# Who still uses Core 2?



## hat (Jul 17, 2014)

I'm wondering how many of us here still use the Core 2 architecture, *in their main rig*. Not a second pc, guest pc, laptop, I mean the main machine still having a Core 2 CPU.

I had an i7 920 at one point, but I wound up with a Q6600 system. It doesn't seem that much different from the i7 machine, at least at the speed I run at. Certain specific things have suffered, but overall it's much the same.


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## Aquinus (Jul 17, 2014)

I personally don't, but my friend who I built a computer for (which has an E6600 in it,) still loves it and thinks it's great. Granted he is your average PC user, so an E6600 is enough for him.

In all seriousness, I could give him an SSD and he would see more of a difference over a modern day i7.

Edit: I also forgot that my wife uses my old Dell Studio 1735 which has a 2.1Ghz Core 2 Penryn in it and it seems to work okay for her. An SSD would also solve almost all of her complaints (along with a new battery.)


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jul 17, 2014)

Nope, I did just buy a Maximus II Formula for an old E7200 I had lying around. Which might become part of my second rig (temporarily) which would later transform into my primary rig (when I replace the CPU and board)


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## Kursah (Jul 17, 2014)

I know of several builds of my own or and built for others are still out and used as daily drivers. But Core2 is fading fast...it's getting to the point where we're replacing school and business workstations that have Core2 with i3's and i5's, and many of these are the last of their kind. Kind of a shame really... the Core2 days were mostly good. I will say that DDR3 has seen much less issues and failures in my experience, but I feel Core2 was much more fun to OC and find out just how far you could go on stock voltage. Really though, I notice major differneces in what I do and want from my PC between an old Core2 setup and my newer Haswell setup...it's no contest. To each their own in that respect.


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## Delta6326 (Jul 17, 2014)

I', still rocking a Q6600 @3.46Ghz Max temp gaming 63C GPU max 75C! I have yet to find issue to upgrade, cpu wise. But I do plan to upgrade sometime 2015. for Pcars and Star citizen.


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## silkstone (Jul 17, 2014)

I wouldn't use one as my main rig as it would bottleneck different games, and while being adequate for day-to-day things, when it comes to encoding videos or working with images, more cores are usually better.

My HTPC is a core2 duo along with my print server and kid's laptop, though. They work well enough in their roles.


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## RealNeil (Jul 17, 2014)

I have a core2 duo rig with Linux on it. An old Dell box.
With Linux Mint, it's fast.


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## SaltyFish (Jul 17, 2014)

I'm still using a Core 2 as my main rig. Still runs games fine since there isn't much to challenge the processor. I think the Core 2 era was around the time when computing power reached a point where it was suitable for most needs for a very long time, especially since there hasn't been anything that really requires a more powerful computer every four years or so anymore.

Skylake is probably the earliest I might consider a new CPU, barring some sort of catastrophic failure of my current system.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jul 17, 2014)

SaltyFish said:


> I'm still using a Core 2 as my main rig. Still runs games fine since there isn't much to challenge the processor. I think the Core 2 era was around the time when computing power reached a point where it was suitable for most needs for a very long time, especially since there hasn't been anything that really requires a more powerful computer every four years or so anymore.
> 
> Skylake is probably the earliest I might consider a new CPU, barring some sort of catastrophic failure of my current system.


Just a question, what games are you playing?

My laptop has an ivy bridge i7 (quad+HT) running at 3.2GHz and it is only just enough for playing newer games like BF3. I tried a bit of underclocking and at anything below 2.7 I was getting a CPU bottleneck. My GPU is basically a GTX560 clocked slightly slower.


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## XSI (Jul 17, 2014)

i use e8400 at 2,2-3,5ghz. it is in my main rig with 8800gt. i can play many games, mortal combat 9 on very high graphics, injustice gods among us very high graphics. devil my cry 5 medium to hight. but my MB is in repair now and im thinking of changing to z97+pentium anniversary edition. (~170$ here).


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## AhokZYashA (Jul 17, 2014)

im still rocking 1 desktop and 2 C2D laptops, 
the desktop still plays all the game i play fluently (dota2, DN SEA, BF2) 
it is paired with a 9600GT.

the laptops only used for listening to music and watch HD movies, which they ran it flawlessly.


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## Nosada (Jul 17, 2014)

Core 2 has been relegated to family members in my case, but I have 4 young cousins who play on a small gaming LAN I set up at my parents house.
an E4300, E7600 and E8400 are among them, with video cards ranging from HD 3850 to R7 260X. All of them play the games they wanna play fluently, though the most demanding is probably Trials Fusion.


