Q6600 jump to Q9550. What are the differences I see?

[Pilotasso]

Hello everybody.

 

I made this swich recently and I came here to report so that everybody considering am upgrade to get an idea what they will get.

 

I had my Q6600 at 2.66Ghz (from 1066 to 1333 FSB and multi lowered from 9 to 8 ), versus my Q9550 stock, i.e. practicaly negligeble clock difference.

 

3Dmark 2006 went from 14500 to 15400, CPU mark was from 4200 to 4800.

 

Supreme commander went up from 54 FPS average to 57...(linear with the clock difference) I confess I was expecting more here.

 

In LOMAC I saw an FPS increase from 0 to 10FPS, about 5 on average when using the same online missions.

This has been a mixed bag of benifits. Because the A-10 solo quick start mission didnt yeld any improvments for example. At least it apeared so at first...

 

But get this: Now I can use full cockpit zoom out at nice playable frame rates when with the Q6600 had heavy stuttering and bitterly UMPLAYABLE frame rates on a 22" inch monitor. WOW...what explains this? On one side the FPS in a given heavily loaded mission might be the same on default view but with a wider point of view gives me much better perfomance than on my "old" CPU...

 

Not only that, I now enjoy FPS immunity for much longer when in multiplayer. Infact in 1 week since I bought this CPU I have never needed to reaload the mission to get playable FPS again.

 

Was it worth it? for me a price tag of 280 Euro considering my fav hobby...yes, but for others that play FPS games that are GFX bound the difference might be nill...

 

Anyone considering a machine now to play DCS I definalty give my advice for a CPU of this latest revisions with a 12MB (or 6Mb per 2 cores) L2 cache over 8Mb on the Q6600(or 3Mb on duals). it seems to be the perfomance secret weapon responsible behind the differences I observed.

 

Anything outside CPu intensive applications will not benifit at all from a new core 2 CPU of similar clock. In these later cases I advice a c2d like the E8600 for humongous overclocks with water cooling ( I dont recommend to make the CPU change on air cooling).

 

I will report my Overclock of this quad later.

Edited September 2, 2008 by Pilotasso

[GTengineer]

I'm looking forward to checking out your overclock.

 

As far as why it seems smoother in a zoomed out cockpit it is probably simply because your FPS are over a threshold that makes it look smoother to your perception. I do not have FPS slow down in my Q6600 in a zoomed out cockpit but I am overclocked. Also the Penryn (Q9550) despite being practically the same architecture as Q6600 is slightly faster clock per clock than Kentsfield (Q6600). I bet you have not noticed much FPS increase in average FPS but the minimum FPS has actually increased to a more comfortable number.

[Pilotasso]

Minimum FPS does increase noticeably on online missions. Though With heavy scenarios on solo missions the difference is small.

 

What I meant about playability in the original post is that zooming out fully in my Q6600 at 2.66Ghz with 1650x1050 was simply impratical. Too low FPS and heavy stuttering pauses(to a point that makes average FPS rating pointless, and/or not realy measurable in the middle of those hickups). With the Q9550, FPS is in the order of 30-40 stable and no stutering.

 

Im on air cooling (Tuniq 120), It wont do 3.8GHz like yours. :D My Q6600 got into the 70º realm under load at 3Ghz...too hot for my confort. Im waiting for an order of 5 series P Noctua 120mm fans to replace ALL my system current fans wich will probably help (on top of a noise reduction so I hope) thanks to their superior airflow static pressure. Lets see what this does to my OC efforts.

Edited September 2, 2008 by Pilotasso

[GTengineer]

Was your Q6600 a old B3 stepping? The older B3 ran hot as hell unfortunately, but the B3 that came out around the time that G0 stepping hit the shelves ran much cooler. I personally waited for the G0 stepping which was really the selling point for me as it would do usually around 3.6GHz easily with good air cooling. I am on water cooling and my temps are around 33-34C idle, and 68-70C running small FFT Prime95 on all 4 cores. With LOFC I doubt it ever goes over 50C. What kind of ambient temperatures do you have in your computer room?

