Intel Q6600 or Intel E7400?

[sastusbulbas]

Hi all,

Sort of decided a stretched upgrade path, and was wondering what one of these is the better option?

Intel Q6600 or E7400, both are 1066fsb which is the limit of the basic mobo I am thinking utilising as an upgrade path set up.

I am thinking of adding one of the above to an Asrock board, then upgrading the PSU and later saving to get a 4870 GPU and Biostar mobo with PC-8500 mem.

My most demanding games are C&C and Red Alert 3 on a Samsung 2032 monitor running games at 1680+1050. My HIS IceQ 3 3850 AGP is bottlenecked by my current AMD 3300 and XMS PC3500 memory. I use the computer for various stuff, not just games but music and such too.

Ta,
Steve

 

[Razor-BladE]

Q6600 because it's quad core, therefore more future proof and it's an overclocking beast

 

[Phatjayunoi]

Personally I say the Q6600, but then my answer is already there with a reason in your motherboard thread.

 

[CaseyChaos]

Quads for things like encoding etc, if it's just games, playing music and videos then a faster dual will make more difference to your games.

As to quads being more future proof, is there such a thing nowadays with pcs? Intel already have a newer chip out in the i7s so you could say the socket 775s are already on the way out.

 

[lunarwolf]

As to quads being more future proof, is there such a thing nowadays with pcs? Intel already have a newer chip out in the i7s so you could say the socket 775s are already on the way out.

hehe still waiting for quads to be of use to me as a gamer, it's been over two years and still waiting lol. I am so glad I bought a e6600 when they came out rather than the q6600 , and when I decided to change (for no real reason tbh) I got a e8600. I certainly wouldn't call a q6600 future proof.

 

[Sipha]

'Futureproof' isnt a word that features too heavily in modern computing.

 

[Admiral Huddy]

This is true but many games are now starting to come with multi-threads so the more cores the better. That said, both CPUs are great overclockers, especially the 7200 which can reach 4GHz quite easily. I've not got my Q6600 past 3.6GHz but it has more physical cores and cache then the 7200. If you're on a budget, then get the 7200 otherwise i'd go for the quad.

 

[linktoinsanity]

Budget = E7400, otherwise out of the two go for the Q6600. However, you may be better off going for a faster clocked dual with higher cache such as the E8400.