Couple of Qs

Frame352

Frame352

Frame352

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23 Jun 2007
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Hi guys (and gals if applicable)

I'm almost ready to order the parts for my new rig. It will be my first full home build, although I've upgraded previous comps now and again. The pc will be used mainly for gaming, with a bit of cd ripping, interwebbing etc for good measure. I know what the majority of components are going to be, but I'm stuck deciding on a cpu and mobo (the main bits, aye!).

Basically, I'll be buying after the July 22 price cuts, which according to the guys here at OCUK, will put the E6600 and Q6600 at more or less the same price. I had originally budgeted for the E6600, but now I'm wondering if, given the same price, the Q6600 would be the better bet, with an eye on a little future proofing?

I checked out both cpus over at Tom's hardware, and in terms of gaming performance, they're pretty comparable on yesterday's and today's games. Given that, would the Q6600 be the one to go for, so that some of tomorrow's games will be catered for?

As for the mobo, I'm going with a P35 board, again with an eye on possible future upgrades, and this is the one I'm leaning towards. Is it a good choice? Any thoughts, feedback, comments, or general flaming are most welcome :D
 
Q6600 if you can afford it, by all means. For tomorows games it will be a big improvement over the E6600. Doubling the number of cores surly can't be bad thing, you can disable 2 of the extra cores and it runs exactly the same as an E6600 anyway.

That is indeed a very nice motherboard, it has a nice BIOS too and will support DDR3.

I would highly recommend posting your whole spec and it will be taken apart by some of the guys here, rest assured whatever you are specced from OcUK's members will be absolutly the best setup you can get for your budget and requirements.
 
The first question i would ask would be will you be doing any overclocking?

If you are The Q6600 is fine, since you could probably clock it to 3GHZ. Thats the best chip to go for, no question about it.

Though if you wont be overclocking, i would not go for the Q6600, i would go for a E6850. Since games will benefit from a faster processor more than 4 cores at the moment. In the future of course games will be optimized for 4 cores but by then the Quad 3GHZ chips will be so much lower in price and 4 cores aren't really needed just yet.

Theirs a certain amount of people going for a Quad because its a Quad. They immediate think because it has 4 cores its instantly faster than anything about, thats only true if you run applications that actually use all 4 cores.

If your not and only running a few applications at a time you would benefit more from a faster dual core chip.
 
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Completely agree with the above. Go with the Q6600 as long as your prepared for some overclocking. Motherboard is a great choice, allows for DDR3 RAM in the future, as i'm sure you know. Do however post the rest of your spec so we can have a look.
 
Hi guys, and thanks for the feedback.

Okay, the rest of the components I am leaning towards so far are;

Corsair HX 620W
2GB Geil RAM
320MB 8800 GTS
Samsung 400GB HD
Samsung Optical Drive
Noctua CPU Cooler
Xtreme Gamer
Lian-Li PC-7+

I'm allowing myself a budget of £900, give or take, and that includes p&p. I already have a monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, and headset that I'm very happy with. The only other item then, would be the OS, which I haven't decided on yet.

As for overclocking, yes, that will definitely be on the agenda!

And I understand what you're saying stickroad. It's just that on July 22, the E6600 and Q6600 will be almost identically priced, and perform more or less equally in games. I'm not interested in a quad core cpu just for the sake of it, only if I'll see extra benefit further down the road, and only if it is indeed at no extra cost over the E6600. Bah, I didn't explain that very well, but hope you got what I meant.

Thanks again for all the replies and feedback. Tis very much appreciated!
 
Thanks for posting the spec, overall it looks good. However, the PSU is a little over the top, the 520W Corsair will handle that spec just fine - even if you were to include a quad core CPU. If your going to be overclocking, then you should consider the Crucial Ballistix RAM. Although it is slower at stock than the GeIL, it will clock way above and beyond, and of course because of the slower stock speed it is cheaper. You could buy the PC2-6400C4 variety if your after peace of mind - though of course it is a little more expensive. Otherwise a great spec you got yourself there! :D
 
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