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## patrico (Jul 17, 2014)

im still using my trusty Q6600 never gave me any probs at stock or o/ced, its been running most days of the week for 7 years without one incident


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## digibucc (Jul 17, 2014)

not mine but a friend and client is still rocking an e6600 that imho is quite good. it does all they need with a little power to spare. me personally with gaming and virtual machines it's just not good enough. still though it's by no means obsolete or anything.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 17, 2014)

One of my friends is still running with my old Q9550 that i had clocked at 3.9Ghz (i think it was 3.9) that CPU is a beast. its paired with a 660Ti but thats going to go soon I think as he said hes starting to lower the settings in games to get decent frames


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 17, 2014)

My youngest son's rig (he turns 19 this month) is still rocking a Core 2 Quad QX9650 at 3.6Ghz on a Gigabye EP45-UD3P motherboard, 8GB of 1066 DDR2, and a GTX 580.  It gets the job done for nearly all the games he plays, and quite honestly, his only limitation is the 1.5GB of VRAM sometimes on the 580 (like heavily modded Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim).

The 4 cores are enough even on multi threaded games, still pushing alot of power to the GPU.  For instance, on BFBC2 and BF3, all the cores are used heavily, but not maxed out like they were when he had an e8400, so that tells me the cpu is still not a bottleneck.

Recently I upgraded him to my old M4 SSD, and a HooToo USB 3.0 add-in card, and that was a huge upgrade in terms of speed and responsiveness.   Since I told him he's got to do any modernization on his own dime now, I have a feeling this setup will be plenty for him for awhile!  Besides, that cpu still has some good overclocking headroom.


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## brandonwh64 (Jul 17, 2014)

We use E4500's here at work on most of the machine but we have been slowly upgrading to I7's. The Machines we have with 2GB of ram are ok for office use.


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## GreiverBlade (Jul 17, 2014)

i doo too i use a DC7700P from HP Compaq with a E6700 (originally a E6300) and 4gb XMS2 800 i use it mainly as a movie platine for my bedroom, but it's also for nostalgic purpose that i still keep it ... (i am rocking a lot of dual core cpu on my shelf... for collection purpose  ) oh wait ... main rig? aherm ... well it's my main rig for DVD/video playback and web browsing when i am in my bed .... does that coun't ?  (plus keeping it under Win XP Pro for KOTOR I/II and Sudeki )


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## Sasqui (Jul 17, 2014)

I still use an E8600 @ 4.3 Ghz almost as much as my main rig.  Soon to be making an "upgrade" attempt to an Xeon X5470 and retire my ROG 775 Boards.


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## ste2425 (Jul 17, 2014)

Yup still running an E8200 and it still runs mighty fine for me, that an my HD4850. I don't game at insanely high resolutions and the games i do play a far from strenuous. For my uses i don't think id see enough of a benefit over cost to upgrade.


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## P4-630 (Jul 17, 2014)

My dad has still running a pc with cpu e7200 and gpu hd4870, os windows vista, still runs great, only replaced the psu some time ago.


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## insane 360 (Jul 17, 2014)

i've got two machines that get almost as much use as my main ones.  one is a dell 1720 laptop sporting a 2.0ghz core2 and an 8500m gpu and its running windows 8.1 smoothly.  even plays dirt 3 on medium 720p  

the other is a dell 360 with a 2.97ghz core 2 that i'm going to do the same as Sasqui, do the 771 pin mod and an xeon e5540 (whatever the 2.8-3.0ghz quad core) and its running windows 8.1 with a windows 7 vm (needed media center and have VL) 

those core2duo are still pretty impressive for their age


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## Sasqui (Jul 17, 2014)

insane 360 said:


> the other is a dell 360 with a 2.97ghz core 2 that i'm going to do the same as Sasqui, do the 771 pin mod and an xeon e5540 (whatever the 2.8-3.0ghz quad core) and its running windows 8.1 with a windows 7 vm (needed media center and have VL)



We must compare notes.  I've made progress with the xeon and sticker, next up is messing with the P5Q deluxe it'll be living in.


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 17, 2014)

I almost forgot!  Does my server count?  The Xeon it has is Core 2 family (it's almost exact replica of e8400).  It runs 24/7 and is used daily.  Does everything I need it to, so no reason to upgrade.


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## Mussels (Jul 17, 2014)

hat said:


> I'm wondering how many of us here still use the Core 2 architecture, *in their main rig*. Not a second pc, guest pc, laptop, I mean the main machine still having a Core 2 CPU.
> 
> I had an i7 920 at one point, but I wound up with a Q6600 system. It doesn't seem that much different from the i7 machine, at least at the speed I run at. Certain specific things have suffered, but overall it's much the same.



not quite what you're asking, but i had an E6600 until about 2 weeks ago.


it was fine for facebook and HD media playback, but its performance was really, really lacking for modern RTS gaming


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## yogurt_21 (Jul 17, 2014)

Up till a few weeks ago my work machine had an E7400 in it. Things ran fine for the most part, but I do compression and my work laptop has an i5 4300U in it, the fact that the laptop can finish in minutes what would take the older desktop hours mean the desktop was retired and replaced with a dock and usb3 hard disk. Much happier at work now.


