E2180 or Q6600 for another 1.5 years?

[kppanic]

Everything else equal, (4GB RAM, P35 mobo, HD4870/comparable card)

would an OC'd Q6600 be a better choice for a system to hold out for about 1.5 years (time until the new mainstream Nehalem hits the market)
or would it be better to get an E2160 and OC it to hell?

The price is:
Q6600 CAD$234.99 +13%tax = $265.54 (£132.41 as of 06 jun 08)

E2180 CAD$77.99 +13%tax = $88.13 (£43.93 as of 06 jun 08)

Wondering if I would end up having to upgrade the E2180 mid way for performance issues... It will be used for gaming mainly.

Worded differently, if I were to get an E2180 and decide to juice it for 1.5 years, would I be pulling my hair out of my sockets? I heard Q6600 is pretty much unbeatable when it comes to performance, as it can take almost anything we throw at it. I am not interested in the top FPS department.

It's only an extra ~£90 or so, but I really am looking for a budget build on this end - estimated allocated budget is at CAD$1000 (£500 approx)

Oh, and the Q6600 has the number (BX80562Q6600) beside it, I can only guess this is the serial number. Is this batch a good OC candidate?

Cheers in advance!

 

[mangobreeder]

q6600

end thread

 

[Vir]

E7200

 

[kppanic]

q6600

end thread

Thanks.

 

[kppanic]

E7200

Price for E7200 is $149.99 + 13%tax or £81.64

If i were to get this, would I need 6400 RAM or 5300 would be sufficient on a P35 mobo?

Sorry for the very "noobish" questions but my current system is a P4 Prescott 3.6... So when i say E2180 or E7200 or Q6600 I have absolutely no frame of reference for the speed comparison. I can only go by what others say, and I've heard that E2180 OC'd to about 3.0~3.2GHz pretty much does everything well incl games, and in my mind I say to myself "why get a Q or an E7xxx or E8xxx when the cheapest E2xxx does everything good?"

Cheers in advance.

 

[Trunks9486]

if you plan on getting a quad nehalem then a e8400/e8200 is a good choice
overclock it to 4GHz and watch the games fly!

 

[pastymuncher]

Price for E7200 is $149.99 + 13%tax or £81.64

If i were to get this, would I need 6400 RAM or 5300 would be sufficient on a P35 mobo?

Sorry for the very "noobish" questions but my current system is a P4 Prescott 3.6... So when i say E2180 or E7200 or Q6600 I have absolutely no frame of reference for the speed comparison. I can only go by what others say, and I've heard that E2180 OC'd to about 3.0~3.2GHz pretty much does everything well incl games, and in my mind I say to myself "why get a Q or an E7xxx or E8xxx when the cheapest E2xxx does everything good?"

Cheers in advance.

Any of those above will absolutely demolish a P4 but what's going to be good for another 1.5yrs or so is a bit trickier. I have been playing with a E2180 this week and got it to 3.6Ghz prime stable. It is a fantastic little chip and flies at that speed. Get it to 3Ghz and above and it's a very capable cpu. Will it still be good in 1.5yrs? Probably.

The E7200 is the favourite "budget" clocker at the moment. Personally i don't call almost £90 budget but that's just me. It is a good cpu though and has more cache than the E2180 although it's twice the price. It is more likely to still be able to cope in 1.5yrs time though.

The Q6600 is one of Intels first Quads and can clock to 3.4-3.6Ghz. Mine went to 3.8Ghz. If you do lots of multitasking or use multithreaded aps such as video and photo editing software then a quad would be a safe bet. If gaming however it would be a total waste as barely any games make use of it. It is also a lot hotter running and a lot more power hungry than the other two.


PC2-5300 will not be good enough for the E7200 or Q6600. You could probably get away with it for the E2180 if you have a motherboard with a decent choice of memory multiplier settings. 6400 would be better though.

 

[kppanic]

Any of those above will absolutely demolish a P4...

Haha I was just waiting for someone to say that

...but what's going to be good for another 1.5yrs or so is a bit trickier. I have been playing with a E2180 this week and got it to 3.6Ghz prime stable. It is a fantastic little chip and flies at that speed. Get it to 3Ghz and above and it's a very capable cpu. Will it still be good in 1.5yrs? Probably.

The E7200 is the favourite "budget" clocker at the moment. Personally i don't call almost £90 budget but that's just me. It is a good cpu though and has more cache than the E2180 although it's twice the price. It is more likely to still be able to cope in 1.5yrs time though.

