Has anyone fitted one of these?
Just upgraded my (rather old P4 550 3.4gzh) to a nice new shiny 2.4 quad core cpu and Asus P5KC mobo (G35 chipset, DDR2/3 memory) plus a nice Tagan 600w psw (very nice too ) and a coolermaster wave master case
Not had it long enough to do any real playing (like this is the first time ive been on line since ive built it) but noticed that the multi tasking is damn good and the chip is a bargain at just under 170 quid but what other area's do you benefit from these (games, applications etc) and any other experiences of this cpu?

Tony

 

Application wise, various software will recognise you have quad core and optimise themselves resulting in miproved performance eg. photoshop, 3DS Max, Premiere, etc...

Games-wise, stuff like Crysis (out this Winter) will recognise your cores and run faster, although you'll need to a strong video card too - your cpu's will throw tons of geometry at your graphics card and it'll need plenty of horsepower to keep up and crunch the data.

 

Cheers think my graphics card can still handle it a bit (xfx 7950gt 512mb) but my only other downside is im still running a 32bit OS, now there is vista which im not 100% happy with just now, or go for a 64bit version of xp.... tempted but will I get anything from that?

Tony

 

No one recommends 64bit XP as the driver support is horrendous and I dont think its going to get better. If your buying a new OS then vista is the obvious choice but its still in early stages. Ive got 32bit home premium and I still dual boot with 32bit xp and spend more time using xp at the mo tbh.

Simon

 

64-bit XP is not really any faster than 32-bit, and the driver support from some companies (stand up Netgear) is poor. With Vista out, then no new drivers will be written for 64-bit. But if you want to play I'll sell you a copy for £40...

As for quad-core, currently they don't overclock very well (in relation anyway) but they're great for DC projects like SETI and Folding. Only about three games out currently use all four cores.


M

 

My Shuttle is 3 years old now.

When The 95W version of the quad core comes out I might get one - that will see me through the next 3 years I would think.

I will be doing quite a bit of Video converting so this might help)

 

I ended up upgrading my Shuttle to a SP39 new type. I am very happy at running the E6600 Dual-Core. The video editing side is a lot quicker compared to my old AMD 3000+ chip. I believe the shullte I have will take Quad core chips. And it only has a 400Watt silent PSU to boot.

 

Just got a Q6600 myself (Rev B3) and it clocks quite nicely to 3ghz. Only trouble is it gets so damn hot!!!

Think I may have to consider water cooling, and I should be able to eek some more out of it. It's currently only needing 1.3v for 3ghz.

 

They do clock very well, it just depends on the board, they love the asus p35

3760ghz on air

Xtreme Q6600 G0 Overclocking on Air !!! (Pics Heavy & Daily Updates) - Page 27 - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

 

Interesting - up until now the highest I'd heard was about 3.3GHz. Even more remarkable, he's using that stupid Asus program to do it.


M

 

And under Vista as well. When I o/clocked my X2 even to a paltry 2.4 (stock 2.0) Vista just died. Seems common. Got it stable under XP and reinstalled Vista - been fine ever since.

Smon

 

In a word - No. THe main advanatage of a 64 -bit operating system is that is will allow for 64 memeory addressing, which, will give you 16TB of addessable memory, as opposed to 4GB which you ge tunder a 32 bit system. But in real terms you ar eunlikely to see any tangible benefits in the short to medium term.

As for your graphics card, to get the most out of Crysis et al, you will need to upgrade it to a DX10 card - Somethin glike a nVidia 8800 or a ATI 2900XT