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## SaltyFish (Jul 17, 2014)

GorbazTheDragon said:


> Just a question, what games are you playing?
> 
> My laptop has an ivy bridge i7 (quad+HT) running at 3.2GHz and it is only just enough for playing newer games like BF3. I tried a bit of underclocking and at anything below 2.7 I was getting a CPU bottleneck. My GPU is basically a GTX560 clocked slightly slower.



Blackguards
King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame
Dynasty Warriors 8
Starcraft II
Borderlands 2
Age of Wonders III
Divinity: Original Sin
Counter-strike: Global Offensive
World in Conflict: Soviet Assault
Kingdoms of Amalur
Might & Magic X
Skyrim
Fallout: New Vegas

I don't play a lot of FPS games, at least not the newer ones. So that maybe something there.


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## BUCK NASTY (Jul 17, 2014)

Still rocking a E7500 in my work PC(2011),  but the newer rigs are i3-2120. Still performs very well for my business applications. Crazy how our corporate IT dept will charge me $1400.00+ for these basic rigs....must be the software licensing.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jul 17, 2014)

SaltyFish said:


> Blackguards
> King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame
> Dynasty Warriors 8
> Starcraft II
> ...


Considering the 560 Ti is only about 30% faster than the 670m, I guess you won't run into bottlenecks in most games.


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## yogurt_21 (Jul 17, 2014)

@BUCK NASTY it has to be, we get the basic rigs from dell for 400$... 1000$ more seems steep. lol


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## Scrizz (Jul 17, 2014)

yogurt_21 said:


> @BUCK NASTY it has to be, we get the basic rigs from dell for 400$... 1000$ more seems steep. lol


lol, reminds me of the Autocad Design Suite Ultimate machine here....
that alone cost 2x what the hardware did .lol


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## Shambles1980 (Jul 17, 2014)

hat said:


> I'm wondering how many of us here still use the Core 2 architecture, *in their main rig*. Not a second pc, guest pc, laptop, I mean the main machine still having a Core 2 CPU.
> 
> I had an i7 920 at one point, but I wound up with a Q6600 system. It doesn't seem that much different from the i7 machine, at least at the speed I run at. Certain specific things have suffered, but overall it's much the same.



i had a q6600 untill just recenty it had been with me from new. and it overclocked like a champ (probably why i had it for so long)
I couldnt really see how id be better off with a new cpu. but after changing from a 5770 to a 7850 i decided that it was time for a change.
il cut out the long stopry and skip to the part where i got my i5-2500k. at stock it was easily 50% faster than my q6600 at 3.7 in most tasks. and when it came to some games (thief especially) the improvment was rediculous.
The in game bench test in thief is Ludicrous its just a beast on the cpu. i mananed to get a avarage frame rate of 26fps with a lot of tweaking with my Q6600  (in actuall game low drops were down in the mid 40's and usually well above 70) but the i5-2500k managed  avarage frames of 63Fps with the exact same settings in the bench test. (obviously thats not reall world expirience) but it does reflect the fact that after the change i no longer had frame drops.
all i ever wanted was to set it up and enable tripple buffer v synk, and not drop below 60fps and the I5 (at stock) + my oc'd 7850 let me do that.
The q6600 even overclocked to 3.7 just could not do it. (no matter what gfx settings i used and tweaked, id still get the drops in game) and that set up had the highest "verified" 3dmark score for similar systems in fire strike and cloud gate. so its not like it was miss configured.

the media pc that i use for the tv downstairs (its the only thing connected to the pc) is a core 2 duo with a hd 6xxx low profile gpu (i forget which). and my other downstairs pc is also a core 2 duo with a 7570 gpu. i use that for light gaming and generall internet stuff. it can play thief at lower settings so its still useable.


