I built my own gaming rig a few years ago with an FX-8350 that honestly is still a bit overkill for what I use the machine for (primarily gaming). My brother wanted to get into PC gaming as well, but really doesn't have the means to afford much of anything. I work at a local computer repair shop/ refurbisher, and was able to pick up an old HP HPE-137C and a used HX 650 PSU for him for free. I slapped the bigger PSU and my old GTX 570 in there. It has an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 @ 2.5GHz. I am going to add another 4GB of RAM to it for a total of 8GB RAM, and probably a small capacity SSD boot drive.
So far all I have run is a few benchmarks with it, like Unigine Heaven, Firestrike etc. They seem to run reasonably well. I really couldn't pass up the offer for a free machine with four physical cores, but the Core 2 Quad is an aging CPU. I guess my question is, is the Core 2 Quad fast enough to run most major titles? He mostly plays League of Legends now, but that's on an old Dual Core MacBook and that's about all it can play. I am hoping he will be able to get into more graphically intensive games with this machine, like GTA V, Just Cause 3, Mad Max, Battlefront etc. I am planning to update the GTX 770 in my rig whenever the new AMD/ Nvidia cards come out, so it may end up with a 770 in it as well, assuming I can get the airflow good enough in the case.
Side note: It also looks like I can get a faster Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 3.0GHz at work for around $50 for a little bit faster CPU.
you would most likely want that faster chip. as for how depending on the processor is gaming, it depends greatly on the game. some games really rely on the cpu and others dont. i think the common trend right now is more workload on the gpu. might want to research specifically into what games you want it to run
It entirely depends on the game. Some games pretty much don't care what CPU is in it as long as there actually is one, others are so CPU dependent that they shudder to a halt if you don't have a rocketship CPU in there.
Okay, that last one may be an overstatement, but plenty of games out there are influenced quite a bit by the CPU. If I remember correctly, many MMOs, MOBAs, many Source games, and some FPS games rely a fair amount on the CPU. On the other hand there are games out there where you wouldn't see any difference between a dual core at 2.5 GHz and a quad core hyperthreaded CPU at 3.5 GHz, especially if the GPU isn't a super double extra mega highend GPU. Heck, I'd say that just in the last year or two have games really started to use more than two cores, yet quad cores have been out for quite a while now.
The whole thing about building a decent gaming rig is basicly all about balancing the parts. You dont have to buy the latest and greatest persee. But what you should do is looking at parts that fit well together. Cpu and gpu are both still very important for gaming. You want both to be as balanced as possible, especialy if you aim to play at resolutions like 1080p or 1440p.
few key questions you should ask yourself.
which games you like to play?
which resolution you want to play them?
how much are you able to spend?
With these 3 questions you can look at what parts would fit the best to your needs.
Yeah it mainly depends on the quality of what youre running the game on, big things change when you turn thing from ultra to high or medium, and from what hes used to, he may even be just fine on medium if hes playing a awesome fun game, which he can now do! I can't think of many games where @3.0 you're dead in the water...
As far as CPU dependent, all I can think off off the top of my head is starcraft and games like battlefield that take out entire graphical processes depending on how many cores you have.
However my favorite motto is that we are playing videogames, thus the videocard is naturally more important.
Upon quick research it seems 3.5 is that sweet spot for surely running "big" games well. and about 3.2-3.3 is like stock box recommended. So I guess youre only about .2-.3 under. Which as I thought.. 3.0 aint too bad.
Look hes going from just being able to play LoL to possibly most high-maintenance games turned down a bit to most "normal" games just fine. I'd be ecstatic if I was him.
The core 2's time has come and gone. I don't think there exists a core two that can run a game of ksp with any ships bigger than a few hundreds parts without lagging a lot.
With ddr3 now starting to become more and more legacy and ddr4 taking over , ddr2 just isn't good enough anymore.
I could see the machine being more of a gta 4 pc rather than gta 5 if that makes any sense. It'll play the crysis games and all sort of older call of dutys and battlefields and so on , but new high end releases are going to be a medium and low experience.
idk , I played minecraft on a q6600 and the difference between a q6600 and an old i7 930 is like night and day. thats JUST mine craft , and the i7 930 is pretty slow by todays standards too.
Imagine the difference between the best 775 cpu and even just a midrange modern cpu. There's simple games like scrap mechanic that just murder the cpu power.
yeah 60fps at 1440p isn't much of an ask in 2016. maybe on a console , but not a pc
we're talking cpu power anyway , not gpu. If your cpu is slow , you can run a game at any res and the cpu will still lag.
Games that kids play , are still cpu intensive thanks to awesome physics which is what makes them fun. Games like besiege and ksp and scrap mechanic and cities skylines. all not that graphically impressive , but super easy to max out any modern cpu.
There's no reason to use a ten year old socket 775 system when there's plenty of newer socketed system being sold for chump change
It does depend entirely on the game. The thing is gaming is changing. It's not just MOBA's, Sims and RTS's that utilize the CPU a lot anymore, even though that used go be the case. More and more often I'm seeing games like metal gear solid 5, gtav, assassins Creed, witcher 3 all commonly using 70%-80% of all 4 cores of my CPU. My CPU being a 4690k running at 4.4 GHz. Obviously settings make a difference here, but it gives you an idea of how things are changing as gaming barely used to touch the CPU
Paired with a 770 a 2.5ghz core2quad will be quite the limitation... The fastest core2quad you can get would be of great benefit but $50 for a 3ghz core2quad is just too much. Even with the best one you can find that CPU is doomed to be useless (for new titles) in a couple years, it's already limping along as it is.
A bump up to the QX9650 will reap some benefits from gaming purely from the higher clock speed.
Is a Core 2 Quad a great way to build a budget PC now? Yes. It will play any game still. Pair it with a midrange or older higher end like the GTX570, you can't go wrong. But, you have to lower the expectation. I run a GTX 480. I got it for 50 bucks a year ago. You have to keep in mind the limitations. I can max pretty much any game on 1080p other than the newest of new games, but I don't play those games so I don't need anything more right now. It is the same with Core 2. Don't expect miracles and don't expect it to compete with CPUs that are 5 years newer.
Exactly. I know the limitations of the 570 as I used it for about 3 years before getting my 770. The good news is his monitor is not full 1080P, so that lessens the strain on the system a little bit.
Q6600 still has plenty of life in it, people tend to over exaggerate on what processor you need. Like people are saying, just match it up with a mid range card, and it can handle most things you throw at it.
For my experience the type of games that requires more CPU power are games with a lot of character on the scene at the same time, like MMORPG. I jumped from a Q6600 not overclocked (you know crappy HP motherboard with no settings for that) to a 4790K @4.4GHz and my framerate in GW2 skyrocketed from about 30 FPS not always stable to 60 FPS (V-Synced) 99% of the time (the game engine can't handle 1000+ charaters on the same scene @60 FPS no matter what CPU you throw at it). Something like GTA V or Battlefield 3 multiplayer 64 vs 64 will probably act the same way as an MMORPG. Also games with a lot of physics effects and destructable objects need more CPU power, but not as much as you need to render 1000+ characters on screen at the same time.
