Low-end CPU comparison needed + upgrade path

[EvESpirit]

Hello everyone,

I'm EvESpirit, I'm new here. (17, F, Europe), so sorry if this is supposed to go in another section. Could someone plese help me? I just ordered a used Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, and I am just confused at what did I find out so far. I originally bought it for my dad, which needs a computer for not much except browsing and a stupid Flash-based game.

 

My question is: Is the Q6600 faster in games than my current A4-7300 is? I have already looked online but I am just confused. If it is, i'll just take the board along with cooler and processor and just swap it out for my current. Yes, I am going to use it with a discrete GPU, more specifically the 1GB GTX 650. (Go ahead and laugh, I heard all the jokes.). My question also is, what is the best GPU for the Q6600 to make a balanced system? (Doesen't matter if it's overkill for my dad, I'll be using it every now and then too.)

 

Thanks to everybody who helps ^•^

[samcool55]

The q6600 has great potential when overclocked so i suggest (if you have a nice aircooler on it) to overclock it.

 

GPU wise, i would say the HD6950 or HD7870 is a nice balanced gpu, more gpu power would rarely be utilized because the cpu won't keep up.

[EvESpirit]

43 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

The q6600 has great potential when overclocked so i suggest (if you have a nice aircooler on it) to overclock it.

 

GPU wise, i would say the HD6950 or HD7870 is a nice balanced gpu, more gpu power would rarely be utilized because the cpu won't keep up.

Well, thank you, but that's all pointless if it's not better than the a4-7300.

[samcool55]

13 hours ago, EvESpirit said:

Well, thank you, but that's all pointless if it's not better than the a4-7300.

Run cinebench on both systems  That should give you some idea how much raw cpu power both have.

My guess is that an overclock on the q6600 will make it faster than the A4. 

[Terryv]

Your A4-7300 is much stronger in single threaded performance 

 

Multi threaded the perform about the same, maybe the Q6600 being marginally faster

 

I'd keep the A4 unless your games really require those 2 extra threads

[EvESpirit]

I am unfortunately unable to bench the systems as I do not yet have the Q6600 in my hands. And I'd like to ask if you're just not writing out to me the benchmarks like gamedebate etc. from google, as I've read those, I need real life game perf.

[Terryv]

For starters, the AMD CPU is much newer and operates at a much higher frequency and have a comparable IPC to Sandy bridge (probably slightly slower)

 

Cinebench single.core results of the q6600 is usually around 50 and the a4-7300 is about 80

[EvESpirit]

2 minutes ago, Terryv said:

For starters, the AMD CPU is much newer and operates at a much higher frequency and have a comparable IPC to Sandy bridge (probably slightly slower)

 

Cinebench single.core results of the q6600 is usually around 50 and the a4-7300 is about 80

Okay. Thanks to everyone who responded ^^ Appreciate your time. Thank you for helping me.