# Just wondering, how much better is the i7 vs Q6600?



## -1nf1n1ty- (Sep 24, 2009)

I was just wondering cause, I want to see if my friends pc and my pc are practically the same

do you guys need specs:
My pc
Q6600@2.4GHz 
3GB Corsair DDR2 800
8800GTS OC 640MB

His PC:
i7 920 stock speed
6GB I forget what brand and speed
GTX 280

from the looks of it, it looks like his pc is far better than mine but I feel like Im not to far off, if I were to get a new graphics card do you think my pc would be as powerful as that?

Im just wondering


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## MRCL (Sep 24, 2009)

No. i7 on stock is superior to a 775 quad, and the q6600 is especially a "relaxed" chip. Not to mention the eight cores of the i7 vs. the four of the q6600.


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## tzitzibp (Sep 24, 2009)

MRCL said:


> No. i7 on stock is superior to a 775 quad, and the q6600 is especially a "relaxed" chip. Not to mention the eight cores of the i7 vs. the four of the q6600.



I agree... The answer is a big No!

your friends system is a lot better in terms of pc power. Having said that I don't mean that your rig is worthless.... Your pc is able to perform and perform well! However the i7 architecture provides more faster, and this can best be seen while encoding video, audio etc....provided that the software supports it...


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## -1nf1n1ty- (Sep 24, 2009)

MRCL said:


> No. i7 on stock is superior to a 775 quad, and the q6600 is especially a "relaxed" chip. Not to mention the eight cores of the i7 vs. the four of the q6600.



oooo i see I didnt know thanks


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## -1nf1n1ty- (Sep 24, 2009)

Yeah, well I just wanted to know actually how powerful the i7's are well what about an i5? where are they compared to i7's? cause everyone was excited when they were announced


edit: when should I start thinking about getting either a i7 or a phenom 2?


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## MRCL (Sep 24, 2009)

-1nf1n1ty- said:


> Yeah, well I just wanted to know actually how powerful the i7's are well what about an i5? where are they compared to i7's? cause everyone was excited when they were announced



775 < i5 < i7

i5 are like the normal quads and i7 are the qx versions, I think thats a good comparison. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

And regarding i7 or Phenom2... I personally would go for the Phenom, but only because I just had one AMD chip in my life, and the Phenom 2 (and the corresponding motherboards) are cheaper than an i7 setup. Not as powerful, but close.


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## -1nf1n1ty- (Sep 24, 2009)

MRCL said:


> 775 < i5 < i7
> 
> i5 are like the normal quads and i7 are the qx versions, I think thats a good comparison. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
> 
> And regarding i7 or Phenom2... I personally would go for the Phenom, but only because I just had one AMD chip in my life, and the Phenom 2 (and the corresponding motherboards) are cheaper than an i7 setup. Not as powerful, but close.



I was looking at a AMD setup, and I really wanted to get an AMD rig again because I never had problems with it and intel has given me a bunch of problems(I had a HP celeron CPU pc, pentium 4 which wasnt as much of a problem but it felt slow even though it wasnt, now this quad core pos is pissing me off everyday)


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## MRCL (Sep 24, 2009)

-1nf1n1ty- said:


> I was looking at a AMD setup, and I really wanted to get an AMD rig again because I never had problems with it and intel has given me a bunch of problems(I had a HP celeron CPU pc, pentium 4 which wasnt as much of a problem but it felt slow even though it wasnt, now this quad core pos is pissing me off everyday)



You need to dig deep into the q6600 yes. I found it quite tricky, too. Needs a lot of BIOS finetuning if you overclock. Like I said, its a relaxed chip, you need to spur it if you want it to go fast.


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## -1nf1n1ty- (Sep 24, 2009)

MRCL said:


> You need to dig deep into the q6600 yes. I found it quite tricky, too. Needs a lot of BIOS finetuning if you overclock. Like I said, its a relaxed chip, you need to spur it if you want it to go fast.



Do you mean overclock it? cause I dont really know how and when I try it usually screws up and I can't leave it at a good speed cause it always blue screens. I'm trying to meet someone locally so he/she can do it for me


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## Binge (Sep 24, 2009)

**PREACHING**  I fell off the face of the PC planet for a while when I went to art school, and when I came back I got into the LGA 775 systems.  To be honest I hated it and even tried some AMD rigs... the x58 chipset exceeded all of my expectations.  **PREACHING OvER**


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## MRCL (Sep 24, 2009)

-1nf1n1ty- said:


> Do you mean overclock it? cause I dont really know how and when I try it usually screws up and I can't leave it at a good speed cause it always blue screens. I'm trying to meet someone locally so he/she can do it for me



Yeah its a bit of a mule when it comes to overclocking. I had to read a lot about BIOS options... 

...and if you find a girl who overclocks it, tell me where you live and I will be your neighbour


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## -1nf1n1ty- (Sep 24, 2009)

lol, thanks


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## hat (Sep 24, 2009)

8 cores? You mean 4 cores with HT... so 2 threads per core. 4 cores, 8 threads.

IIRC, i5 is essentially the same arch. just no HT.


