Afternoon all, Now, after much debate, I think I'm going to change over to Intel, and have a few questions about it. I'll be getting a Q6600, but am unsure of what motherboard yet. First of all what motherboard would you all recommend (main use is gaming), and secondly would I notice the difference over my current setup (Asus M2N-Sli deluxe with AMD X2 6000+ @3.2ghz) in regards to gaming performance? For the motherboard I can spend around £120. I've looked around for benchmarks and FPS comparisons, but cannot find much comparing the Q6600 and the AMD X2's, am I not looking hard enough? Sorry if this has been asked before, and thanks for any input. Sam.
I'd recomend the Intel P35 chipset. The Asus P5k-E or Gigabyte P35 DSR3 are awesome mobo's for the money. As for the Q6600, i wouldnt pick for gaming as Dual Core is faster and i would suggest a Wolfdale cpu for that job. I Switched from a X2 4200 939 rig and i found it a much smoother expeirance but i did also change OS.
Personally, I think your PC is perfectly capable at the moment, yes, Intel is faster, yes you would garner a small speed difference, the question to ask yourself is, is it worth it? The difference will be negligable and vastly un-noticed. Games like a fast CPU but they much prefer a fast GPU, of which you have. Nahelem, however is a different story, save your pennies and get a true quad core processor when they land from Intel, apparently Q3, not far enough away for any newly released games to make you wish you had a faster PC. Make sure you sell/reuse your old stuff as, as it is so new it would be pointless to keep it sitting doing nothing, a media centre PC for example would be great. Overall, I think you should wait. Of course, that is my personal preferance and the money is yours, would like to know of the outcome though.
I will be making the jump to intel soon too. The board I will be getting is the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R mainly because it's cheap and cheerful but definitely value for money. (£70 ish on scan) Quad core isn't used in gaming but the intels overclock so much better than AMDs, getting the Q6600 past 3.2GHz is simple so from the speed point of view will out perform your current CPU. I reckon you will see a performance difference although how noticable, I am not sure. As for me, I will be switching to an E8400 as I don't need quadcore yet.
