Not sure if I should go quad or dual

[Cuppa]

I have decided to upgrade my current system and I had decided on the q6600 as my CPU of choice but after asking a few questions on motherboards I am now not sure which chip is best for me.

I don’t do video encoding or 3D rendering and pretty much just game (WoW mostly) I’m not bothered about overclocking (although i will if i have to and have done in the past), I'd rather spend more on a faster stock chip then save money and clock the nads out of it. So my question is what to go for now? Current front runner for me is E8400. Any advice or recommendations are much appreciated.

 

[gurusan]

Go for the quad and overclock!

Even if you just do 333fsb that's already 3ghz which is more than enough for todays games....and the games of tomorrow will begin to take advantage of all 4 cores. You shouldn't even have to touch voltages or anything for that clock, just go into bios and type 333 and you're done.

 

[Cuppa]

Thanks for the feedback, one of the reasons I am now not sure what to go for was bacause I wanted a SLi MB (a second 8800gt will be a cheap upgrade in 6 months time) but I was lead to believe that quads would not OC well with SLi motherboards. Is this indeed the case or should I not worry about it.

Thanks again.

 

[DavidB]

A cheap temporary upgrade going to SLI, but then consider that your missing out on new cards being more electricity efficient, and adding to your power drain with a second graphics card. And it probably isnt the best long term saving

 

[Wiggins]

Thanks for the feedback, one of the reasons I am now not sure what to go for was bacause I wanted a SLi MB (a second 8800gt will be a cheap upgrade in 6 months time) but I was lead to believe that quads would not OC well with SLi motherboards. Is this indeed the case or should I not worry about it.

Thanks again.

You are right. Quads are notoriously crap for overclocking with SLI setups but that normally stands with Budget/Mid-range Motherboards.

The X38/48 Chipsets are said to be good boards for SLI and Quads but you pay the extra for it.

 

[Cuppa]

Oh dear, I fear I am going to show off my noobness now. I was under the impression that to use SLi you had to have one of the nForce MB's. Is this not the case? All the X38/48 boars I've looked at support crossfire but not SLi.

 

[Wiggins]

Oh dear, I fear I am going to show off my noobness now. I was under the impression that to use SLi you had to have one of the nForce MB's. Is this not the case? All the X38/48 boars I've looked at support crossfire but not SLi.

Good point.

SLI is not currently supported but Nvidia is in talks with Intel to release some X38/X48 chipsets that do. When that happens, who knows.

The 750i boards have had good reviews with regards to SLI and Quads and are pretty cheaper than the 780i types.

Depends if your looking for all the bells and whistles of the 780i. If not, the 750i could be a better choice.

Edit: Oh and unless you like to be on the bleeding edge with every game developed for the PC then I would reccommend you get an E8xx processor instead of a Quad.

 

[EffBee]

I am a bit of a luddite.

For a gaming PC:

No sli or crossfire

Windows XP Pro

2Gb RAM

Dual core - fastest you can afford. Upgrade to quad when you have to. Forget the quad core & futureproofing argument. It is nonsense. Always buy for the present.

Don't overclock. Unless you like to play with hardware.

WoW has been reported to have issues with modern graphics like 8800GT. Check it out before buying. Further if you only play wow you really don't need much of a machine. Athlon 2400XP, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7600GT is pretty good.

Purchasing decisions should be application based. What do you use. What hardware does it need to run well. What can you do to maximise stabilty.

Let the flaming begin!

 

[Cuppa]

I am a bit of a luddite.

For a gaming PC:

No sli or crossfire

Windows XP Pro

2Gb RAM

Dual core - fastest you can afford. Upgrade to quad when you have to. Forget the quad core & futureproofing argument. It is nonsense. Always buy for the present.

Don't overclock. Unless you like to play with hardware.

WoW has been reported to have issues with modern graphics like 8800GT. Check it out before buying. Further if you only play wow you really don't need much of a machine. Athlon 2400XP, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7600GT is pretty good.

Purchasing decisions should be application based. What do you use. What hardware does it need to run well. What can you do to maximise stabilty.

Let the flaming begin!

6 months ago my system was more than fine playing wow (3700 san diago, 2 gig RAM X850XT 256) then I got a 22" monitor and the frame rates have gone into freefall (8 to 10 FPS) in some of the areas, I pvp quit a bit so that is not good I upgraded my VGA to a a 8800GT and that has helped a bit but I've since found out that WoW is much more dependent on the CPU than I realised.

Since I am a gamer I though as long as I get a good CPU having the SLi functionality would allow me a good upgrade option for a reasonable amount of money in 6 months time (i'm not going to be able to do a complete system rebuild again for about 2 or 3 years)

Sadly I have no idea what is the best to do, but I'm starting to come down on the side of the luddite

Life was so much simpler with a ZX Spectrum.

