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Which CPU?

Zaphrod

Zaphrod

Zaphrod

Associate
Joined
13 Feb 2003
Posts
342
Hey all, quick question. My son is 8 years old and into gaming but plays mostly Minecraft / TF2 / Portal / Terraria and the like but he is getting more into FPS games and I have the option of putting one of the following 3 CPU's in his PC. Which would you go for in 2013 with modern games? I do not have a suitable Motherboard for Overclocking so stock speed only.

Q8200 (Currently Installed)
Q6600
E8400

Thanks
 
That's a tough one.

The Q6600 and Q8200 trade blows as they're slightly different architecture from what I remember, so even with the Q6600 having slightly higher clock, it's not black and white.

The E8400 in any games that only use 2 cores will be ahead of either CPU, but there's some latest games which really need a quad core (Crysis 3 for one)

I'd probably stick to leaving the Q8200 in the system, my friend's currently gaming on a stock Q6600 with a 7770 and enjoying it, he came from consoles.
 
Those are pretty much my thoughts, If it was 4 years ago I would definitely go for the e8400 but with modern games using more cores I am thinking the q6600 may be better. I dont think the q8200 is in the running as I am sure the Q6600 would be faster 90% of the time. I am just concerned that the benefit of the quad cores of the Q6600 would not outweight the clock speed benefit of the e8400 except in a few games which at 8 he's not likely to play.
 
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If you have all those CPUs in your possession you could always do a few games/benchmarks with the Q6600 and the Q8200. I would have thought the Q6600 would be a bit better if overclocked but I doubt there's a huge difference in it?
 
Anandtech shows the Q8200 and the Q6600 are really neck and neck. I am tempted to leave the Q8200 in and just swap his HD 4890 for my old GTX 480, I really don't think the difference between the CPU's will be noticeable in the real world.
 
Ok so now that that decision is made, are there any 775 overclocking boards still available? Thinking of building a small LAN machine. A MATX or ITX board would be best so I can use a prodigy case. This Q6600 hits 3.6Ghz and the E8400 hits 4Ghz so will still be decent for LAN gaming with a lower resolution monitor. I am tired of lugging my CM690 case to Telford for a few games of TF2 and Trackmania.
 
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Probably best bet will be Ebay or members market, doubt you will find a 775 board in stock anywhere these days. :)

I remember the old P35/P45 boards used to be good for overclocking if you could find an MATX version of one of those.
 
I don't have access to MM unfortunately, I will check ebay but unless it is really cheap I don't like taking my chances on things like motherboards.
 
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