Gadgetory

it seems every time I put together some kind of interesting CPU or GPU gaming type video the comments section quickly fills up with requests for cue 6600 testing for those of you who don't know or have simply forgotten the core 2 quad q6600 it's an almost ten-year-old Kentfield 65 nanometer processor which as the name suggests boastful caused Ken's field was Intel's first have a quad core architecture and the cue 6600 was the company's first mainstream offering in a cool 530 US dollars upon release out of the box that operated all four cores at 2.4 gigahertz and ran on 266 megahertz front side bus ah the good old days as Intel's first mainstream quad core processor the Q 6600 was incredibly popular and the fact that almost a decade later so many of you are asking for modern benchmarks using it is a testament to this therefore I decided to do some second-hand shopping and pick up a Q 6600 system for as little as possible for around a benchmarking looking on ebay didn't prove particularly useful as Australian selling here seem to think they're crusty old dust infested q 6600 systems are increasing in value as they age despite my best Michael cotton impression town they're dreaming didn't seem to help so I moved on checking local computer forums is where I had the most success and having just missed out on a few Q 6600 rigs that sold for less than $30 dollars I landed on a real gem for 40 Australian dollars which is roughly thirty US I managed to land a Core 2 quad Q 9300 system with 4 gigabytes of memory decent power supply case mechanical storage and inaud geforce gtx 560 TI graphics card the q 90 300 is decent step up from the q 6600 as well this 45 nanometer part codenamed York field 6 M runs on a faster 333 megahertz front side bus so out of the box it offers a bit more of a punch it can also be overclocked to over 3 gigahertz which is handy for netting a bit of extra performance what I wanted to know was is it even worth investing the time it takes to not only locate one of these old systems at a fair price then set it up and of course use it if all you plan on doing is playing games such as League of Legends that were on a potato then yes I suspect the investment will be worth it but what if you have expectations are playing more recent more demanding titles such as overwatch and even Star Wars Battlefront for example can an old Core 2 quad system offer you anything this is what I wanted to find out so I picked up half a dozen popular games including Star Wars Battlefront League of Legends overwatch counter strike global offensive dota 2 and the ever-popular rocket League the Core 2 quad q 9300 system with the geforce gtx 560 TI was tested in the condition i received in indicee what kind of results were achievable without any upgrades the gtx 560 TI was then swapped out for the recently released radiant RX 460 see what kind of headroom there was in the processor in order to do that we also overclocked 2q 9302 3.25 gigahertz to see how hard it could push the RX 416 finally if a comparison sake I ran the same games using the same settings on the RX 460 with it installed in my core i3 and core i7 test rigs I thought this might provide an interesting insight to see how this almost ten-year-old quad-core compares to intel's current range so with that said let's get on with it first up let's get League of Legends out of the way I know this is an insanely popular video game but let's face it the game runs on pretty much anything proving this we find a very playable 49 FPS average on the Q 9300 rig using the gtx 560 TI 1080p using the maximum in-game quality settings throwing the RX 416 didn't really improve performance much that said overclocking the q 9302 3.2 5 gigahertz did boost the performance by almost 30% with the rx 460 when compared to a modern low voltage core i3 system the overclocked 290 300 only delivered around half the performance and the core i7 rig was naturally much faster again still in terms of value for money it's hard for League of Legends gamers to do better especially given this isn't a game that needs extreme frame rates so what about the other massively popular online battle arena game dota 2 the gtx 560 TI did provide playable performance here if only just an average of 36 FPS is playable but we found considerably better performance when using the rx 416 the average frame rate jumped up to 62 fps a massive 72% increase an additional 10% more was also found through overclocking again that's around the performance of a modern core i3 system the q90 300 and GTX 560 Ti combo performed exceptionally well in csgo using the very high quality settings at 1080p along with eight times msaa the system has no trouble exceeding 60 FPS average that's pretty nuts not only that but army with the rx 460 boosts the average framerate to well over 100 fps in over 140 fps once overclocked even when compared to the latest and greatest skylake systems the 290 300 didn't look too bad here my personal favorite is rocket League and I was a bit disappointed with the gtx 560 TI here using the performance quality settings with a a disabled we did average 31 fps though constant frame drops made for a lag experience replacing the GeForce graphics card with the rx 462 wonders for this system not shocked by the performance now with averages in excess of 100 FPS the game is fantastic to play and most importantly lag free I'm not really sure why the GTX 560 T I was so useless here despite a shockingly poor result for the GTX 560 Ti when playing rocket League we found rather decent performance and overwatch the 44 FPS minimum suggests perfectly smooth performance though I have to admit the game was at times quite stuttery overclocking the q90 300 corrected this and with the RX 460 it was perfectly smooth keep in mind my over watched test does feature two full teams of bots so it is very CPU intensive so how about a modern triple-a title them well unfortunately playable performance just wasn't achievable with the q90 300 and GTX 560 Ti combo in with the low quality settings which I did try swapping out the 560 Ti for the RX 460 solved the performance issues in the game jumped up to a playable 46 FPS average overclocking the Q 90 300 boosted performance by massive 35% and we were now looking at an average of 62 FPS which wasn't a great deal slower than a core i3 test system in fact with no cpu bottleneck at all the RX 460 is only capable of 69 FPS it's been some time since I've games on a Core 2 quad system so if anything the experience is interesting the game is on seriously tight budgets the dual quad core systems can offer a decent gaming experience especially if you get lucky with the GPU how much of a bargain the Core 2 quad computer would be comes down to not only luck but also the second-hand market in your region where you look is also a huge factor an easy way out looking on eBay wasn't very successful for me but you might have more luck I found local trading posts and computer forums to be by far the best sources for cheap computer parts and systems so make sure you look around to try and find the best buying options in your part of the world the q90 300 was surprisingly capable though the geforce gtx 560 TI had its ups and downs delivered acceptable performance in games such as overwash and League of Legends while the sucks badly in battlefront and rocket League I mean the q90 300 with the RX 460 solved any performance issues I was having a really brought this system to life alternatives to the $110 Radeon rx4 60 will be something like the r7 260x or even HD 77 90 likely I've seen GTX 580 and HD 7970 cards selling for as little as $50 so there are certainly some cheap options out there of course if you can land an even faster GPU then that's even better just make sure you overclock the q90 300 processor on that note you'll ideally require an aftermarket our style CPU cooler if you want to push much past three gigahertz on the overclock in the end we've taken a good look at how the Core 2 quad q 9300 handles some of today's most popular games using an old GPU along with the modern budget option the idea of this video isn't to show you how to purchase such a system for 30 US dollars but rather inform you that it is possible and this is the resulting performance the hope is with a clear indication of the expected performance you can make a much more informed purchase here in Australia we're paying a little over $80 for the pentium g 40 400 processor alone so I feel paying up to a hundred bucks for a Core 2 quad system with a decent GPU is still very much worth it unfortunately on eBay prices seem to start around 120 dollars for complete systems while those with decent GPU started around 150 dollars it took me a few weeks of bidding bartering and begging before I found the right system at the right price so if that's something you aren't willing to do then budget second-hand shopping probably isn't the right option for you what do you guys think of this system let me know in the comments I'm your host Matt as always and I'll see you guys next time youtubers like me depend on your support to continue improving the quality and content of our videos to support the channel directly consider becoming a patron to also get access to a heap of cool rewards and exclusive giveaways also don't forget you can check prices and buy the products I looked at in this video through the Amazon links in the video description below thank you kindly for supporting me and the hardware unbox channel it means a lot to me and I really do appreciate it and in return I'll continue to work as hard as I can to keep producing the content you enjoy