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E8400/E8500/Q6600?

metamorphpwner

metamorphpwner

metamorphpwner

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Hi,
Looking to build a new pc, mainly going to be for gaming, SupCom/Crysis ect. bit of photoshop and web design. but not really loads of multitasking.
need a fast gaming machine.
i was thinking about the Intel Q6600 but seen reviews for gaming and now not too sure.
what would you recomend, the Q6600, the E8400 or the E8500. thanks for any help with this.

also: anyone tell me what the difference in stepping means? i've seen a Q6600 with G0 and an E8400 with E0 stepping/
 
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Que yet another flamefest. Try doing a search on dual vs quad.

E0 steppings are the latest Wolfdale cores and are the ones to go for as they are generally easy to get to at least 4Ghz.

G0 steppings on the Q6600 replaced the older B2 stepping. B2 was hotter running and needed more voltage for a similar overclock.
 
pastymuncher said:
Que yet another flamefest. Try doing a search on dual vs quad.

E0 steppings are the latest Wolfdale cores and are the ones to go for as they are generally easy to get to at least 4Ghz.

G0 steppings on the Q6600 replaced the older B2 stepping. B2 was hotter running and needed more voltage for a similar overclock.
Click to expand...

i know a lot of things on these forums seem to be personal opinion anyway, but from what i've read so far quads are only better for multitasking, do better for gaminng?
 
Highly recommend the E8400 from a gaming point of view, though personally i would be tempted to go for a Q9xxx one now - have an E8400 at the moment though and its fanctastic
 
E8400. Cheaper than the E8500 and at stock its pretty capable anyway, so overclocking will also be good.

The 45nm core 2 processors run cooler, have added instruction sets, have more cache memory and generally run faster clock for clock than their 65nm counterparts. Faster clocked Duals will cope fine with photoshop and run most games better then Quads anyway. Lots of multitasking + media rendering = Quad, Everything else = Duals.

The Q6600 is a good cpu, but it is very old tech now, so either go E8xxx or Q9xxx or even i7 if budget stretches that far.
 
Sorry on slight hijack. Got a 8400 atm that only hits 3.6, considering selling it and either getting another 8400 and hoping for 4Ghz or should I get a 8500 instead?
 
I went for the e8400.

I was tempted by the q9550, but in the end I went for the faster clocking dual. I'll go quad with the next generation of Nehalem.
 
So when it comes to gaming processors you want a higher clock speed instead of more cores? i'd have thought it could share the load making a lower clocked quad just as good as a higher clocked dual.
my last processor was 3.2Ghz at stock speed and i didn't notice a difference at 3.5Ghz with it, so with the Q6600 at 3.2-3.6 vs. the E8400 at 3.6-4.0 would i really notice a difference with the dual bieng slightly higher?
had to ask this because my old processor didn't seem to change when higher clocked.
 
metamorphpwner said:
my last processor was 3.2Ghz at stock speed and i didn't notice a difference at 3.5Ghz with it, so with the Q6600 at 3.2-3.6 vs. the E8400 at 3.6-4.0 would i really notice a difference with the dual bieng slightly higher?
had to ask this because my old processor didn't seem to change when higher clocked.
Click to expand...
You'll notice zilch difference. My brother got an E and has it at 4.0, he got all upset when he realized there is no discernible difference whatsoever in games. Of course when it comes to photoshop he's suddenly lost his interest in photography :D
 
lol each time this type of thread comes up its the same argument. For most games today dual is fine (E8400 is better value). However for the future games are now making use of more than two cores...
 
metamorphpwner said:
So when it comes to gaming processors you want a higher clock speed instead of more cores? i'd have thought it could share the load making a lower clocked quad just as good as a higher clocked dual.
my last processor was 3.2Ghz at stock speed and i didn't notice a difference at 3.5Ghz with it, so with the Q6600 at 3.2-3.6 vs. the E8400 at 3.6-4.0 would i really notice a difference with the dual bieng slightly higher?
had to ask this because my old processor didn't seem to change when higher clocked.
Click to expand...

For the most part, you will benefit more from the higher clockspeed than multiple cores. The reason for this is the difficulty in writing multi-threaded code - particularly in games, where most of the game logic is communication-heavy and runs on a single thread (hence a single CPU core).

This being said, developers are slowly but surely starting to take advantage of multiple cores. Yes, most of the game logic tends to reside on a single thread, but increasingly we see that modular components (like physics, sound-processing, or even direct-x calls) are farmed out to additional CPUs. Games in which most of the processing occurs in separate 'units' or as AI routines (like large-scale strategy games for example) are much easier to parallelise, and so generally see more benefit from multi-core hardware.

Anyway, the bottom line is that clock-for-clock the quad is the superior component, but you will need to check the benchmarks for games you actually play to determine whether the extra two cores make any difference.

As for 'noticing a difference', well again that depends on the game and the resolution. You will usually see bigger performance increases from a faster GPU, but a fast CPU often helps with framerate 'dips' (for example performance on UT3 is far better with my CPU clocked at 4.2Ghz than at stock 3Ghz, with a 4870x2 at 2560 res).
 
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