E4300 to Q6600 = worth it?

[Dark_Angel]

Hey guys

I am currently running a E4300 (as you may have gathered from the title ) but am considering gettng the Q6600 (once again, as you probablly guessed).

Spec is:

4GB ram
8800 GTS 320MB (another thing I am considering upgrading - to a 8800GT 512MB)
E4300 @2.7 GHZ (does go higher, but can't be bothered to fiddle around at the moment since I got some new ram, so just using a safe setting)

Anyhow, I was just wondering - in peoples oppions, how much of a boost I would get from the quad / extra cache.

Now, I do some gaming, but also a lot of general work. I wouldn't mind doing a little more video encoding, but at the moment I do a little but of light encoding.

However, I do use a lot of Photoshop / other image programs.

I did notice a fairly massive jump from my old venice @2.7 GHZ to my E4300, (ok, I had more ram with the new PC too, but I more meant in general multi tasking). Is there a similarly large jump with the quad, or at the least a noticable bennefit ?

Thanks

 

[-iceblade^]

I'm not too sure about photoshop since i don't use it all that much, but in terms of encoding, and using a properly threaded and optimised application, you should see a pretty noticeable jump...

 

[steve258]

Assuming you'll be overclocking the Q6600 then yes you'll see a difference. You'll see a big jump in video encoding but in the gaming department the Q6600 pretty much performs similarly with the equivalent E6000 series in most games that don't have multi-core support.

I did the same jump from E4300 3.1Ghz and it has been worth it.

 

[Dark_Angel]

What about in terms of overall system use ? Do you notice a large jump in general performance, or is it not really what you could define as noticable?

 

[steve258]

General windows browsing isn't noticeably faster it's when you start to encode video and multitasking or in my case, folding you'll see the difference.

 

[Tetras]

What about in terms of overall system use ? Do you notice a large jump in general performance, or is it not really what you could define as noticable?

I agree with steve258, you'll hear people say a quad makes Windows more responsive than a dual but to me, that is more likely to be placebo effect, I saw nothing (even with large apps running).

Tbh if you have to work really hard to justify a quad then you don't need one, if you are using apps that make use of it all the time then it is a no-brainer, otherwise a waste.

 

[psychas]

well i have it on 3.6ghz on air and man its fast i just have to to put my water back in go to 4ghz and fly like a wind its cheap now two so i say if you overclock at least to 3.4 its worth it

 

[reflux]

I went from an E6300 @ 3.3ghz to a Q6600. Can't say I've really noticed the difference in general usage, as all Core 2 CPUs are great, but it will rip an average DVD in an hour less than the E6300.

Considering more and more games are using more than two cores and Windows handles cores very well, you may as well go for a Quad IMO. Unreal Tournament 3 shows a decent benefit for example.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3127&p=4