The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Yes but also in 2560 I thought. The Q6600 is not that much faster clock-for-clock than the E4300 either. The L2 Cache does make a difference but not much. A 5000+ will get the same frames in 2560 as a quad. And AFAIK Crysis does NOT YET use quads. The update hasn't come out yet or won't. Check your core usage during a run through. I retract my previous elation about your performance until then

Your bottleneck HAS to be graphics. AFAIK, resolution doesn't affect the CPU in any way. I think either something else is going on, or the 4870X2 is just really that powerful to where it needs every ounce of power you can give it. I dunno, it confounds me as to why the E4300 was such a bottleneck. You'd think a 3.2GHz Core 2 Duo would be adequate, especially for high res Crysis. The video has to be the bottleneck, it just has to. It makes no sense...

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/p-6.html

I don't know if Gamespot are reliable, but that looks pretty conclusive to me. It's not showing an advantage on the quad here... What is your OC at for the Q6600?

Also, I don't agree with them on the memory. 2GB minimum for Crysis. 1GB DOES have a bad effect. The hitching can make the game completely unplayable.

 

That's bull, no offense. Age of Conan and Crysis reported 80-90% increases. You don't get that just from cache alone. Every other title got about a 10-12% boost at the same clock speed, that is from the extra cache.

E4300, HD4870 21fps
E4300, HD4870X2 25fps
Q6600, HD4870X2 46fps

 

So quad cores are worth it?

WHOO I WAS RIGHT. And everyone says games don't support quad cores.

 

For the most part they don't, I still have to stress that. However, to say that those that do don't offer significant gains is a lie. They are completely transformed by it.

 

there are some recent games that support quad cores. like mass effect and assassins creed. also most games coming out in the future will support it.

 

My Q6600 is getting here today

I'm excited to see what a quad will do for my Crysis performance. Maybe it will be bottlenecked by the card. But I hope that's not the case and the card can go higher than sams benchmarks have shown.

I knew Age of Conan supported quad core. It has the "Use all available Cores" option or something like that, correct?

 

It should still give you some gains, but not sure how much.

 

It's here! I'll post again when I'm done setting up!

 

It takes two days to setup? lmao

 

Sorry. Been busy with college and work and stuff

Anyways, WHOO!!! It's a G0!! And working temp sensors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lapped the Q6600 and lapped the Tuniq Tower this time. I did it by backing the sand paper with a piece of glass, so they should both be perfectly flat. I also used the line method for thermal paste to cover all four cores. Fan on the cooler at 100%.

Idle Temps

Core0 - 28*C
Core1 - 29*C
Core2 - 28*C
Core3 - 29*C


Orthos full load after 15 minutes

Core0 - 45*C
Core1 - 46*C
Core2 - 45*C
Core3 - 46*C

I'd say these are happy temps DDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!

OCing shall take place in short time. This thing is sweeeeeeeet!!!

 

lol Glad to see how excited you are. What's the VID on the chip(make sure you turn off speedstep when you check this).

 

The VID is 1.25v. Speedstep is for chumps... lol

It certainly does run cool. I'm surprised

 

Aha, you lucky sonofabitch.

 

I'm apparently oblivious to something good. Is a 1.25 VID uncommon for Q6600's???

 

Yes. The new Q6600s are all 1.325v.

 

Well I lucked out then! Sweet!

3.4GHz is my goal. That's what I'll get. I might even drop the multi to 8 and take the FSB to 425. I wonder how it would take the higher FSB...

You know what's funny? Even with high-end parts in it, it's still a fairly budget oriented machine. I could have easily spent twice as much...

 

YEah, but the performance gains would have been minimal. Certainly not twice as much.

 

The Q9450 was sort of a gamble. I am perfectly content with a Q6600

I hope to finally test out this HD4870. It's sitting there growling at me, lol.

 

Don't all of the Q6600s have working temp sensors? I thought it was just the 45nm ones...
You did well getting an older 1.25Vcore chip this late, congrats on that.
From benches I've looked at, there isn't much of a difference between the scores of the Q9450 and Q6600 even in arithmetics. With a low VID, you should get a good overclock out of your chip.

 

hm, I have an 8800 Ultra card here that won't display at all...I know it sends out a signal because the screen flashes, but it won't show anything on screen after...Being used on a ASUS Striker II Extreme. What do you think? Any hope for this card?