Which CPU?

[Zaphrod]

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

 

[Zaphrod]

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.

 

[Zaphrod]

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.

 

[Zaphrod]

As I said, just leave the Q8200 in

Thanks, just had to work it out in my head.

 

[Zaphrod]

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.

 

[Zaphrod]

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.