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q6600 or E8400 for Gaming

Turtles

Turtles

Turtles

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I was wondering what would you recommend for gaming, the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz or Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 2.4Ghz? I'll be using it in this rig for playing Crysis, Football Manager, Counter Strike Source, Team Fortress 2, and other future games.

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (£199.74)

Samsung SpinPoint T 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD501LJ) (£66.96)

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (Deal Product) (£35.24)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) (£12.91)

Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU (£76.36)

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (£65.79)

I was thinking of overclocking the q6600 to 3GHz but then I've never overclocked before so was intending to stick with 2.4Ghz at first to see how it runs Crysis, etc. Any help much appreciated :)
 
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Are you building the PC right now? Is there an immediate need?

I would suggest if possible to wait for the new Quads. The Q9450 looks very good.

If you cant, but upgrade your pc regurarly go with the Dual, if you dont upgrade often then go for the Quad but do overclock it, its a damn shame not to. I have my Q6600 at 3.4GHz
 
Building my PC right now.
I don't upgrade my PC often.
If I overclock I think I may need a new cooler case and/or water cooling....I'm already over my budget on my new rig anyways.
 
adamsmith1903 said:
Building my PC right now.
I don't upgrade my PC often.
If I overclock I think I may need a new cooler case and/or water cooling....I'm already over my budget on my new rig anyways.
Click to expand...

with that cooler, you will get a good overclock with an E8400, the Q6600 will struggle to get far tho
 
The Q6600 feels snappier though... The quad core advantage is only going to get higher as times goes by.

Either wait for the Q9450 or get the Quad and clock it IMO. No point in going Dual core now unless you are on a specific budget.
 
the Q6600 and E8400 are pretty much the same price anyways. And with quads the way of the future. I think I'm leaning towards the Q6600 and overclocking it....
 
I'd say if you're gonna loads of encoding, run multiple applications, etc then a Q6600, if just gaming and the usual run of the mill pc tasks, then go for the E8400. That'll give you a better overclock and you can spend the extra £70 on summat else as well. :)
 
Title says best for gaming so it would have to be 8400 for me, but I might be biased I thats what I've got ;). Thought long and hard about this myself but I mainly use mine for gaming and tend to upgrade every 12 months at least. If you look thoroughly you can find an E8400 for £135 delivered so saving about £30 on the Q6600.
Was originally thinking of a Q9540 but the lower mutliplier and stock clock combined with the extra cost made me go for the E8400 as I don't encode anything.
 
Go for a quad, clock it to 3.8, play games and encode at the same time, which a duel can't do very well!!
 
Went for the E8400. All I do is gaming and I usually shut down background programs beforehand. I'll upgrade to quad in a year or so....or just whenever I need to. Also I've never overclocked before and I'd have to get a case with better air flow and/or watercoling. So I'll get the E8400 and leave it at 3.0Ghz. Thanks for all your input :)
 
I would get the crysis killing e8400, although I wouldnt pay the prices OC have got them for. It ***** that they are in demand and their are not enough being shipped over.
 
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