Quad vs Duo

[wiggyuk]

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 ?

 

[wiggyuk]

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.

 

[wiggyuk]

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 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.

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

Sounds good, but may just be that bit too expensive.

 

[wiggyuk]

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.

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 ?

 

[wiggyuk]

what can you get the Q6600 overclocked to on air compared to water ?

 

[wiggyuk]

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.

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 ?

 

[wiggyuk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMiSjvBQdkM

Yeah I have watched that but it doesn't give you a detailed build log like some others