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Quad vs Duo

wiggyuk

wiggyuk

wiggyuk

Associate
Joined
1 Oct 2004
Posts
706
Location
Rowley Regis, West Mids
Hi all I am currently considering upgrading my P4 3.2, but I was wondering if you guys could tell be the benefits of having a Core 2 Quad over a Core 2 duo ?

Do you only notice the difference when using 4 applications at a time or is the quad just generally quicker ?
 
Depends really, how much do you want/have to spend, and what do you need.

If you do a lot of multi tasking already then it'll already help you out.
Not much really good multithreded software about at the moment but a little down the line the quad should pay off. It should be really good when games really start using multi threds as they'll be able to have much better physics( like the using that physics x card but without needing the card) and AI too. The real benifits of a quad core at the moment is when doing stuff that really give a processor a hard time like Video Encoding and of course other programs like seti.
 
If you buying a new rig as you are there would be no point at all going for say a E6750 clocked @ 2.66 over a Q6600 clocked @ 2.4gig, the price difference is around £45 why have 2 cores when you can have 4 for such a small amount more.
 
To some people £45 is not a small ammount, and why go for an E6750 when you can get an E2140/60/80 for much cheaper.

TBH though, if you are thinking on spending that much on a cpu, the quad would definately be the wise choice, will help out video encoding/mutitasking/redering HUGELY.

There are very few games out there that will take advantage of the 4 cores, and thus for gaming purposes you will probably not notice much gain, but future games will no doubt start to be multi threaded, and if you plan on keeping this pc for a while, quad is the way to go.
 
When I do finally upgrade I will be keeping it for a while before upgrading again, so a Q6600 @ 2.4gig would be a lot quicker than a E6850 @ 3gig, to be honest I think that might be too expensive, at the moment I have a P4 3.2 on a P4C800-E board, and it is beginning to do my head in because it is too slow, I do a lot of compressing de-compressing work (can be quite demanding whilst trying to do other stuff at the same time, video encoding avi-DVD e.t.c I do like playing games but im not a hardcore gamer, so what would you guys recommend me to upgrade to without spending thousands, about £5 - £6 hundred would be nice could maybe go a bit further.
 
are you going to keep your current machine intact? if not you maye be abole to save a bit by canabilising a few bits out of it such as hdds, cd/dvd drives (may depend on if they are IDE or SATA), case (if you like it and if it is big enough to fit your new machine in), psu (depending on age, brand and wattage) and maybe even the ram if you have ddr2 stuff (this will depend on if you want to overclock or not or if you want or need more ram) . this may save a bit towards building your new machine thus allowing you to buy better parts with the limited anount of money you have since you will be havng to buy less parts (depending on what you may save from your old machine)
 
My e4300 Vs QX6700 at the same clock speed is well worlds apart in day to day tasks and the QX6700 blows it away in every benchmark, deffinatly get the quad if you had a choice :)
 
hikaru452 said:
are you going to keep your current machine intact? if not you maye be abole to save a bit by canabilising a few bits out of it such as hdds, cd/dvd drives (may depend on if they are IDE or SATA), case (if you like it and if it is big enough to fit your new machine in), psu (depending on age, brand and wattage) and maybe even the ram if you have ddr2 stuff (this will depend on if you want to overclock or not or if you want or need more ram) . this may save a bit towards building your new machine thus allowing you to buy better parts with the limited anount of money you have since you will be havng to buy less parts (depending on what you may save from your old machine)
Click to expand...

My case is about 5 years old and only cost £30 then it is just a cheapo case, I would like a new case and to watercool it so I can OC the new rig, my current setup is DIM 1 & 3 Corsair XMS CMX256A-3200C2, DIM 2 & 4 512 MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM, Radeon 9700 Pro, ASUS P4C800-E, P4 3.2 Northwood, PSU 300w Jeantech, HDD 1 IDE - Maxstor 152gb, HDD 2 SATA - Samsung 111gb, CDROM 1 - SONY DVD, CDROM 2 - Pioneer DVR-111D, I think thats about it.

fothsn said:
My e4300 Vs QX6700 at the same clock speed is well worlds apart in day to day tasks and the QX6700 blows it away in every benchmark, deffinatly get the quad if you had a choice :)
Click to expand...

Sounds good, but may just be that bit too expensive.
 
No need for watercooling to overclock the new machine. Modern high end (circa £30) air coolers are just as good as average watercooling. Get a quad core, decent cooler, 4GB of OCUK 1066Mhz RAM and a P35 motherboard and your away. For £600-700 it can easily be done including all the other parts you need.
 
Dureth said:
No need for watercooling to overclock the new machine. Modern high end (circa £30) air coolers are just as good as average watercooling. Get a quad core, decent cooler, 4GB of OCUK 1066Mhz RAM and a P35 motherboard and your away. For £600-700 it can easily be done including all the other parts you need.
Click to expand...

I just like the look of watercooled rigs to be honest, I thought water was way better than air ?

Also I thought these quad cpu's ran hot ?
 
if you stupidly go for a B3 stepping q6600 then you will get a very hot quad core, however, if you go for a G0 stepping cpu (know on OCUK as a 95watt low power edition) Q6600 then temps will be a fair bit lower (both will require you to put a heatsink on correctly to see the temp difference otherwise they will both just overheat anyway (B3 first though))
 
Its not the clockspeed that will be the limit with air, its the temperature. Using watercooling allows the use of higher voltage as the temps are kept under better control so theoretically you can obtain a better overclock. Check out the database in my sig for some ideas of temp differences.
 
I am interested in this thread and others like it. I have a (Single Core) Athlon XP2400+ based PC which has given me sterling service for years but I am now thinking of upgrading. The main reason for the upgrade to be honest is because I want to move from Windows 2000 to Windows XP (Not Vista for a year or two yet) and if I am going to reinstall the OS which takes days to get JUST right I may as well upgrade all the h/w too.

Main concern is my large collection of older games. Does anyone have any experience of backwards compatibility problems with old, even VERY old games, with either dual core or quad core. Does Dos 6.2x for instance run or throw its hands up in confusion under dual and quad core based systems. Games I care about most are things like Rise of Nations, C&C Generals, and similar.

Thanks in advance.
 
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w3bbo said:
Its not the clockspeed that will be the limit with air, its the temperature. Using watercooling allows the use of higher voltage as the temps are kept under better control so theoretically you can obtain a better overclock. Check out the database in my sig for some ideas of temp differences.
Click to expand...

Cheers w3bbo, I have seen your build and it is well impressive I would love to be able to build a system based on yours but I dont think I could afford to pay nearly £300 just for a case.

P.S. do you have a build log of your rig posted anywhere ?
 
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