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Core 2 Quad vs Core i7

gazfocus

gazfocus

gazfocus

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Ok, I know this has probably been asked hundreds of times before, but I am in the process of gathering parts to build a new computer as my 'work' machine.

So far, I have Power Supply, Hard Drive, Graphics card, Case, and DVDRW's, however I am stuck on which CPU to get so can't buy CPU, Motherboard or Ram at the moment so need your help....please.

What CPU should I go for?
Are there any huge advantages in having a Core i7 over a Core 2 Quad at the same clock speed? The Q8400 is about £80 cheaper than the i7 920 2.66GHz. - On a side note, what does the Q9400 have over the Q8400 besides an extra 2MB cache?

Should I go for an E5200 or something and wait for the i7's to go down a bit?

I will be using the computer for a variety of things from general office tasks to web development (including image editing in Photoshop) and light video editing.

Can someone please offer advice? Thanks
 
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I personally wouldnt go for an i7 for that, as it's ridiculous amounts more powerful than you need. There isn't that big a price difference in it, and I daresay someone is going to optimistically shout 'future proof' in the near future.

Budget? This http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-029-OE is ridiculously quick for 200 quid, but has nothing on an i7 system.

From quad core to i7, the processor changes from two c2d on one die to a native quad core. The i7 does intelligent things with cache and benefits from an onboard memory controller, so is quicker clock for clock than the older quad core. It also does hyper-threading, which offers an advantage while multitasking (it uses the cpu more efficiently, so can handle more things at once but runs hotter). DDR3 costs more but offers bandwidth advantages over DDR2. I'm not moving to i7, because I'm never likely to try to do 8 things at once :)
 
If I'd build a new machine now I'd go for a i7 rig. Would cost you more but will last you longer and the D0 steppings overclocking well from the sounds of it at the momment.
 
Thanks for a great reply :)

As for being more powerful than I need...I see your point but I'm quite an impatient person when it comes to waiting for computers to do things. I recently built a friend a system with a Q6600 (I used to have an E6600) and I even find that slow on occasions, although that may be due to the fact he only has 2GB Ram.

I would ideally like a quad core (for the times I do video editing) but then I am likely to either switch to Macs at some point towards the end of the year/early 2010 or build a better system around that time.

Would the E5200 with 8GB Ram and Vista Ultimate 64bit be a REALLY good system for the money? (I already have Vista so CPU and Ram will cost about £120 plus a motherboard off the Members Market).
 
Anything that is both demanding and multithreaded will love quad cores. As for being generally impatient with computers, I'm the same. Something to bear in mind is that for programs loading and the like, the hard drive limits the speed of the computer. I'm on a quad core at the moment, and the difference between windows running off a hard drive and off an ocz vertex is astonishing. Keeping the system balanced is important, and vertex + quad core feels like neither is holding the other back.

On that note, e5200 and 8gb of ram is probably a bad call. That much ram with a slow processor looks lopsided to me. e7*** with 4gb is likely to be quicker, and a q6600 with 4gb definitely would be. Are you overclocking this? I've gone from 8gb down to 4gb in the interests of making overclocking less northbridge limited, and will stay on 4gb until I move to i7 in a couple of years.

Potentially opening a massive can of worms, but why mac? I use windows because I am forced to by the cad work I do, are there video editing things out there that require a mac? If the reason is usability/security/dislike of m$ I'd recommend building your own system and running linux on it
 
Thanks again JonJ678...never thought of it being lopsided. With an E5200, my intention would definately be to overclock it. Would 8GB still be a problem? I think, the more I think about it, I would prefer a cheaper option for now until I have the money to build a real 'beast'. I have just tried uploading a load of files to my web server and my PC crippled and the FTP software crashed (couldn't even switch from the FTP software to Firefox).

Why a Mac? Call it personal preference I guess...I dunno, I've always liked them and yeah the security, etc is an advantage but I think it's just me being a snob lol. I am just finishing uni and during my course we've been using Linux (I'm an IT Student) and I don't think I could use it as a full time OS. I actually like a lot of things about Windows which is why I've not totally switched to Mac yet - Did have a Macbook but sold it and gone back to using my Dell.
 
8gb is never much of a problem in itself, its when you ask too much of the motherboard that things become difficult. fsb is coming to its limits (hence i7), so if you go for quad + high fsb + 8gb ram it isn't happy. If you go for a dual core, that stresses the nb a lot less so it should clock almost as far with 8gb as with 4. As always, ymmv. My point was more that with a slow processor more ram isn't likely to help.

Good shout on clocking it, and probably good call on staying cheaper for a bit. DDR3 is now pretty cheap, but X58 motherboards still quite expensive. Heavily overclocked e5200 or better dual core would be my advice, along with looking into an ssd for the os. If the choice is e5200/4gb/ssd or e8400/8gb id definitely recommend the former.

I've played with osx a bit. To me it looks like linux customised heavily in a way I dont approve of, ls / shouldnt produce a folder called Documents in my eyes. I'll customise my own copy of unix instead. Windows is pretty, and has programs on it I need. Sadly it breaks rather too easily for comfort, right now I'm trying to recover a vista partition thats gone awol and without warning. Operating systems shouldn't self destruct :(

As this is almost a 'spec me' thread, I'll suggest P5Q pro, e5200, 4gb of 800mhz ocz blade (only 40 quid for some reason, bargain). 220 quid for the bundle, add on a sunbeam cooler if needed. Long way cheaper than i7 and should overclock beautifully.

SSD obviously not cheap, a 30gb vertex will set you back 120 quid. With regards the future, I've got one 30gb vertex now. When I build a better system, I'll get another one or two and raid 0 them. If you cant fit windows on 30gb (I think vista eats 20gb or so somehow) then unfortunately they start to be very expensive, but then XP and ubuntu fit on 30gb quite happily
 
gazfocus said:
Should I go for an E5200 or something and wait for the i7's to go down a bit?
Click to expand...

i7's won't fall by any apreciable amount, there Intels enthusiast platform & will allways carry a price premium, the i5 due later this year on the other hand should come in cheaper as its Intels mainstream platform.
 
I was all set to buy an E5200 and clock it to 4GHz but I've just seen a Q6600 for £95 and wondered if that would be my better option? What do you think??
 
Q6600s will do around 3.5ghz but the extra two cores will help if you multi-task or use pro photo/video apps.
 
I think what he means is that if you are just surfing the web, using office applications, viewing media or moving about files the extra CPU speed will not be felt. In such situations, the new RAM and SSD would open up bottlenecks caused by these components.

But if you start playing games, editing images/video or any other CPU based tasks, you will certainly see a difference.
 
I'm still using a P4 3ghz (:o) so i7 is definitely what I'm aiming for. It might be more than I need but I've got a little cash to burn and I'm intrigued to see what a big difference it'll be upgrading from such an out-of-date CPU. :D I think if you're going to have to buy a new motherboard anyway and cash isn't a big issue you might as well go for it.
 
Thanks everyone for the useful comments. I have decided to go for the Q6600 and overclock it as much as possible and then save a little for an SSD.
 
Good shout, I'm pleased to have gone from dual core to quad at similar clock speeds. The ssd will make an amazing difference, highly recommended :)
 
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