The Q6600 is one of Intels first Quads and can clock to 3.4-3.6Ghz. Mine went to 3.8Ghz. If you do lots of multitasking or use multithreaded aps such as video and photo editing software then a quad would be a safe bet. If gaming however it would be a total waste as barely any games make use of it. It is also a lot hotter running and a lot more power hungry than the other two.


PC2-5300 will not be good enough for the E7200 or Q6600. You could probably get away with it for the E2180 if you have a motherboard with a decent choice of memory multiplier settings. 6400 would be better though.

Cheers for an awesome response;

I am not that knowledgeable or adventurous in the OC - I would def. do some easy OC'ing like multiplier change but changing volts or adding water cooling are out of my reach.

I would not be able to get E2180 running @ 3.6GHz. Best I could do is 3.0 or maybe if I get lucky with the hardware 3.2 max.

As for E7200, I think I'd get the E2180 and drop a little more on the GPU if possible.

Q6600... I think my next upgrade path will be mid-range quad Nehalem in 1.5 years, so I don't think I'd be getting that.

I am trying to gauge performance in terms of Crysis. Although I've never even attempted to download the demo and try it on my Prescott (forgive my sin) but I think in about a year if I have a gaming rig that could decently run Crysis at 75% detail I'd have a pretty good system considering how little money I am trying to spend. I am more confident after your answer that E2180 will be able to pull this off with perhaps next gen graphics card such as HD4870.

Unless I am horribly mistaken, I am ready to down my money on:
E2180
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X4096-6400C5
HD4870
Corsair TX Series TX650W.

until Q4 2009.

 

[ukbrainstew]

An E2180 clocked @ 3ghz+ handles Crysis just fine, the game is GPU bottlenecked and you're not going to see massive gains with a better CPU.

I have an E2180 clocked to 3.2ghz and couldn't be happier, it should manage a year and a half of gaming just fine, as there's nothing currently on the horizon as taxing as Crysis. Alan Wake is said to be optimised for quad cores yet its going to run on the 360's highly stripped down PowerPC Tricore just fine, so a much more powerful Core2 Duo will manage it more than admirably.

 

[J.D]

I don't have a need for a quad. I only play games and surf mainly. I do the odd bit of work that would enjoy an extra 2 cores but it's very minimal so I just went for this CPU for my gaming. First boot was 3.2Ghz after XP was installed (first Intel CPU since PentiumIII 450Mhz ). Simple. I can even run at 3.5ghz but I've not done an 8-12 hour stability test as I'm happy at 3.2Ghz for now. My games are running fine and I'm pretty happy. Crysis runs just as good on my machine as it does on my friends machine who has the E6850 @ 3.6Ghz and the same card (in sig).

However, what is the resolution you intend on gaming at?. If it is 1280x1024 or below then I'd maybe think about the E7200 as the extra CPU speed would help such a low resolution. If 1680x1050 then the 3-3.2Ghz you are expecting from the E2180 should suffice. Please have a mess with the voltages up to 1.5Ghz with the E2180 as it's all about heat, these CPU's can take 1.5v no problem.

I'm happy with my E2180 but if games start needing more cores then I'll have to get a quad. Simple as that. Only UT3 and Supreme Commander (that I can think of) will show an increase with quad core. I've not played Supreme Commander on this rig but I do know that UT3 runs great . Even the brand new Grid racing title from Codemasters runs flawlessly with every setting maxed out at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 (only had it two days).

Go for it and it enjoy unless you have a low resolution. Then the E7200 and the greater clock speed might be the better option although a little more expensive.

 

[kppanic]

...

However, what is the resolution you intend on gaming at?. If it is 1280x1024 or below then I'd maybe think about the E7200 as the extra CPU speed would help such a low resolution. If 1680x1050 then the 3-3.2Ghz you are expecting from the E2180 should suffice. Please have a mess with the voltages up to 1.5Ghz with the E2180 as it's all about heat, these CPU's can take 1.5v no problem.

...

I don't get this part: if 3.0 - 3.2GHz E2180 is ok for 1680x1050+ res, wouldn't it handle 1280x1024 nicely too? Extra cache/speed would def. help in any situation, but why would E7200 be especially useful in low res gaming? I have 2 19" LCDs but come the Christmas time it'll get to be 22". So i'm guessing 1680x1050 gaming for me.

