Ok, I've decided Q6600 G0 here we come!

[Firegod]

After deliberating for a good few weeks now between Phenom 9600+ Black Edition and the Q6600 G0.... and then the E8400 Wolfdale.... I've settled for the Quad.

Tbh I think anything will be a nice speed boost over my current X2 3800+ CPU.

But I was thinking that I can pickup the Quad for £151.99 inc. Free Delivery! Bargain. Then when the new 45nm versions arrive, depending on how the PC is running and prices I may keep the Q6600 or Upgrade again. But I just think the ability to have 4 cores is going to payoff in the long run over a mentally clocked dual-core, even though it'll be well nice to have a 4Ghz CPU.

Do other people agree? Just after some closure really. lol. So basically X2 3800+ -> Q6600? Yes or No?

(I've picked a P35 DFI mobo to go with it for some serious tweaking potential and read on here that the P35 is the better choice over the hotter X38 chipset. I don't need Crossfire or anything special as I only have x1 card. I also have 2Gb G.Skill HZ DDR2 Memory from another PC which uses the Micron Chips. Should clock nicely!)

 

[Firegod]

x2 3800+ -> Q6600? Nice choice - nothing wrong with that.

Though,
x2 3800+ -> E8400 for most would be the better choice. Anyone who doesn't run distributed computing clients, encoding/decoding and/or 3d rendering won't see the benefit of all 4 cores. Now, you'll notice I've a Q6600, and so yes - I do run WCG. It also clocks higher than the Xeon 3060 it replaced so that was why I chose it. I am tempted by the E8400 though...the temptation of the 9x multi, without the FSB limitation of the Quad, along with the 10% clock-for-clock improvement all add up to a sweet deal.

As for the G.Skill HZ's...as you say, they should clock nicely. If they're the right revision (green pcb under the heatspreaders i think), you should hit DDR-1200 with ease.

Enjoy the Quad. Coming from the x2 3800 you'll really appreciate the difference.

Cheers for the helpful reply.

I do dable a bit with video encoding, but do a canny bit of audio work as well. Nothing major, just messing about and stuff. Sometimes hook my guitar up to the PC and that. So I guess the Quad would come in handy for that?

Yeah the HZ's are green PCB and from Week20 from 2007 which I believe are the Micron chips, as it was roughly half-way through 2006 when they switched to the Micron's. So here's hoping anyway!

Cheers again!

Yep go for it. If you can clock it to around 3.2Ghz you'll be fine, un less you encode and such. I get no appreciable differeance between 3.2Ghz and 4.1Ghz in games.

Thanks, tbh I'd happy with anything around 3.0Ghz. I think I'm going to be pushing my little Zalman Reserator pretty hard with a Quad to cool. But we'll see how it goes, if it comes to the crunch I'll just have to upgrade that as well. lol.

 

[Firegod]

Cheers for the replies peeps.