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Is Q6600 > E8400?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by CanadaPhil, 26 Aug 2008.

  1. CanadaPhil

    CanadaPhil What's a Dremel?

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    How much better is Q6600 than E8400?
    I have read that most software won't take advantage of four cores. Can anybody confirm or dispute this?
    What opperating system do you need to drive four cores? is XP enough or do you need Vista?
    Is Q6600 worth the $10 cost increase over E8400?
     
  2. chrisb2e9

    chrisb2e9 Dont do that...

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    for the operating system i suggest vista 64bit. and as for the cpu, i would need to know what you are going to do with the computer, ie games, video encoding, etc
     
  3. DaveVader

    DaveVader Fast Action Response Team

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    As Chris said, it depends what you do with your PC which determines what CPU you need.
    Anything that is CPU heavy and will take advantage of four cores (someone can provide examples) then obviously the Q6600 is the way to go. If you are just gaming, listening to music, anything non CPU heavy, E8400 is the way to go.
    If you were to do the later with the quad, there will be less performance than with the duo (due to clock speeds) and vice versa.
     
  4. mansueto

    mansueto Too broke to mod

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    As dave stated, it really dippends on the task you have planned for the rig, encoding and editing the quad is almost always better, while gaming the dual will provide more.
     
  5. Xtrafresh

    Xtrafresh It never hurts to help

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    IMO the 8400 is a far better choice in almost all cases. The q6600 only makes sense when you do a lot of heavy calculations that are not gaming. For everything else, the 8400 is better. It even produces less heat.

    Oh, and don't worry about operating system, you can use XP, Vista, or any of the Linux or OSX alternatives you like :D
     
  6. CanadaPhil

    CanadaPhil What's a Dremel?

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    I plan on gaming with it. Mainly World or Warcraft. I understand that this game isn't very demanding, but I'd like to have a system that wont hold me back if I want to jump into something new.
     
  7. Xtrafresh

    Xtrafresh It never hurts to help

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    e8400 for sure. Have fun :)
     
  8. GregTheRotter

    GregTheRotter Minimodder

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    IMHO dual core>quad core until all programs have been made to run on four cores. I plan to get the E8500/mobo/ram for encoding, gaming, photoshop, the works. Get the E8400.
     
  9. NickElliott

    NickElliott What's a Dremel?

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    So what you're saying is that the Q6600 is better for CPU heavy tasks but the E8400 is good for listening to music, which begs the question what good is a dual core? My Athlon XP1900+ (must be getting on for 7 years old now) is good for listening to music!

    I'm planning to buy an Intel dual core in the next few weeks as they get good press (no doubt it will be a lot faster than my ageing Athlon) and also because I thought a quad core would be overkill. However if I then don't updgrade my PC for another 5 years will a quad core be the better choice because sometime in the next 2 or 3 years software will start to make use of the quad core CPU? Nobody has a crystal ball, I know, but it might be worth considering...
     
  10. hodgy100

    hodgy100 Minimodder

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    im planning to get q6600 and OC it to 3Ghz, the reason being that although i want to play mainly games, i want my pc to last a good 3-4 years before i build a new one, this makes a quad core the best choise for me :)
     
  11. DaveVader

    DaveVader Fast Action Response Team

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    don't be so pedantic, I wasn't saying you would put an E8400 if you are building some kind of music playing system; I meant it can do many simple tasks compared to the quad which can do many multi threaded tasks.
     
  12. chrisb2e9

    chrisb2e9 Dont do that...

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    lets not forget that the most important part for good frame rates is the video card.
    as for 5 years from now it wont really matter, both current dual and quad's will be way out of date. People will look back at the q6600 and say it was good for its time but cant compare to what will be availble then.
    My vote is for the dual, overclock it like a mad man, get a 4850 or a 4870. both will kill WOW and can still keep up with new games for a while yet.
     
  13. Akava

    Akava Lurking...

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    I've noticed over all these threads that where the quad vs duel cores are concerned most people only ever highlight the ability for a single program for run on more than one core. So I think to myself in this day and age of paranoia with many people running numerous 'background' anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-inflammatory software, why is it still thought of to be a waste to have 4 cores?
     
