E84/500 or Q6600?

Devil_Spawn · 14 Mar 2008 at 17:03

E8400/E8500 or Q6600?

For budget gaming pc, which is likely to perform better in current games (ut3,tf2,crysis) etc, and which is likely to have the longer lifespan for later games?

graphics card will be an 8800gt

i was pretty sure about getting the q6600, but these new intel chips have a damn high clock speed, and overclock even further!

is the price difference between the 400 and 500 really worth it?

any comments about either?

edit: just to note, i will _not_ be encoding, or atleast encoding where speed or time is much of an issue.

Trunks9486 · 14 Mar 2008 at 18:36

i prefer quad cores... unless you upgrade your rig often

UTmaniac · 14 Mar 2008 at 18:41

Your choice may well come down to the FSB wall of your motherboard, if you plan to overclock it. 4GHz seems possible, providing you can raise the FSB high enough (500) and you get lucky with one that does not need much above stock voltage.

If this cpu upgrade is intended to last a couple of years, rather than a long term investment, the 8xxx series is the way forward. They are performing very well in games like UT3 now and because of the relatively low heat production compared to the Q6000 at stock voltage, they ought to last a good while. Whether games will become common place in a couple of years that make full use of a quad core, who knows!

pastymuncher · 14 Mar 2008 at 19:08

For gaming there is little point in getting a quad as there are hardly any games that make use of it. Far better to have a faster dual core. Don't bother with the overpriced E8500 unless your motherboard can't handle high (500+) fsb's, in which case the extra .5 multiplier could come in handy. I had a E8500 briefly and never used the .5 anyway. I preferred using the 9x or 8x multipliers and using the higher fsb to give improved bandwidth. Before that i had a Q6600 which showed no advantage with games at all.

Devil_Spawn · 14 Mar 2008 at 19:25

i dont think i would complain about buying a quad core of some sort in a couple of years, and it would be nice to get the improved performance right now instead of later. Chances are i will get a really cheap sli motherboard available, either

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-099-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=174
or
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-221-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=174
is there a preference on these? is there any point at all in going nforce 7?

(im likely to go for the asus one)

jak731 · 14 Mar 2008 at 19:32

are you going to use SLi at all?

if not look for an intel chipset based MB such as the P35 or X38 ,they offer much better overclocking potential than the nforce chipsets

Devil_Spawn · 14 Mar 2008 at 19:49

the idea behind me getting sli would be for longetivity - cheaper future upgrades, as we cant see into the future, its hard to tell if its worth bothering, but in a couple of years time im sure a second 8800gt will be much cheaper than a *insert future graphics card here*

whether i will want a new mobo by then is a different story....

DavidB · 14 Mar 2008 at 20:02

the idea behind me getting sli would be for longetivity - cheaper future upgrades, as we cant see into the future, its hard to tell if its worth bothering, but in a couple of years time im sure a second 8800gt will be much cheaper than a *insert future graphics card here*

Your forgetting about re-sale values and electricity bills though.

Devil_Spawn · 14 Mar 2008 at 22:10

ok, ill trust you guys on this one, you certainly have more posts than me!

what board would you reccomend?

this one any good? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-000-OK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

should i bother with 1066mhz ram?

setter · 15 Mar 2008 at 03:26

i was thinking along theese lines a few weeks ago either e8400/q6600, currently running an e6600 @3.6ghz on air cooling, e8400 looked attractive cause of the high stock speed of 3.0ghz. then i thought why not get a q6600 and clock it to the same as my current dual core e6600, which is pretty much a waste unless youre heavly into benchmarking, im primarily a gamer so i think ill stick with what i have for a while

JeffyB · 15 Mar 2008 at 05:14

For gaming at the moment e8xxx, for recoding/bench whoring qxxxx. The ip35 seems to have a lot of bang for buck value and quite a few supporters, if your working to a tight budget can't really go wrong. For really low budget perhaps consider e8200 and a ip35, although the £30 more for the 8400 is well spent.

Tooks · 15 Mar 2008 at 09:22

Why do we still see people perpetuating the phrase 'Dual for gaming, Quad for encoding'?

