Intel CPU Comparison Advice Needed Please

[Alty]

Hiya Peeps,

am speccing together a few machines for work which will be processor and ram intensive. At work we will be multi tasking but also need raw processing power for the applications we use. Now regarding the CPU, I am looking at either:

Intel Core 2 Quadro Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

or

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

now with the Q6600 being £300 more expensive per CPU, can someone please tell me if it is a worthwhile purchase over the E6600? Are there any comparisons of these 2 processors that anyone knows of? I need to be able to justify spending over £1650 on the Q6600 CPUs instead of around £900 for the E6600s!

Thanks in advance

 

[Duff-Man]

It depends what you're going to use the CPU for.

It's extremely difficult to write efficient multi-threaded versions of certain applications (particularly games where constant communication between all components is required). As such, you'll only see benefits in programs which are designed to use more than two cores. If you're planning on doing a lot of (say) media encoding, then the extra two cores are probably worth it as you will see a close to 100% improvement in performance. If you're thinking of gaming and general desktop performance, you're probably better off saving your money. A Q6600 will run all current games at the same speed as an E6600.

It's likely that in the future games and other programs will become optimsed for >2 CPUs, and so there is an argument for 'future-proofing' by getting quad-core now. But at a £300 premium, I'd much rather save my money now and buy a £200 quad core CPU in 12 - 18 months when they start being useful, which will also likely be much faster than the Q6600 is now.

If you want actual benchmarks, I would suggest looking at anandtech.com. Search their CPU section for the review they did when quad core c2d first appeared.

 

[Stelly]

It depends what you're going to use the CPU for.

It's extremely difficult to write efficient multi-threaded versions of certain applications (particularly games where constant communication between all components is required). As such, you'll only see benefits in programs which are designed to use more than two cores. If you're planning on doing a lot of (say) media encoding, then the extra two cores are probably worth it as you will see a close to 100% improvement in performance. If you're thinking of gaming and general desktop performance, you're probably better off saving your money. A Q6600 will run all current games at the same speed as an E6600.

It's likely that in the future games and other programs will become optimsed for >2 CPUs, and so there is an argument for 'future-proofing' by getting quad-core now. But at a £300 premium, I'd much rather save my money now and buy a £200 quad core CPU in 12 - 18 months when they start being useful, which will also likely be much faster than the Q6600 is now.

If you want actual benchmarks, I would suggest looking at anandtech.com. Search their CPU section for the review they did when quad core c2d first appeared.

I also agree with what Duff-Man is saying there

Stelly

 

[Alty]

thankyou 4 your advice the E6600s are the ones to be ordered then