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## BarbaricSoul (Sep 24, 2009)

to be equal with his I7 920 at stock speed, you'd have to OC your q6600 to 4 gigs or more from what I've been told.

About the new AMD quads, they are about equal to the newer(45nm) core2quad CPUs, but are blown away by the I7 cpus, just like the core2quads are.

Your system more than likely can not run as fast as your friends I7(4 gig OC on the q6600 is very rare these days), but that's not saying it doesn't have adaquate speed for todays software.


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## phanbuey (Sep 24, 2009)

BarbaricSoul said:


> to be equal with his I7 920 at stock speed, you'd have to OC your q6600 to 4 gigs or more from what I've been told.
> 
> About the new AMD quads, they are about equal to the newer(45nm) core2quad CPUs, but are blown away by the I7 cpus, just like the core2quads are.
> 
> Your system more than likely can not run as fast as your friends I7(4 gig OC on the q6600 is very rare these days), but that's not saying it doesn't have adaquate speed for todays software.



Yep... in raw crunching power, the Q will have to hit ~4.2Ghz to match the i7 in raw FLOPS benchies.  At least thats what my Q9650 has to do and its ever so slightly faster clock/clock

@OP:

His rig is literally more than double the speed of yours in terms of both gfx and CPU.

If you want to match him in games, you will have to OC that Q to about 3.6 GHz, get a 5870 or 5850 - and OC the pants off of it.

then you will be set.


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## MRCL (Sep 24, 2009)

hat said:


> 8 cores? You mean 4 cores with HT... so 2 threads per core. 4 cores, 8 threads.
> 
> IIRC, i5 is essentially the same arch. just no HT.



Yeah I somehow forgot to work that into the text...


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## tzitzibp (Sep 25, 2009)

hat said:


> 8 cores? You mean 4 cores with HT... so 2 threads per core. 4 cores, 8 threads.
> 
> IIRC, i5 is essentially the same arch. just no HT.



that is confirmed!


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## yogurt_21 (Sep 25, 2009)

i don't know about you but it's hardly the cpu that draws my eye as the major difference in those rigs. 

to me a 8800gts 640mb vs a gtx280 is the big thing. slap the 280 in either rig and theres the winner. cpu wise sure the i7 has more juice but it's not like q6600 is a super weak chip either. 

I mean shoot swap gpu's and then bench. no matter which cpu is used the gtx280 would give you the best results. 

cpu power is great but I'd take amidrange cpu and a highend gpu rig any day. if you want to beat your friends rig get a gtx285 and then compare. he'll be surprised for sure.


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## DRDNA (Sep 26, 2009)

Binge said:


> **PREACHING**  I fell off the face of the PC planet for a while when I went to art school, and when I came back I got into the LGA 775 systems.  To be honest I hated it and even tried some AMD rigs... the x58 chipset exceeded all of my expectations.  **PREACHING OvER**



**MORE PREACHING FROM THE FLOCK**
         Binge is on the Money here as usual...If you cant clock very well or lack confidence go with X58 and i7 920 ...clocks as easy as can be and is superior !**AMEN**


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## TheLaughingMan (Sep 26, 2009)

You said yours in doesn't feel far off, it is because of what you are using to compare.  I have to agree you are better off OCing the chip and/or getting a faster GPU.  It seems to be the weakness of your rig.  Then I personal would look into faster RAM.


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## [Ion] (Sep 26, 2009)

If all you do is web browsing, it won't matter if you have a 2ghz Pentium Dual Core or a pair of 4 ghz QX9775s, your experience will be just as pleasurable.  However, if you plan on gaming the Pentium Dual Core with a GTX 285 will smoke a pair of 4ghz quads with an 8800GTS.  As long as you have a reasonably fast CPU (~2ghz or more C2D/Athlon (II) 64 X2/X4/Phenom), games are mostly GPU limited.  Thus, you will see the biggest improvement in games if you get a new GPU (at least GTX 260 Core 216)


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## TheLaughingMan (Sep 26, 2009)

Except WOW, which seems to have some weird quirk with CPU clock speed.


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## hat (Sep 26, 2009)

CPU speed does make a difference. Everything will load so much faster, be so much snappier and be so much more responsive. I remember going from a 2GHz Celeron to a 2.8GHz Pentium 4... the difference was legendary. And then when I went from a 3GHz pentium 4 to that Athlon64 x2 5200+... that was even more legendary. Then I went to a Phenom 9500 that blew my board and graphics card when I tried to overclock and I juggled video cards and went from a Sempron LE-1250 at 3GHz to this processor at 3GHz. The difference there was noticible in some things but for 90% of the things I do it's not a big deal. The only thing I can say is the extra core helps out a lot when I'm running a ton of programs (like vispatching quake maps) and it helps WCG.


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## Mussels (Sep 26, 2009)

ignoring the CPU, your system is far behind his. he has twice as much ram (and likely faster too, DDR3 vs DDR2) - and theres no way a first gen 8800GTS comes close to a 280 in modern games.


if you want your PC to be as powerful as his, buy the same stuff. thats not to say that power is needed for games.


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