Quads play games too you know...

There may not be many games out that use four cores, but there will be.

A quad at 3.6Ghz is just as fast in games as a dual at 3.6Ghz.

So, it seems daft to me to get anything other than a quad, unless you are choosing an E8400/E8500 which should hit 4Ghz relatively easily, something most 65nm quads won't do.

But, your extra 400mhz won't get you much in performance terms, as most games are GPU limited anyway.

Devil_Spawn · 15 Mar 2008 at 11:14

difficult decision... i think i might go with the q6600... it still has those 2 cores for gaming than a dual core has, and another 2 as a future investment.... or something like that!
from reviews i hae managed to pick out this cooler
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-041-AK
as far as i have been able to tell it beats the arctic freezer 7 pro, which i have heard a lot of good thing about, is there any other cooler you guys can vouch for?

again... should i bother with 1066mhz ram?

Mana · 15 Mar 2008 at 11:59

u might wanna consider a tuniq tower 120.

Tooks · 15 Mar 2008 at 12:05

Devil_Spawn said:
again... should i bother with 1066mhz ram?

You shouldn't NEED it, stock 800Mhz stuff should be good for 3.6Ghz on a Q6600 with its 9 multi.

With 1066Mhz RAM, you could tweak the memory dividers to get it running near its maximum which will give you a little more memory bandwidth, but that won't make a great deal of difference.

Get some decent overclockable 800Mhz RAM, which will likely do 1Ghz+ anyway.

Mana · 15 Mar 2008 at 12:09

ah dont get a Q6600 mate, its too easy to overclock. i expected at least 4 days of tweaking to find a stable overclock like i had to do back in the days of my amd 3500+ but this thing did like 3.4ghz stable with only a few voltage bumps... damnit

Devil_Spawn · 15 Mar 2008 at 12:32

Mana said:
ah dont get a Q6600 mate, its too easy to overclock. i expected at least 4 days of tweaking to find a stable overclock like i had to do back in the days of my amd 3500+ but this thing did like 3.4ghz stable with only a few voltage bumps... damnit

THE HORROR!

edit: i also have pretty much run out of artic silver 5, if there is not enough to cover the cpu, should it be ok to clean it and use artic 2 instead? or is there a major difference between the two?

chaparral · 15 Mar 2008 at 13:30

Tooks said:
A quad at 3.6Ghz is just as fast in games as a dual at 3.6Ghz.

So, it seems daft to me to get anything other than a quad, unless you are choosing an E8400/E8500 which should hit 4Ghz relatively easily, something most 65nm quads won't do.

But, your extra 400mhz won't get you much in performance terms, as most games are GPU limited anyway.

The title of this thread is E8400/E8500 or Q6600

So it would be between a quad at about 3400 to 3600ghz or a dualcore at about 4ghz to 4.2ghz

Tooks · 16 Mar 2008 at 10:27

Yes, I fully understand the thread title!

Maybe I didn't make my point very well though.

The point I was trying to make was that even though the E8400/8500 will clock the extra 400mhz to 600mhz over a quad, it would make next to no difference in the games the OP mentions, as most games are GPU limited anyway.

And, the quad would be a bit more 'future proof' when games start using multi cores.

So, the way I see it, the extra raw Ghz speed of the dual cores mentioned wouldn't make any noticeable difference in games, over an OC'd quad, but a quad OC'd to 3.4/3.6Ghz would still fly in games, and you've got 2 more cores to use when games take advantage of them?

I've owned an E8400 as well as several quads, and the E8400 even at 3.8Ghz is indeed a mighty quick chip. Comparable in overall system benchmarks to a quad at 3.4Ghz on the tests I ran.

But, apps and CPU's will likely have moved on anyway by the time games use more than 2 cores routinely, so perhaps there's a case to be made for just going for the cheapest?!

fiNker · 16 Mar 2008 at 12:19

Sorry for jacking in on this thread but ive a similar question...

i have an e6600, P5N32-E, 8800GTS 512 (all stock) and was wondering if i would

get much of an performance increase in games if i upgraded to an E8400...thx