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Wheres the current core2 quad sweet spot?

tezmo

tezmo

tezmo

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Joined
5 Jan 2005
Posts
312
I am thinking around a £100 for four cores to give adobe lightroom a nice little bump, but am a little lost with all the variations. I do not want to overclock, but I suspect there will be a choice given my budget that is obvious to everyone except me....so, gentlemen - where is the sweet spot for four intel cores around a hundred quid at the moment?
 
Well, I'm thinking its the Q8400.

would a 400w OCZ ModXStream be sufficient for an Asus P5Q, a Q8400, 8gigs and one HDD & one optical drive? I am going with onboard gfx at the moment, but in the future may drop in something low powered and passive.....any and all comments much appreciated :)
 
How about a used Q6600. Is an excellent clocker if you want a bit more from it. There must be a few about at around £100.
 
What am I missing out on with the Q8400 precisely, fellas? I know it has the smaller cache, though as I said it will not be overclocked...
 
Q9550 is £172 (unknown stepping), where the Q8400 is fifty quid less for (as I see it) an extra 166mhz, and 12meg L2 instead of 4meg - is it really worth the extra money?
 
4mb of cache cripples the q8400. The q6600 is apt to outperform it.

The q9550 is where it's at. Amazing processor

At the cheaper end, its the q6700 or q6600. However if you can't afford the q9550, buy a dual core
 
Can't see why your not overclocking though as a q6600 will overclock to 3Ghz with no voltage increase on the stock cooler.
 
Forget the q8400, its garbage, try and find a good clocking low vid q6600 on the big auction site, the q9550/9650 will cloock further but they cost quite a bit more, i went from a 3.8ghz q6600 to my current q9550, simply to try one out.
 
Thank you all for your suggestions - there will no doubt be more questions to come ;) Consider the q8400 discounted - its gonna be a 9550 or a 6600 depending on how much cash I can find in the sofa........unless I stumble over a really big bag of cash and decide to go i7 ;) It's very interesting to be re-entering the loop, as it were, after so many years on the periphery.
 
tezmo said:
What am I missing out on with the Q8400 precisely, fellas? I know it has the smaller cache, though as I said it will not be overclocked...
Click to expand...

It's also missing some CPU instruction sets which the other Q6X and Q94/5/6 all have iirc
 
good info again chaps - thank you all :) Your help has directed me along these lines:

As I said before, basically I'm after a new mobo/cpu combo for use with win7 and hackintosh'd with osx. This means gigabyte mobo for osx compatibility. I've drawn up the following three specs:

The cheap option
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3LR
2*Crucial 4GB (2X2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Ballistix Memory
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler
£297.86

Top core2 option
Same as above with Q9550 2.83GHz
£343.05

:eek: i7 Option
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R
Intel Core i7 920
Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Triple Channel i7 Memory Kit
Scythe Mugen 2
£466.03

Given these three options, from Less than three hundred quid, to just over four hundred and fifty, bearing in mind that it is going to be used for lightroom in windows7 and apple aperture in osx, would you gentlemen say there is much to be gained from the more expensive options? Am I gonna notice the difference? I daresay the machine will not be upgraded during its lifespan - likely replaced wholesale - that is indeed what I am doing here....as before, any and all thoughts much appreciated :)
 
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