Wait for 7nm GPUs for major upgrade from Q6600?

Smeghead · 26 Aug 2018 at 12:38

I'm still running a system with a Q6600 ( :eek:

). I was waiting for the 20xx cards to see what to upgrade to, but I'm sure like a lot of you, I'm feeling incredibly underwhelmed about what they're offering, especially price-wise. My upper budget for a card is about £400.

While there are a slew of newer games I'm keen to play (Fallout 4, Deus Ex, Monster Hunter), I'm not losing any sleep not being able to play them. About the only thing I play semi-regularly these days is Overwatch. I get a very inconsistent 20-50fps on lowest settings.

So my plan is to get a second hand 1050 for <£100 to give me a bit of an FPS boost in Overwatch (the CPU is OC'ed to 3.2GHz), and then wait for 7nm hopefully next year for a balls to the wall upgrade.

Or should I just bite the bullet and upgrade everything now with like a 1070 or used 1070Ti/1080? I just don't like the idea of doing a "major" upgrade on 2 year old tech when 7nm is just around the corner, but then again, especially if Nvdia's 20xx greedy pricing is anything to go by, I have no idea what sort of prices we'll see at launch, and if I'll even be able to get any 7nm card for ~£400, and how long it would take for prices to come down to that price (so I could be waiting 2+ years?!).

Finners · 26 Aug 2018 at 13:51

What is your current gpu?

Smeghead · 26 Aug 2018 at 14:08

5770. Used to have a 460 but it died bout a year ago. I normally wouldn't switch between manufacturers, but my brother had a 5770 that wasn't being used, so I just used that.

Todd Greene · 26 Aug 2018 at 19:37

with a q6600 the 1050/ti may be a good bet before a full upgrade but that cpu (while still amazing for the age) is getting on in years and has started to show in gaming, maybe look at saving for when you can up the lot rather than get a gpu now (especially with the new gpu's coming the prices will probably drop more) when you might improve more later and find the gpu behind.

ExoMale · 27 Aug 2018 at 16:11

a gtx 750ti or a 950/960 would better that 5770 lol.

i dont know if you played fallout 4 yet and if theres anything new about it, but when i played it ages ago i had less frames, but less stutter and a better gaming experience with a 1gb 560 superclock compared to a 2gb 270x i then replaced it with, might have been unoptimised at the time as it was only out a few months, but the radeon only offered more frames and was a stuttering mess, so id say nvidia for that game atleast.

if you got £400 to spend right now then you could get a 1st gen ryzen setup be it new or used and a cheap 950/1050 be it used or not aswell, you obviously not in a hurry it seems, but you could be waiting around a fair while for the newer things you want.

its just over because of shipping, but this:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 3 Quad Core 1200 3.40GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £79.99
1 x Gigabyte GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 AMD B350 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard= £72.95
1 x Team Group Dark Pro 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Grey (TDPGD48G300= £89.99
1 x Palit GeForce GTX 1050Ti StormX 4096MB PCI-Express GDDR5 Graphics Card= £149.99

Total: £404.02 (includes shipping: £11.10)

salvage your drives, psu and case and this should be a very good stop gap.

EsaT · 27 Aug 2018 at 19:55

That CPU is very likely bottleneck in many games.
Its IPC isn't good by today's standards and it also lacks clock speed.

lltfdaniel · 27 Aug 2018 at 19:59

Well the q6600 was nice back in it's day but i agree it will bottleneck some (most?) certain cards.

From my memory an amd 7850 gpu would hardly get bottlenecked by that q6600 and i do not know what today's equivalent would be.

