My old Dell XPS with Q6600 questions in regard to current gaming

[g335]

Hello

As I am buying the parts to build a new pc to replace my Dell XPS 420 which I thought was dead (was a bad hdd with bad sectors) I am wondering how it stacks up to playing the current games from the past 3 years to the present.

I have the cpu overclocked to 2.9GHZ and I am using 667 ram. I can buy 800 ram which I might.

I have a GTX 560 non Ti in it and still have the original GTS 8600.

How does this set up do in regards to playing games from the past 3 years to the present(with the 560 and the 8600)?

Also how would it do if I did 2D and 3D design and animation production on it?

I upgraded the OS to windows 8 when I replaced the hdd. Its a WD Calvier Black SATA II drive with 32mb cache.

 

[nitrium]

On the CPU side you'll be just fine for all past and current games. My brother has a Q6600 OCed to 3.2 GHz with an HD7950 Boost in it, and there is nothing that doesn't run just fine at 1920x1200 with max settings (Crysis 3 excepted!). The PCIe 1.1 slot that I presume accompanies such an old CPU is probably the weakest thing with regards to gaming performance, with PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 offering ~10% higher fps figures from similar spec hardware.

 

[g335]

On the CPU side you'll be just fine for all past and current games. My brother has a Q6600 OCed to 3.2 GHz with an HD7950 Boost in it, and there is nothing that doesn't run just fine at 1920x1200 with max settings (Crysis 3 excepted!). The PCIe 1.1 slot that I presume accompanies such an old CPU is probably the weakest thing with regards to gaming performance, with PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 offering ~10% higher fps figures from similar spec hardware.

So it is not really a bad machine?

 

[nitrium]

So it is not really a bad machine?

It's just fine. My brother's main criterion for every PC upgrade is to get something that has at least DOUBLE current performance. Really only those ridiculously expensive Intel hexacores (the cheapest is the i7 3930K) achieve that.

 

[simon12]

Both at stock clocks yes the i5 3570K is around double the perfromance of the Q6600, but the 560 is only a fairly basic card (not a bad one of anything) so with the small overclock the Q6600 is fine. If you where getting a 7970 or GTX670 then a CPU upgrade would be needed.

 

[g335]

Best answer selected by g335.