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Swapping from quad to dual?
- Thread starter Modjo
- Start date
That's what I thought. Was thinking of buying a Q6600 as they're quite cheap now and I feel the need for an upgrade (see current spec in sig) but have seen a lot of recommedations for the E8500 for the gamer. Are the 8500's good clockers on air?
Seems I've opened a can of worms here. Found this helpfull review (hmm...) (especially the end statement in bold) dated March '08! And I quote.....
"Intel has a winner on its hands with the Core 2 Duo E8500...... (for those ppl swapping from quad to dual)
...Unfortunately the E8500 also signals the end of easy, crazy-high overclocking for Intel chips due to increased standard FSB speeds. Because even if you end up with a really great board that runs fine with a 500MHz FSB, the lower end E8200 with an 8x multiplier would max out at 4GHz - which as we can clearly see is far below the potential of the 45nm Wolfdale. When Intel switches to 1600MHz FSB for its mainstream parts, the maximum overclock achievable on a good board with a lower multiplier less expensive chip will be limited to about 12.5% which is not exactly earth shattering.
We should enjoy the 35%-50% overclocks that we can currently achieve with reasonably priced parts while we can - the E8500 may well be one of the last easily significantly overclockable mid range part from Intel for a while.
At the stock 3.16MHz it already provides excellent performance for office use, encoding and gaming; and given that it is also an excellent overclocker, it absolutely shines and screams when pushed to the limit.
Frankly, for a gamer, an E8500 is a better choice than a quad core QX9770 - and it will remain a better choice for a gamer until such time as the games are no longer GPU bound and are extremely multi-threaded - which will not happen for quite a while."
"Intel has a winner on its hands with the Core 2 Duo E8500...... (for those ppl swapping from quad to dual)
...Unfortunately the E8500 also signals the end of easy, crazy-high overclocking for Intel chips due to increased standard FSB speeds. Because even if you end up with a really great board that runs fine with a 500MHz FSB, the lower end E8200 with an 8x multiplier would max out at 4GHz - which as we can clearly see is far below the potential of the 45nm Wolfdale. When Intel switches to 1600MHz FSB for its mainstream parts, the maximum overclock achievable on a good board with a lower multiplier less expensive chip will be limited to about 12.5% which is not exactly earth shattering.
We should enjoy the 35%-50% overclocks that we can currently achieve with reasonably priced parts while we can - the E8500 may well be one of the last easily significantly overclockable mid range part from Intel for a while.
At the stock 3.16MHz it already provides excellent performance for office use, encoding and gaming; and given that it is also an excellent overclocker, it absolutely shines and screams when pushed to the limit.
Frankly, for a gamer, an E8500 is a better choice than a quad core QX9770 - and it will remain a better choice for a gamer until such time as the games are no longer GPU bound and are extremely multi-threaded - which will not happen for quite a while."
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What this statment was trying to say (I think) was the best dual core would be a better bet for the gamer than even the most extreme (and most expensive) quad. Tho I'm no expert as I've yet to experience to joys of quad multi-threading