I will try 1.5v max and prime it for 24/7 stability. In other cases, I'd say "ahh if I blow this CPU I'll just get another one" but that defeats the whole purpose of going budget to try and save money

I'm happy with my E2180 but if games start needing more cores then I'll have to get a quad. Simple as that. Only UT3 and Supreme Commander (that I can think of) will show an increase with quad core. I've not played Supreme Commander on this rig but I do know that UT3 runs great . Even the brand new Grid racing title from Codemasters runs flawlessly with every setting maxed out at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 (only had it two days).

Go for it and it enjoy unless you have a low resolution. Then the E7200 and the greater clock speed might be the better option although a little more expensive.

Glad to know that high-res gaming is not only viable but actually very enjoyable on a [email protected]+ GHz. Hopefully HD4870 is within the speculated price range and if it does as good as an 8800GTX, I can't lose!

 

[queamin]

It is the 1.5 years is the big point for me,we all hope that quads start to get used more fully(maxed out) in games at moment a lot of the games like the faster dual core but will that change yes maybe but when ?.
I thought quads would start to coming into their own this year but there is still not a lot between them if i was going to buy a cpu now and keep it 1.5 years i would more likely get a quad,for 6 months or so i get a cheaper dual core and clock the nuts of it.

 

[queamin]

I want a quad myself but resisting trying to wait until next year for the new chips from intel or amd keep telling myself just get a new videocard to replace the 320 but i had my finger over the buy button so many times haha.

 

[pastymuncher]

A E2180 will be fine for even 1600x1200 i would say. Crysis is gpu limited and i saw hardly any increase in fps between 3ghz and 3.6ghz on my E6600. In fact even a 4.5ghz E8500 made very little difference.

 

[easyrider]

Q6600 or Q9450

 

[Talrinys]

Go for the Q6600, it's plenty for current games and will be better supported in the future

 

[J.D]

I don't get this part: if 3.0 - 3.2GHz E2180 is ok for 1680x1050+ res, wouldn't it handle 1280x1024 nicely too? Extra cache/speed would def. help in any situation, but why would E7200 be especially useful in low res gaming? I have 2 19" LCDs but come the Christmas time it'll get to be 22". So i'm guessing 1680x1050 gaming for me.

I will try 1.5v max and prime it for 24/7 stability. In other cases, I'd say "ahh if I blow this CPU I'll just get another one" but that defeats the whole purpose of going budget to try and save money

Well, when a member here at OCUK was benchmarking with 3dmark06 @ 1280x1024, he was still seeing the CPU being a bottleneck with a QX9650 @ 4.5 - 4.7Ghz. I know that doesn't translate into gaming performance but if some of that were to be true then I was just stating the the E7200 at a higher capable speed and doing more work per cycle than the 65nm Intel CPU would have been better suited for gaming on 1280x1024 and below.

I've yet to kill a CPU and I've gave my older CPU's 1.7v trying to get the most out of it that I can. I wouldn't run at that voltage 24/7 lol but it's ok for a couple of benchies. I doubt you could kill that CPU but don't go and try to prove me wrong .

Glad to know that high-res gaming is not only viable but actually very enjoyable on a [email protected]+ GHz. Hopefully HD4870 is within the speculated price range and if it does as good as an 8800GTX, I can't lose!

Aye, very enjoyable. I will admit this though. I've just installed Assassins Creed (great game) and @ 1600x1200 with everything on max (multisampling is greyed out though ), my CPU hits 100% utilization. The game still runs great and is in no way unplayable but it's just something I wanted to point out although quite pointless .

 

[RizlaKing]

If you got the money to buy a quad it seems a no brainer to me buy the quad. Yes i know some on here will say oh but nothing uses four cores and at the minute they are right but what a kicker it will be when that first game comes out and having a quad is a requirement or as more likely performance is so much better on the quad. Old thing of better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it. As for the other old chestnut of "something newer is coming soon" there is always something newer coming soon so you could wait forever live for the day and have fun.

 

[hedgey]

quad is still a waste of time. e2180 until Nehalem.

 

[-iceblade^]

i have a 2160 at 3ghz and hit about 30fps constant using the CCC mod in Crysis. On an 8800GT at 1680x1050.

the e2**0 chips are underrated IMO... Anyways, if you can clock yours to 3+ ghz, you'll be fine... It's definitely plenty for games...