 

[Davey D]

6 months ago my system was more than fine playing wow (3700 san diago, 2 gig RAM X850XT 256) then I got a 22" monitor and the frame rates have gone into freefall (8 to 10 FPS) in some of the areas, I pvp quit a bit so that is not good I upgraded my VGA to a a 8800GT and that has helped a bit but I've since found out that WoW is much more dependent on the CPU than I realised.

Since I am a gamer I though as long as I get a good CPU having the SLi functionality would allow me a good upgrade option for a reasonable amount of money in 6 months time (i'm not going to be able to do a complete system rebuild again for about 2 or 3 years)

Sadly I have no idea what is the best to do, but I'm starting to come down on the side of the luddite

Life was so much simpler with a ZX Spectrum.

Just changing your monitor to a 22" wont make any difference to the framerate. It is the resolution that you presumably have changed to that has changed the framerate.

Thats one reason im sticking with my 20" NEC with 1680x1050 - that was i can still get good Frame rates at the screens native resolution

 

[Cuppa]

Yep it was the rez that did it, went from a 17" at 1280*1024 to a 22" at 1680*1050

 

[pastymuncher]

I am a bit of a luddite.

For a gaming PC:

No sli or crossfire

Windows XP Pro

2Gb RAM

Dual core - fastest you can afford. Upgrade to quad when you have to. Forget the quad core & futureproofing argument. It is nonsense. Always buy for the present.

Don't overclock. Unless you like to play with hardware.

WoW has been reported to have issues with modern graphics like 8800GT. Check it out before buying. Further if you only play wow you really don't need much of a machine. Athlon 2400XP, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7600GT is pretty good.

Purchasing decisions should be application based. What do you use. What hardware does it need to run well. What can you do to maximise stabilty.

Let the flaming begin!

I would agree with most of that apart from the no-overclocking bit. More power for free is always good. For gaming a quad is a complete waste. I had one and while it did clock to 3.8Ghz the heat and power draw was ridiculous and two cores stood doing nothing because most games can't use four cores. Come to that a lot of games can't use two cores. Forget the future proofing arguement. It's not going to be used now and at the end of the year Nehalem will be out along with a new socket so that's the future proofing out of the window. I have had Sli before and while it worked ok for me, other people report problems. Couple with that twice the power consumption and twice the heat to get rid of and you are much better off getting the fastest single card you can afford. I would get a E8400 and a decent cooler and clock it to 3.8-4Ghz and get a 8800GTS or wait until the new cards are released.

 

[Cuppa]

OK thanks for the help so far chaps, I will go for a e8400 I already have an 8800GT so its just memory and MB to get I was thinking Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX seems pretty good stuff and not to expensive.

So the last question is what board to go for? I'm not going to bother with SLi now so is x38/48 or p35 the one to go for, again any recomendations are much appreciated.

 

[:(Rhodri:)]

I would agree with most of that apart from the no-overclocking bit. More power for free is always good. For gaming a quad is a complete waste. I had one and while it did clock to 3.8Ghz the heat and power draw was ridiculous and two cores stood doing nothing because most games can't use four cores. Come to that a lot of games can't use two cores. Forget the future proofing arguement. It's not going to be used now and at the end of the year Nehalem will be out along with a new socket so that's the future proofing out of the window. I have had Sli before and while it worked ok for me, other people report problems. Couple with that twice the power consumption and twice the heat to get rid of and you are much better off getting the fastest single card you can afford. I would get a E8400 and a decent cooler and clock it to 3.8-4Ghz and get a 8800GTS or wait until the new cards are released.

I disagree tbh, whist it's true that in single applications unless optimised for Quads you won't see much difference if your like me and play music whilst gaming, backing up hard-drives, with antivirus, msn etc running it makes a big difference.

I would have agreed with you a year ago, but quads have come down in price so much I fail to see why you'd go for a duel over one.

 

[GunRunner]

I would have agreed with you a year ago, but quads have come down in price so much I fail to see why you'd go for a duel over one.

Because if you get a good dual such as an E8400 you can overclock it past 4.0ghz with ease and if you are the average user and game player you can get higher fps in the majority of games now. Please dont tell me its future proofing (seen this somewhere before ), as within 12 months most enthusiasts move on to the next generation of Motherboard, RAM, CPU and Graphics card. I have tried a quad 6600 and an E8400 in my EVGA 780i with SLI BFG 8800 GT OC2 and the E8400 at stock speed knocks the socks off a q6600. At present I am testing (a success) my e8400 at 4.0ghz, so the next stop is 4.2 ghz. Grant you this is an older game (IL2 forgotten battles) and is opengl2. So there is a good reason for me anyway eh?

 

[MikeHunt79]

If you've got good cooling go for quad.

If not go for dual.