'s on one chip) and then to my Q8200. The biggest jump had to be from the K8 dual to my current quad. Each upgrade was at least double in performance or more.

The i7 is still too costly and i5 certainly wont even come close to doubling the performance as each previous upgrade of mine.

 

[taltamir]

for a Q6600... upgrade priority:
1. 4GB ram
2. Video card
3. 8GB ram
4. intel 34nm SSD (out in 6 days)
5. P55 mobo and i7

 

[Deadtrees]

Originally posted by: Scholzpdx
Does my Q8200 allow me to be in the thread? Its pretty close!

On topic, I don't see a reason to upgrade. At the absolute very least a decently overclocked s775 quad will be just as good as the midrange i5 quads. Especially in multithreaded applications the overclocked S775 quad will show better performance as Turbo mode does not apply. However, in games the i5 (w/ turbo) will render us extreme performance compared to this generation of quads.

It sounds crazy to think about, even though Q6x00/Q8x00 processors are relatively dated (2 1/2 years) their performance certainly doesn't show it. Video upgrades would be better for most of us. There is no reason to upgrade our CPUs.

One note for anyone, I wouldn't sell your quads once you become done with them. These are pretty much the second coming of the Pentium 3's which will last as an office/work CPU for another decade.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I don't game. My GPU is 8600GT, it's fine and I don't plan to upgrade it simply because it's enough for my usage.

The reason why I think about updating the CPU is because of 5D mk2 that I got. Its 22MP images and 40 bitrate 1080P video makes Q6600 3.2Ghz feel somewhat slow. Well, it's not slow-slow but it's just not responsive enough.
For someone like me, there really is a reason to upgrade the CPU but, as I've mentioned, I'm not sure when it comes down to 'when and which' category.

 

[naisanza]

How does the i7 triple channel ram work?

1. Should you only use 3 sticks?
2. If you use 6 sticks, do they all have to be the same?
3. What difference in performance is using 3 sticks (12gb total) compared to using 6 sticks (12gb total)?

--
Eric

 

[tynopik]

my upgrade plan is to wait 3 years and see what's around then

 

[Markfw]

Upgrade ? I just add... I7 920, ASRock Extreme and 6 gig OCZ on the brown truck.....