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E2180 or Q6600 for another 1.5 years?

I was in the same situation as you, had a E2200 and wasn't sure whether it would last me until the new Intel stuff arrives at the end of the year. Sure enough, after using the E2200 for a week at 2.9GHz I got fed up of the lowish FPS in CSS and brought a E8400 instead. It handles everything I throw at it and more! It's currently running at 4GHz and has been since I got it, I also have 5300 memory aswell.

Personaly if I was you I'd get the Q6600 now rather than hope the E2180 lasts you cause I don't believe it would.
 
The e2180 will definately do for now, but 1.5 years is a fairly long time..

I'd get it now if you're going budget, but saying that you won't be upgrading for a year and a half..

The equivelant a year and a half ago was a ~2.8Ghz Prescott, and anyone still using a 2.6 Presser for gaming will be crying over their keyboard

Get the e2180, but don't ecpect it to still be playing new games in a year and a half ;)
 
uvmain said:
The e2180 will definately do for now, but 1.5 years is a fairly long time..

I'd get it now if you're going budget, but saying that you won't be upgrading for a year and a half..

The equivelant a year and a half ago was a ~2.8Ghz Prescott, and anyone still using a 2.6 Presser for gaming will be crying over their keyboard

Get the e2180, but don't ecpect it to still be playing new games in a year and a half ;)
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Anyone buying a 2.8Ghz Prescott over a Conroe E6300 1.5 years ago was misguided or missold, or badly informed. Core 2 Duo is approaching 2 years old in the retail market now. (Got my E6700 in August 2006), and its still going strong today. (Nehelem is a temptation when it comes out)

While a Kentsfield, or Penryn quad will probably be around 30-35% slower on average than a Nehelem, it will still be a decent processor in 1.5 years time. Probably about equal to a new "entry level". Any quad clocked at 3Ghz or more should be well withing "Recommended" gaming specs still.

Games are generally more dependant on the GPU, there is no reason why a new game wouldnt run on a 1.5 year old machine of a respectable specification, although it may deserve a gpu upgrade by then.

Pretty much any game will run fine on my almost 2 year old CPU, but for some of the latest releases my old 7900GTX is a bottleneck. One which I will sort out once I've seen the latest offerings coming soon from NV/ATI.

Even though the current generation quads will soon be replaced, their performance is good enough that they will keep up with mainstream OEM computers for a fair time. As multicore is still the way of the future, any new applications making better use of multicore will also benifit from the Q6600.
 
Well Im hopeing to keep my [email protected] for at least 2years, then drop a quad in when games get too much for my dual cpu. So with a bit of luck my sys should last at least 3 years before I need to buy a whole new build.(see in sig)
 
pastymuncher said:
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.
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I know it's not the same and clock for clock Intel cpus are miles ahead of AMD but I went from a dual core 4200+ AMD running at 3Ghz to a 3.4Ghz Q6600 and my Crysis framerates went up by 12 fps with the same gfx card, a G92 GTS.

So on that basis I could well see that in the next year and a half the E2180 would perhaps start and become a bottleneck and hold back your performance slightly.

As stated, if you have the money and thinking long term get a Q6600. For the money they are an amazing bargain. Having 4 cores running at 3.4Ghz for around £110 or £80-£90 2nd hand is great and will certainly last longer than the E2180.

With both AMD and Intel all aiming to make their cpus more multi core this year and years to come I think the increase in clock speeds will slow down and all you will gain with future chips is a better clock per clock performance plus more cores.

Once the vast majority of computers sold are all 4 core or even 8 core, expect game software writers to start taking advantage of multi cores.

At least you will have 4 cores if you get a quad now albeit it might be 50-100% slower than the latest topend cpus in a year and a half.
 
Greebo said:
I know it's not the same and clock for clock Intel cpus are miles ahead of AMD but I went from a dual core 4200+ AMD running at 3Ghz to a 3.4Ghz Q6600 and my Crysis framerates went up by 12 fps with the same gfx card, a G92 GTS.

So on that basis I could well see that in the next year and a half the E2180 would perhaps start and become a bottleneck and hold back your performance slightly.
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Your increase is purely from switching platforms. AMD rigs just are not as efficient as Intel rigs when gaming. I got a E2180 for £35 off the bay and it clocks to 3.6Ghz. You cannot beat that bang for buck. The simple fact is that if gaming then a quad is totally pointless (with the odd exception) and i can't see it changing anytime soon. We have been waiting years for games to use even two cores let alone four and yet there are still single threaded games being released.
 
I think the point that is made is that quads are so much cheaper now and the op mentioned something lasting 1.5 years which has to be a quad. It's apples and oranges really as to what people will say to get but i stick by what i said get a quad and not need it rather then buy a dual and find out those extra cores would be useful.
 
A couple of things:

Always useful to have 4 cores as you can game on two and leave stuff running on the other two even if you don't have software which uses all 4 cores.

Secondly if you look at the Intel roadmap, the bottom of the range processor for at least until Q2 2009 is going to be the E8xxx series.

Therefore I would imagine a E2180 will start and struggle over the next year and a half.

