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Quad core cpus

narcolepsy

narcolepsy

narcolepsy

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Joined
21 Jan 2010
Posts
12
Are the core 2 quad series of cpu's worth the money these days? I have a core 2 duo and had considered upgrading to a quad, but am unsure whether i'd be better served by an i5/i7?
 
depends on your budget, but you can pick up a Q6600 for around £60 from the MM, only 249 posts to go.:D
 
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Hello and welcome to the forums.:)

It will depend on what you use your system for, gaming wise, a few games will show gains with a quad, if doing tasks such as encoding or rendering, a quad will have decent gains over a dual.
 
I run dual twin core Xeon's on one of my workstations and it shows no difference in game to my Core Duo in gaming benchmarks. However it is more noticeable in real time apps like photoshop and ripping Blurays to my media library.

Don't feel that you need to spend the money just because other people have them, but do buy if you use the apps that take advantage of the extra cores.

Personaly you would notice a much bigger improvement by upgrading your hard disk to an SSD, it would make your existing setup feel like a new PC.
 
Hi, thanks for all the replies!

Main reason for the upgrade is to be able to play arma2 (though I only play rarely -> didnt realise I could get a quad for 60 quid! seems like it would be the obvious choice)

Other things would be video transcoding, apart from that nothing overly cpu intensive.

I'll check out the quads, which models are going for 60 green queens?
 
You might manage to bag a Q6600 for @£60. I paid about £80 for mine a good few months back. If you are going to grab one try and make sure it's the right one - A GO Stepping SLACR. They clock better and usually run cooler than the B3's.

I went from a great little E6300 which was sat at 3.0Ghz no problem ( now in my wifes PC ) to my current Q6600 which is sat at 3.2Ghz. I have noticed a fair size improvement in overall performance in gaming and day to day applications. I dabble in web and graphics/logo design and use Adobe CS3 Fireworks, PS and Illustrator for a lot of image manipulation and its all very "snappy" with the Q6600 compared to the C2D E6300.

I'd say jumping from your E5200 to a Quad, especially if you apply a moderate overclock to it would be a good decision. :cool:
 
To the OP: May I ask what make and model number of motherboard you have? If you don't know, you should be able to check using CPU-Z.

As mentioned by the others, if your motherboard supports it, going from an E5200 to a Q6600 would be a good idea and provide a nice performance boost in games like ARMA2 - which make use of quad cores.
 
always check the bay, can pick up some real bargains there. try to find a q6600 and clock the nuts off it! :D
 
Yes seeing as yours is an E5200 it should give you quite a big performance step up. If you video edit you will definately see a good increase in speed and for £60 i would say a definate yes :D
 
I've got a 4870, and my mobo can support xfire, but there's no more 4870s around for love nor money! (And I don't know about adding a 4870X2)

Run it at 1920x1080 and its good out in the open countryside, but in towns its a bit on the slow side!
 
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