  14. outlawaol

    outlawaol Geeked since 1982

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    I have a Q6600 OC'd to 3ghz. Per core remember. On a x64 OS it flies (not saying a E series will not, but its really nice to have those extra cores for various other things). And for only $10 more?! Ha! A no brainer, get a quad! Got the FSB up to like 1300 something if I recall. Get some decent ram that can go up to 1000mhz, and set your ratio to 3:2. Will smoke like good firewood! You can push that CPU to the moon too btw. Its more or less half decent ratios to take advantage of it for the performance gain (and with boards going to DDR3, you can surely push that thing stable to ungodly speeds).

    Just my two cents.

    :)
     
  15. bigsharn

    bigsharn Officially demotivated

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    That, plus if you become interested in various other activities (eg. photoshop, 3d rendering) or even if you're just playing a game (uses 1-2 cores) you can still use other programs to download things and you've got nothing interfering with the game
     
  16. badders

    badders Neuken in de Keuken

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    Just to add to the mix - Games are starting to use 4 cores.
    GRiD, Assassin's Creed, Lego Indy, Supreme Commander all use 4 cores. Admittedly with differing efficiencies, but the multi-threadedness is prevailing.
    Even if a particular game doesn't use 4, vista will try to load-balance the cores with background tasks, as Akava said.

    The only games I struggle with really are Source games - they are no where near multithreaded. Valve are supposed to be working on it, but haven't got very far - maybe with the new incarnation of the Source engine (Ep3?)

    For $10, I agree with the last few people. Get a Quad, and bang that baby to 333FSB(1333) - 3GHz Easy.
     
  17. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    ANY other application than old games runs better on quad cores.

    look at me, i do Folding@home SMP (2 cores high performance client) while i play GRID, not a single lag. i FOLD while i play RA3 Beta, not a single lag. i encode videos into iPhone format, very fast and system is still useable. i use VMware to emulate MacOSX Leopard and creat custom iPhone firmware, while playing games, not a single lag!

    quad core is all about able to run background tasks without being cut off from your computer. dual cores will not be able to FOLD while gaming, nor will it be able to run virus scan while gaming or encode as fast.

    it's the buyer's choise, whether you want faster old games or nearly 2x faster at everything else.

    besides, get a good cooler and run your quad core at 3.4Ghz easily, 3.6Ghz in winters if you got a large room with good airflow around your case. and that will beat even 5Ghz dual core Penryn at everything excluding old single threaded games.
     
  18. NickElliott

    NickElliott What's a Dremel?

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    How much hotter does a quad core run? How about when running at stock speeds?
     
  19. outlawaol

    outlawaol Geeked since 1982

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    Even at OC'd speeds a quad will run at about 50-60c under load. Thats with a aftermarket cooler too though, the stock cooler isnt great and could throw 5-10c more. At stock they are lower but by how much I couldnt really say. Arctic cooler freezer 7 pro is the after market cooler, and considered by some one of the best fan cooled heat sinks for any LGA socketed cpu.

    Get it, love it, cool it! :)
     
  20. Splynncryth

    Splynncryth 0x665E3FF6,0x46CC,...

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    A 64 bit OS is NOT a requirement to use multiple cores. Good old Windows 2000 could do it fine, and we had SMP machines long before AMD introduced the 64 bit extensions.
    However, the number of CPUs Windows will used is based on the flavor. I don't remember what the values are for the OSs though. The 64 bit versions may allow for more cores, but, I have 32 bit XP running happily on an 8 core machine. IT sees all 8 cores and spins out threads to all of them as needed.

    More cores are good for programs written specifically to use all of them, but not all of these programs scale. Games are one area that get written like this.
    What you will see as an immediate benefit is the ability to run more stuff without the OS getting choppy from all the context switches. But games and software like that still isn't the best at using multiple cores (been looking for a good multithreaded video encoder for a while, there is an even bigger machine at work that sits idle :) ).

    Recently, there has been a push to try and create systems that allow for multithreading more easily. A lot of the future depends on stuff like that IMHO.

    IF I were buying now, I'd grab a fast, but relatively cheap dual core CPU. That way, it wouldn't be as painful to switch to a quad core if needed. But your needs may vary.
     

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