 

I think your Q9550 is gonna rock, even the Q9450 overclock like a dream as long as the temps in the room are not too hot temps should be fine. Remember the max vcore for Penryn is around 1.4V. That seems to be the consensus right now. Intel technical reports claim their absolute maximum vcore (for daily use) for Kentsfield (Q6600) at 1.55V and Penryn (Q9550) at 1.4V.

Edited September 2, 2008 by GTengineer

[Pilotasso]

Yep, it was B3 stepping. It was a heat monster. Unfortunatly Enviroment temps are in the order of 30C while Im testing the Q9550. My counties hot during summer.

 

As a comparison my Q9550 is 7C cooler at 2.8Ghz than my Q6600 was at 2.66 a week ago.

Edited September 2, 2008 by Pilotasso

[TheMoose]

I tried tonight to OC my Q6600 setting the FSB from default 266 to 306 yielding average 2.7G instead of 2.4G. Besides this I manually set my ram to manufacturer specs Mushkin 4-5-4-11 2.1V instead of the default one it had. It’s stable, but the gain in GHz at the cost of the heat generated, humm... 5 to 7 Celsius more then usual. It does not yield much better results in FPS maybe a 3% gain in FPS, but I think that’s due to the heat factor, slowing it down. The gain is not worth it for my rig. True I’m still using default Intel heat sink. I’m considering upgrading my CPU as soon as my new video card is paid off.;)

[5thduke]

ive gone from 20fps in the f15 cockpit to between 50 to 80 fps.i selected the quality setting over proformance in control panel thats all i did.then started using the latest beta drivers 177.92 have had no lock ups the game is just nice you wouldnt think its 5 odd years old.apart from the dumb AI off cause.all stock settings no oc.

[Vekkinho]

Good thread Pilotasso! I'm also interested in Q9550 so all info is welcome!

[Pilotasso]

CPU scaling article. No Q9550 but Q9450, but this gives you a good idea what to expect in either CPU or GFX bound games.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scaling-in-games-with-quad-core-processors/

[TheMoose]

CPU scaling article. No Q9550 but Q9450, but this gives you a good idea what to expect in either CPU or GFX bound games.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scaling-in-games-with-quad-core-processors/

 

 

Good article :book:, thanks:thumbup:

 

How to tell if my cpu is B3 stepping or G0?

 

EDIT :doh: Never mind I found the how at tomhardware forum http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/248344-28-q6600-stepping :D

 

Looks I have B3 :cry:, not surprising since I bought it shortly after it came out. That would explain the extra heat...

 

I'm not in a hurry to upgrade the CPU, I'm still satisfied with my performance overall, even with stock Ghz of my Q6600, but when I do, I will be upgrading to a motherboard that offers PCI express V2 to exploit even more my video card.

 

Any suggestion on the chipset, should I switch to Nforce or stick with an Intel chipset?

Edited September 3, 2008 by TheMoose

[Kuky]

stick with Intel chipset

[hitman]

The only reason why anyone should stick with an nforce chipset would be to use the SLI technology. THe Nvidia chipsets past 680i have issues with playing mpegs, which means they get corrupted while playing, youll get a blue screen, and get pissed like I do. I know, I had that problem on my old Asus P5N-E and my current MSI P7N Platinum. Granted they are few and far between, its irritating when I get BSODs.

 

If Intel made SLI compatible boards I would go there.

[Kuky]

I read upcoming X58 chipset will suport both CF and SLI... but I would still recomend single GPU solution... save yourself the trouble with multi-GPU issues.

[Vekkinho]

So we have a same engine in DCS as we had in LOFC, new engine available in the future so I guess DCS will also be CPU dependent in terms of FPS as LOFC was.

 

Many folks including me trying to squeze all the juice from their rigs tried upgrading their GFX cards with newer generations but experienced no FPS increase. So instead of any Crossfire/SLi combinations we better go for some aftermarket coolers needed for any serious OCing of CPU!

 

I don't play too many games besides LOFC and other Flight Sims, so I'm not really looking for a hi FPS count in Crysis, I just wanna make sure DCS:BS runs smoothly on my future rig!