Granted we still get games using one core but also remember that games are in development for two years plus in a lot of cases and now we are starting to see games which use four cores and I can only see this trend continuing over the next couple of years especially since more than half of the cpus available to buy will be multi cores.
 
pastymuncher said:
Your increase is purely from switching platforms. AMD rigs just are not as efficient as Intel rigs when gaming. I got a E2180 for £35 off the bay and it clocks to 3.6Ghz. You cannot beat that bang for buck. The simple fact is that if gaming then a quad is totally pointless (with the odd exception) and i can't see it changing anytime soon. We have been waiting years for games to use even two cores let alone four and yet there are still single threaded games being released.
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Yeah, bang for bucks the E2180 is great but the op is asking will it last a year and a half.

Personally my quad off the bay for £90 running at 3.6Ghz is also great bang for bucks as well IMO plus with the extra cache and ignoring use of all 4 cores, will be quicker than your E2180 anyway.

Buy the E2180 for £35 if you plan to change cpu again in 6 months and buy a E8200 or E8400 cheaply 2nd hand and keep doing that every 6 months or so.
 
Greebo said:
Yeah, bang for bucks the E2180 is great but the op is asking will it last a year and a half.

Personally my quad off the bay for £90 running at 3.6Ghz is also great bang for bucks as well IMO plus with the extra cache and ignoring use of all 4 cores, will be quicker than your E2180 anyway.

Buy the E2180 for £35 if you plan to change cpu again in 6 months and buy a E8200 or E8400 cheaply 2nd hand and keep doing that every 6 months or so.
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Hmm.. I've never thought about picking up a CPU off on EBay... Is this a safe practice??
 
kppanic said:
Hmm.. I've never thought about picking up a CPU off on FleaBay... Is this a safe practice??
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Well, same as buying anything really. Make sure they have been around for a while, have good feedback and if it's too cheap it's probably wrong!

My q6600 was a low VID 1.25v G0 so it was a bit of a premium.

Plenty of people selling atm as they are buying Q9xxx and E8xxx chips and hence shifting their old quad and dual cores.

Alternively wait until you have 300 posts and been on 3 months and you can buy them on members market on ocuk forums.
 
kppanic said:
I don't get this part: if 3.0 - 3.2GHz E2180 is ok for 1680x1050+ res, wouldn't it handle 1280x1024 nicely too?
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It will at lower res too but at lower res the games become cpu limited
not gpu limited.

For example you may have a game at 1680 x 1050 which runs at 50 fps but it is been limited by your gpu. At 1280 x 1024 with a E2180 it might then run at 100 fps and be cpu limited and if you had a 4Ghz E8400 it might run at 200 fps at that res but unless you are a dedicated fps gamer who have even been known to run games at 800 x 600 to get 300-400 fps then it isn't really going to matter at all.

Hope that explains that well enough ;)
 
Greebo said:
It will at lower res too but at lower res the games become cpu limited
not gpu limited.

For example you may have a game at 1680 x 1050 which runs at 50 fps but it is been limited by your gpu. At 1280 x 1024 with a E2180 it might then run at 100 fps and be cpu limited and if you had a 4Ghz E8400 it might run at 200 fps at that res but unless you are a dedicated fps gamer who have even been known to run games at 800 x 600 to get 300-400 fps then it isn't really going to matter at all.

Hope that explains that well enough ;)
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Thanks for the explanation, just as I thought :)
Ahhhhhhh I am going to get an E2180 I think, with a GA-P35-DS4L. If I could have held on with a P4 for 4 years, I think I can chill with an E2180 for a year and a half. ;)

And I never understood the advantage of having extra FPS on a... well.. FPS..

I mean... anything over 100+ fps is really an overkill, no?
 
Phil2008 said:
But if he sticks with the dual for a yr or so then buy a quad later, then he will be able to get a better quad for the same price as a Q6600??
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Nehalem will be out by then with a completely new architecture, better and faster processors, tri channel memory and new sockets. Better to build a budget rig now and clock it so that it will easily get you buy until then.
 
I didnt notice any speed increase in games going from 1.8ghz to 3.2ghz

I run it at 2.8ghz and have since i bought it the day the e6300 came out.

Save your money on a quad, buy a dual and buy better ram and mboard.

I went from a 1.73ghz athlon and at 1.8ghz the e6300 slaughtered it in everything!
 
twoblacklines said:
I didnt notice any speed increase in games going from 1.8ghz to 3.2ghz

I run it at 2.8ghz and have since i bought it the day the e6300 came out.

Save your money on a quad, buy a dual and buy better ram and mboard.

I went from a 1.73ghz athlon and at 1.8ghz the e6300 slaughtered it in everything!
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Wahh?
 
twoblacklines said:
I didnt notice any speed increase in games going from 1.8ghz to 3.2ghz

I run it at 2.8ghz and have since i bought it the day the e6300 came out.

Save your money on a quad, buy a dual and buy better ram and mboard.

I went from a 1.73ghz athlon and at 1.8ghz the e6300 slaughtered it in everything!
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The older AthlonXP? Not surprising that the E6300 whooped it. The XP's were consistantly outperformed by Northwood P4's. Athlon was better than P3, and AthlonXP was better than Willimotte, But Northwood retook the performance crown until AMD's AMD64 processors came out, and totally blew away P4 :P.

The point with suggesting the OP gets a quad, is a lot of future development in CPUs is more and more cores. Even the "dual core" Nehalems will be "virtual" quad cores, and the quads will have 8 virtual cores. Software design should take this into consideration and better use of multithreaded software should be the logical conclusion. So a Quad core Kentsfield or Penryn should be better in the long run.
 
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