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CPU choice - E6850 vs Q6600 - advice pls

NickOw

NickOw

NickOw

Associate
Joined
1 Aug 2006
Posts
71
Hi Guys and Gals.

I currently have an Intel Core2duo 2.13 E6400 processor running on an Asus P5B Deluxe board with a Tuniq Tower 120 cooler.

With recent generous gifts of cash I am now in the position to update the CPU for something a little better.

I was thinking about either:

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)

or

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 "LGA775 Conroe" 3.00GHz (1333FSB)

I know the P5B is an older board now but after having much updated the BIOS it is meant to support FSB1333 and quadcore processors ok.

So my question is really which CPU should I have a stab with next?

The machine is mainly used for gaming (75% time), video processing (20% time) and work (meh, 5% time) so would it be better to go with a faster dualcore (3Ghz) or the Quadcore at 2.4 and overclock it? Was thinking the dual as not much supports quad well yet (games anyway) but wanted your opinions. I have been overclocking my E6400 to 2.8 but recently had SATA problems and lost a drive so not so confident about my overclocking skills......

Sorry if its been asked before, I did try searching but with little success (as ever lol).

Thanks in advance for your input :)

System: Core2 duo E6400, P5B deluxe, 2 Gig Crucial PC2-6400 Ballistix RAM, XFX Geforce 7900GTX Extreme, NEC 21inch widescreen 1680x1050.
 
thanks for the advice, unfortunately i dont get time away from work to look over multiple sites and always buy from Overclockers so came here for some help, tend to look upon the people here as helpful and well informed. Not a problem, even though I had searched, the answer it seems is a simple "makes little difference, buy what you prefer". Though personally I dont see flame wars happening on this forum (which is a welcome change on the net), so of course didnt realise this topic could potentially start one...my mistake :)
 
okay lets kick a war off :p

if 75% of the time your gonna game, get a dual core, get the E6850 or if you have patience buy yourself one of the E8000 series chips. Not much point going for a quad if your not encoding that much.
 
I say don't bother with the E6850. If you're gonna be gaming and hence don't need the quad, get the E6750 and save yourself £40 or so and put it towards something like the GPU. If you are going to actually use apps with which use a quad, then get the quad.
 
I went e6750 as I am a gamer and surf the web. Guaranteed performance and no faffing or worrying about cooling or a 'poor clocker' with the risk of overclocking.

By the time you need quadcore for gaming you would have upgraded 2-3 times by then.

Quadcore if you are a serious multi-tasker, not that a fast dualcore will let you down anyhow
 
I went Q6600 SLACR and currently have it at 3Ghz without altering the vcore and only using a artic freezer pro 7 to cool it. These run cold and fast.

Go with this and save yourself £8 over the E6850.
 
I went with an E6850 myself when they were first released. Then everyone went through a phase of bashing us E6850 owners and basically calling us stupid. Personally, I'm quite happy with mine. Got to 3.8Ghz quite easy and by the time enough games/apps take proper advantage of quad core, it'll be time to replace mine.

In your situation though, I would probably go with the quad. My reasoning being in games, the higher FPS you would get from the E6850 wouldn't really be noticeable but with video encoding, the decrease in encoding time would be.
 
Or just stick with your E6400? Have you tried overclocking it? If you can clock it to 3Ghz, which is easy with your mobo and cooler, then it's not far off an E6850. Otherwise go Q6600.
 
Keep with your 6400 and overclock it.

My 6400 I had reached 3.8ghz

13hrs3.jpg


Plus the P5B is a great clocker for these chips. 3.4ghz would be a gimme I would have thought.
 
Another vote for clocking that E6400 and putting the money towards a better graphics card. Or if your into flight sims, buy a TrackIR4 Pro ;)

BTW and please correct me if wrong chaps, from my experience in overclocking related to performance in games, you get about a 1 frame per second increase for every 100mhz you clock a CPU...
 
easyrider said:
Keep with your 6400 and overclock it.

My 6400 I had reached 3.8ghz

Plus the P5B is a great clocker for these chips. 3.4ghz would be a gimme I would have thought.
Click to expand...

WHAT !!!! am I reading this properly, instead of bashing, he's recommending dual core over Quad, someone save this thread PLEASE :D
 
I've just upgraded from a 6400 to a quad in my matx system. I had the 6400 clocked to 3.2, and found it rather hot at those speeds, even using watercooling. Since putting the quad in the same system, it now runs at 3.6 and under prime never goes over 55 on any core.

Even the quad at 3.2 beats the 6400 on anything I have tried at the same speed. SO I would say G0 quad.
 
Stick with the 6400 and get it clocked. Spend a bit of money on a decent cooler and watch it fly. If you game 75% of the time and do little or no encoding then you will see absolutely no improvement. Believe me, i know.
 
wow thanks very much for all the advice guys. Looks like a good option right now is to keep what I have and overclock it. Will give it a go, have a tuniq cooler on it and got up to 2.8 with it but seemed to have SATA problems and cant see where to limit that from the fsb. Anyway is a different topic lol , thanks for the advice. When I get around to buying a new CPU it might as well be when the newer intels come out :)
 
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