23 replies to this topic

[Kaptain]

Barbaric Soul I agree that an AM3 Motherboard and some DDR3 would greatly enhance the AMD system for not alot of $. I disagree that it would be a lot faster. Sure there is no comparison between a OCed 3.8 AMD and a stock clocks Q6600 but my Q6700 is not a stock 2.4ghz Q6600, it's a Q6700 OCed @ 3.5ghz.

[Barbaric Soul]

Kaptain, on 17 August 2013 - 08:38 AM, said:

Barbaric Soul I agree that an AM3 Motherboard and some DDR3 would greatly enhance the AMD system for not alot of $. I disagree that it would be a lot faster. Sure there is no comparison between a OCed 3.8 AMD and a stock clocks Q6600 but my Q6700 is not a stock 2.4ghz Q6600, it's a Q6700 OCed @ 3.5ghz.

The Conroe Architecture is infact slower than the Phenom II architecture. If you had a Yorkfield Core2Quad like the Q9650 OC'ed to 3.5ghz or higher, you would be correct. But in the case of Conroe vs Phenom II, clock for clock, core for core, the AMD is faster. Same thing as my Sandy Bridge i7 2600k is not as fast as a Ivy Bridge i7 3770k at the exact same clock speed. Then add that with a better board, I'd be willing to bet that AMD BE with proper cooling could easily break 4ghz and beyond, something that Q6700 has very little chance of doing.

[Kaptain]

My apologies Barbaric Soul I was not taking into account architecture differences and If I were to rebuild a system the AMD BE would be the way to go. That said, the intel is playing the game great (imo) and I really don't need to upgrade at this time. I will probably SLI the GTX280s though as I already own them and a Corsair 1000w.

You really noticed a big difference with the Q9650? How much faster is the architecture?

[Barbaric Soul]

Well, for me at least, when I upgraded, I first upgraded from a E8400 to a Q6600. Immediately, my system seemed slower with a Q6600 OC'ed to 3.6ghz than it did with the dual core at 3.8ghz. I can't say my system was actually slower, as I'm sure in some cases it wasn't, but it just didn't seem as responsive as it was before. It was kind of like comparing driving a full sized truck and a sports car. The truck may have more power, but the sports car accelerates faster. It just felt like it took longer for the system to respond to my inputs(we're only talking a matter of a 1/4 to a 1/2 sec). For me, it was bad enough that I sold the Q6600 in less than 2 weeks and bought the Q9650. Immediately my system has it's responsiveness back, before any OC'ing of the Q9650 was done.

As for whether or not it would be worth the upgrade, that is up to you. If your happy with the performance your getting, then by all means, stay with what you have. But if you do upgrade one of the systems, upgrade the AMD build.