Well if you want to upgrade the gpu then go with a nvidia gtx 1050 (non ti) graphics card because it is close to the performance of a amd 7850 card.

orbitalwalsh · 28 Aug 2018 at 08:37

if your playing at 1080p- should see a boost in FPS even with current card and will last just as long as your Q6600 did being 8 cores 16 threads
comes with free 256GB SSD

should find sata 3 ssd would be flying as an OS and gaming platform

BB CODE
My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Gigabyte B450 AORUS PRO (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £109.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 7 Eight Core 1700 3.70GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £194.99
1 x Team Group Dark Pro 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Grey (TDPGD48G300= £89.99

Total: £405.47 (includes shipping: £10.50)

when RTX 2070 is launched followed b GTX 2060, prices will start to fall and second hand market will be a Buyers market

intel- will have edge over ryzen in gaming at 1080p

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Intel Core i5-8400 2.8GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - OEM= £158.99
1 x Gigabyte B360 HD3 Intel B360 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £79.99
1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD416G24= £128.99
1 x Alpenfohn Ben Nevis CPU Cooler - 120mm= £21.95

Total: £400.42 (includes shipping: £10.50)

DrBombcrater · 28 Aug 2018 at 15:34

Smeghead said:
So my plan is to get a second hand 1050 for <£100 to give me a bit of an FPS boost in Overwatch (the CPU is OC'ed to 3.2GHz), and then wait for 7nm hopefully next year for a balls to the wall upgrade.

To be honest, you need to get shot of that Q6600 asap. It's hopelessly slow and out dated. I didn't realise how bad the Core 2 Quads are with modern games until I had to use a Q6700 machine at work recently. I have a few games installed that I play at over lunch, and even with just a Radeon RX560 installed it was obvious the CPU was crippling the machine. I ended up ripping the Q6700 and motherboard out of the system and installing an i3-2100 and mobo that I pulled from the junk pile. Night and day difference, even the piddly i3 (which is worth, I think, about £10 these days) was visibly quicker.

Daaaveee · 28 Aug 2018 at 16:54

DrBombcrater said:
To be honest, you need to get shot of that Q6600 asap. It's hopelessly slow and out dated. I didn't realise how bad the Core 2 Quads are with modern games until I had to use a Q6700 machine at work recently. I have a few games installed that I play at over lunch, and even with just a Radeon RX560 installed it was obvious the CPU was crippling the machine. I ended up ripping the Q6700 and motherboard out of the system and installing an i3-2100 and mobo that I pulled from the junk pile. Night and day difference, even the piddly i3 (which is worth, I think, about £10 these days) was visibly quicker.

Just want to echo this. 2 years ago I upgraded my wifes OC'd Q6600 to an i3 6100 and the difference in Overwatch was night and day!

Upgrade now and pick up a used 1070 for around £250.

AyeAyeAhoy! · 28 Aug 2018 at 20:07

Man, the Q6600 was great, but you need shot of it now really. DDR2 RAM too.

The above Ryzen setups will work as a great stop gap, and if you wait without upgrading for the next release... you'll forever be waiting. What's to say the next Nvidia release will be a £1600 let down? In 2 years.

With Ryzen Zen+ out now and the 1070 / 1070ti hitting good prices, around the next month would be as good a time as any

Terrorfirmer · 29 Aug 2018 at 22:59

A Q6600 at 3.2Ghz should get you through Overwatch at 50-60fps most of the time with a half decent card. I played it recently on a Q9300 at 2.8Ghz and it ran OKish at mostly 50-60fps with a GT1030. It is your card that is crippling you in this particular case.

The H5770 is even worse than the Q6600, even just temporarily replacing that with something like a £60 GT1030 would make a pretty big difference as a stop gap measure. Despite the age of the Q6600 and it's inability to play most modern games, the 5770 is even worse in 2018 and an overclocked Q6600 is still somewhat usable for Overwatch.

At 3.2Ghz the Q6600 with a GT1030/1050/1050Ti should also run Fallout 4 at a locked 30fps somewhat OK, pretty much the same as the console versions though it'll look better on PC depending on what card is used. So not unplayable.....but it would be pretty painful with your current 5770.

I would say a Ryzen 1200, 8GB, GTX1050Ti combo is absolutely the best way to spend your £400. Overwatch at 1080p ultra settings 60fps without a sweat. Fallout 4 at 1080p med-high 60fps.

Your PC is so ancient that new CPU setup + keep old card for now = still dismal performance, even in Overwatch.