[TheMoose]

Thanks Hitman on sharing your MPEG issue, I would hate this happening to me too. Guess Intel chipset will remain.

 

Thanks guys:D

[TheMoose]

looking for a hi FPS count in Crysis, I just wanna make sure DCS:BS runs smoothly on my future rig!

 

That was my main reason to purchase my GTX 280, very satisfied with Crysis with it. I'm now able to run it at very high on DX10 with 4xAA at high rez. (not perfect, but highly playable) I hate playing games that needs tweaking to juice up the FPS, at the end, always better to get the hardware to cope with your expectations. "budget permitting"

 

And FSX all graphs setting pumped up is now playable as well under DX10 with AA enable...

 

This is why I'm in no hurry to upgrade my CPU :D I satisfied my craving for need for speed... Well for a couple of month at least;)

Edited September 3, 2008 by TheMoose

[Pilotasso]

I have overclocked it to 3.2 Ghz without effort, though I had to lower memory from 1066 down to 999 Mhz. It was not stable at 1100Mhz with default voltage.

 

The CPU got hotter by 3 degrees into 57 degrees VS 54. Stable Vcore was 1.20V, practicaly on default Vcore on stock.

[GTengineer]

I have overclocked it to 3.2 Ghz without effort, though I had to lower memory from 1066 down to 999 Mhz. It was not stable at 1100Mhz with default voltage.

 

The CPU got hotter by 3 degrees into 57 degrees VS 54. Stable Vcore was 1.20V, practicaly on default Vcore on stock.

Nice keep pushing it! :D

[mikoyan]

I have been playing lomac in my imac and it plays very nice at full specs. but the vista bug is killing me, also the lack of drivers for boot-camp killed my idea of connecting my 32 inch flat screen tv to the computer because the #@#$ guys from apple don't make drivers to export video using boot camp; the funny thing is that the tv screen works using apple's leopard.

[Pilotasso]

Gents...I have hit 3.4Ghz on stock voltage... wow :shocking:

 

Mobo is at 400Mhz, max temp has hit 58 celsius on CPU 1, though the other 3 cores show 7 degrees less :huh:

 

Its stable in prime 95 for 2 hours.. will keep testing.

[GTengineer]

Gents...I have hit 3.4Ghz on stock voltage... wow :shocking:

 

Mobo is at 400Mhz, max temp has hit 58 celsius on CPU 1, though the other 3 cores show 7 degrees less :huh:

 

Its stable in prime 95 for 2 hours.. will keep testing.

 

Nice, thats got a lot of juice left :D

 

My Q6600 also shows temperature discrepancies, a whole lot of them do unfortunately. It was driving me nuts about a year ago but then I just live with it. It is due to the fact that no two cores are ever the same in terms of efficiency, it could also be cause by a slightly bad HSF mount or bad thermal compound spread, last but not least the cores may not be equally loaded (workload). But with 7 deg I wouldn't worry about it. On average one of my cores is 8 deg off, the other 5 deg off and the other 2 deg off from the hottest core.

[crazysundog]

Hey Engineer, what mobo do you have??

[TheMoose]

I need to change my default heat sink. Any good suggestions for air? Zalman?

[Pilotasso]

Thermalright extreme 120 or Tuniq tower 120 wich its the one I have. IF you want go watter cooling its useless to buy cheap. You cant surpass these aircooled monsters that easely.

[GTengineer]

Thermalright extreme 120 or Tuniq tower 120 wich its the one I have. IF you want go watter cooling its useless to buy cheap. You cant surpass these aircooled monsters that easely.

Absolutely agree, unless you build yourself a good custom water cooling, it is better to go with a top model air cooling like the two mentioned above. I am running an Apogee GT waterblock and a triple fan radiator (6 fans 3 for push and 3 for pull). It is absolutely overkill right now since I only have the CPU on the loop.

 

crazysundog, I am running an Asus P5K Premium. It is very similar to the Asus P5K Deluxe but with a few small improvements.