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## Capitan Harlock (Jul 17, 2014)

I have  right now my q9400 at 3.2ghz because my motherboard cant go higher that 400mhz oc but runs well a lot of games and i have a e6420 in my "old" system oc at 3.2ghz too.
Im unemployed so i cant buy new stuff xd but i would really like to swich to something more powerfull for sure xd


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## coozie78 (Jul 18, 2014)

My brother's still using my old E6600 but curses the slow load/boot times. perhaps a small SSD for his birthday might be an idea?
Perhaps he's a more typical user than most here: Mainly online services along with Ebay and Youtube with the odd run in with an old game or two are all it's used for.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jul 18, 2014)

I haven't run or seen a Core 2 system since about 2006-7


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## BUCK NASTY (Jul 18, 2014)

I remember just prior to Bloomfield, I was rocking a Q9550/EP45 @ 3.8Ghz and it was a beast of a CPU/Mobo combo. My first Intel CPU was a E8400 Wolfdale and it was quite an improvement from Athlon X2's. Was my first attempt at water cooling as well.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jul 18, 2014)

I went from an E6600 to a i7 920 with an Evga Classified and GTX260 SLI.


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## yogurt_21 (Jul 18, 2014)

Q6700 (non extreme) to i7 950. The jump from the FX 62 to the Q6700 felt larger than the jump from Q6700 to i7 950. In fact the jump from i7 950 to i7 4790k doesn't feel as large as FX-62 to Q6700 even. The Core 2 just felt like "Hello Nurse" not only was it much faster per core, but  it had more cores AND it clocked much higher. 2.67 to 3.95 GHZ was a breeze (would hit 4.1 but wasn't 24/7 stable) Compare that with the FX-62 that could barely hit 3.4GHZ on Phase Change...


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## Mussels (Jul 19, 2014)

I just found an E6300 on my desk. i forgot it was there about 2 months ago.

Wonder if ill find a mobo it can go in.


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## JunkBear (Jul 19, 2014)

Just got a cheap 30$ new mobo that can handle only ddr2-800 but 1600fsb quad core so ill find a dual core and put it there


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## hat (Jul 19, 2014)

Wow, Core 2 is really this dated huh? At least I've got my decent overclock...


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## Toothless (Jul 19, 2014)

Fixed up a Q6700 rig and it's a speedy grandpa chip.


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## 1nf3rn0x (Jul 19, 2014)

I remember I ran an E7400 at 4.2GHZ with an evga 780i and dual 8800 ultra's. That was probably my most kickass system I had ever built. Going from that to a new system didn't seem much of an upgrade to be honest. I did some light photoshop work, surfing the internet and gaming. Gaming was a dramatic increase due to the new gpu but in like system fluidness etc it was the same. I do edit and render videos and I can say that there is a very big difference in that.


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## Mussels (Jul 19, 2014)

1nf3rn0x said:


> I remember I ran an E7400 at 4.2GHZ with an evga 780i and dual 8800 ultra's. That was probably my most kickass system I had ever built. Going from that to a new system didn't seem much of an upgrade to be honest. I did some light photoshop work, surfing the internet and gaming. Gaming was a dramatic increase due to the new gpu but in like system fluidness etc it was the same. I do edit and render videos and I can say that there is a very big difference in that.




the big change is when you go back.

I've met lots of people who've used a newer PC and thought 'nah its not faster', but as soon as they go back to their old PC, the instantly notice very bit of lag.

Its like how console gamers are happy at 30FPS, but once you go 60, 30 just doesnt cut it anymore.


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## 1nf3rn0x (Jul 19, 2014)

Mussels said:


> the big change is when you go back.
> 
> I've met lots of people who've used a newer PC and thought 'nah its not faster', but as soon as they go back to their old PC, the instantly notice very bit of lag.
> 
> *Its like how console gamers are happy at 30FPS, but once you go 60, 30 just doesnt cut it anymore.*



Yes, that makes perfect sense. Though, I personally did much notice much of a difference going from an SSD to mechanical drive. Other than boot times, everything was pretty much the same but I didn't install any games, just programs I use all the time such as word processing, photoshop etc

That's why I could also never go to a console, I refuse


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## zenlaserman (Jul 19, 2014)

My main home PC runs a Q6700.  I built this rig 7 years ago with an HD2900XT and since then all I've upgraded is the video card and added a few HDDs.  It's been 99% reliable.

It runs all my games just fine at 1680x1050, runs AutoCAD for side projects, runs Plex for my Roku and is also the main house server for audio and video.

Since Core 2 came out, it seems that CPUs have been nothing but increasing degrees of overkill.  I'm waiting for 8-core Haswell-E to upgrade, tho.  My CAD renders will thank me


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## BrooksyX (Jul 19, 2014)

Crazy to think core 2 cpus are that old. Shoot even the i5-2500k in my rig is over 3 years old. Still rocking strong though.


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## JunkBear (Jul 19, 2014)

Yeah. I'm still rocking single cores with these old Compaq SFF pentium 4. But why expense for morewhen what you have is already enough?


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## v12dock (Jul 19, 2014)

I recently sold a core 2 machine for $300


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