Thanks to everyone's help here I'm finishing up the specs on my new build, but I'm left with one last question. Which processor? I've narrowed it down to the following: E6750 E6850 Q6600 I'm a pretty heavy gamer, but I also do A LOT of photoshop/multi-tasking. I was leaning towards the Q6600 (for future performance), but the 6750/6850's are really attractive too! Any input would be appreciated! Thanks!
The question is this: will you keep your processor for several years, or will you upgrade in 18 months or less? If you'll be upgrading soon, then I'd go for the E7650, then go for a Q6600 later on, once quad-threaded apps become more mainstream.
The more recent CS* versions of Photoshop are able to take advantage of the Q6600 so I would go for that, but wait until after July 22nd Price cuts
Thanks to everyone who replied so far! For gaming I use 1600x1200 (my monitors max res), althogh I'm going to switch to 1680x1050 as soon as I pick a 22" widescreen. I do NOT do any type of 3-d rendering whatsoever. I use photoshop daily for my job. For work, I usually have photoshop, dreamweaver, multiple IE/Firefox windows, excel, word, outlook open and alt/tabbing between. Right now, i'm leaning towards the e6850. I'm going to be using the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R, so I could always upgrade to a quad core/DDR3 later down the road.
You might be interested in this comparison of dual and Quad published today following the announcement of the new Intel products and price cuts. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=8
I do not mean to hijack the thread but i am planning an upgrade next month and i'm looking at the same processors. I tend to upgrade every two years and was planning to go quad core so i have a bit of future proofing. I am assuming that games will start to make use of the multiple cores with in the two years before my next upgrade. Does this sound like a sensible idea? I'm currently running a single core Opty 146. If any of the staff members are reading this, (nudges Tim or Bindi ) are you aware of any news on the AMD front that would justify holding off on the upgrade to see what Barcelona is capable off? Are we likely to see any real benchmarks around the time of the Intel price cuts to put people off buying Intel?
I'm confused by the end of that review. if you look at the e6850 compared to the q6600 in game performance it did really well. In supreame commander it was even better. the q6600 spanked it at everything else but at the end the suggest the q6600 over the e6850. but for someone who plays games it would make more sence as per these bookmarks to get the e6850. anyone else agree or did i miss something?
Well, because most people buying these CPUs will do more than gaming. In the future, the quad core will have more advantages than the dual. Personally I would buy the quad rather than dual then quad. Cheaper and no difference virtually.
What you are seeing is the difference between applications with good multiprocessor support such as Photoshop and video encoders, and those that still have some way to go. As more multiprocessor applications appear, then the quad processors will show more significant gains. Truth is, not every application is going to benefit, many will not get beyond 2 processors and for those, higher clock speeds will give the greatest benefit which is what the benchmark results are telling us. Because I often run CPU intensive tasks, I am going Quad so I can surf or do a bit of word processing whilst the other stuff churns away in the background.
TomsHardware UK posted their new CPU charts yesterday Code: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/cpu-charts-2007,review-2351.html Going from the looks of things after the July 22nd price drop the Q6600 will be a better buy than the E6750, so personally I'd go for the Q6600 (as soon as I can afford it I know I will be)
The quad core is a better idea when 45nm parts come out, as now they get really hot, and with the die shrink that should be less of a problem.
