Much use for a Q6600?

[danhulud]

My neighbour has just given me a Q6600, he's apparently going to be dropping off a mobo and other things for it soon.

 

Having a look on the intel website the Q6600 is just over a decade old. What could I use a machine running a Q6600 for?

 

For clarity I'm running an i5 2400 in my main machine so that's better; I've recently started streaming, so would the Q6600 work as a dedicated streaming machine taking some of the weight off the i5 2400, or should I just end up using it as something like a media player in the living room?

[Silentprototipe]

Common, don't doubt the good old Q6600 . I use an A6 3650 with nearly exactly same IPC as the Q6600. Sadly the Q6600 is really seeing its final days (Amazing how such an old CPU has lasted so long). Just use it for media really. It can still game if you try hard enough too 

[Princess Luna]

 

[KoeppColto024470]

Since its over a decade old it might run but if it fails you can't buy a new one and will have to upgrade to the newest Intel chip that's still being sold I believe there still selling Haswells and Devils Canyon Chips

[Jurrunio]

It can be a dedicated streaming machine, though I dont know how to setup one.

 

With a good P43/P45 chipset motherboard and cooler, Q6600 can be overclocked to 3.4GHz or more and play all basic games with ease, so dont think it's garbage because it's old. Without overclocking... then it's a bit slow for most games.

[danhulud]

15 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

It can be a dedicated streaming machine, though I dont know how to setup one.

 

With a good P43/P45 chipset motherboard and cooler, Q6600 can be overclocked to 3.4GHz or more and play all basic games with ease, so dont think it's garbage because it's old. Without overclocking... then it's a bit slow for most games.

 

I know how to set it all up if it were to be my streaming machine, so all good there!

Is OCing mobo dependent? I'm not sure what motherboard my neighbour is giving me just yet, and having never OCed before do you recommend any guides on it?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

It's old, and it's slow compared to almost anythign you can get these days, but there are plenty of things you can do with even slower CPUs. I would say that is not so much a matter of what it can do (it can still do plenty), but about how much power it will draw to do so compared to newer, lower end alternatives. Like, a Q6600 would still be way overpowered for a home NAS, but you would care more about power draw in such a use case, which would advice against it.

For occasional uses, like a media player that's off when no in use, or the streaming you suggest, it may just work, ideally with some quiet cooling solution.

[Jurrunio]

6 minutes ago, danhulud said:

Is OCing mobo dependent? I'm not sure what motherboard my neighbour is giving me just yet, and having never OCed before do you recommend any guides on it?

As a locked CPU, Q6600 cannot be overclocked with the multiplier, but can be overclocked by raising the FSB. Different chipsets have different maximum FSB before losing stability, in which P43 is good for about 400MHz while P45 can reach 500MHz, and that's not its limit. There are cheaper boards with something like G41 chipset, and that's only good for 340MHz

 

btw, the stock FSB of the Q6600 is 266MHz and the maximum core clock multiplier is 9. FSB multiplied by multiplier equals to final clock speed.

 

As for overclocking guides, there are plenty of them about this very popular gaming PC CPU. Even AMD's FX, Phenom and Athlon non-Black editions are overclocked this way, so those guides also work.