Q6600 or E8400 (i know its common but still)

iurytx

New Member
Which should i get? I play games and i do a lot of photoshop and illustrator. i also want to start with video editing (cant right now cause i have a P4 that can barely run photoshop)

Thanks for any help

Mobo: ASUS 750i P5N-D

p.s. I dont plan on overclocking anything but if i do it wont be a lot.
 

lovely?

Active Member
if you don't plan on overclocking, i suggest the Q6600, just because it has the two more (albeit slower,) cores. if you do decide to go with a TINY bit of overclocking, which i can help with, i suggest the E8400.
 

Kornowski

VIP Member
Which should i get? I play games and i do a lot of photoshop and illustrator. i also want to start with video editing

Go for a Quad. Games are starting to use all four cores, video editing will be faster with four cores (speaking from personal experience).

So guess ill just get a E8400 for now then sometime in the summer ill just get a Q9550.

That's silly. You're going to spend money on a Dual Core, then up-grade to a Quad Core. The Q9550 is just 'basically' an OC'ed Q6600. It'd be a waste of money, get the Q6600 straight up, OC it a little and bam, you have your Q9550.
 

DirtyD86

banned
Dual Core 3.0 GHz

Quad Core 2.4 GHz



First number, dual, second, quad, third, change as a percentage
PCMark05 9091 8853 -3%
SysMark 2007, E-Learning 167 140 -16%
SysMark 2007, Video Creation 131 151 15%
SysMark 2007, Productivity 152 138 -9%
SysMark 2007, 3D 160 148 -8%
Quake 4 136 117 -15%
F.E.A.R. 123 110 -10%
Company of Heroes 173 161 -7%
Lost Planet 62 54 -12%
Lost Planet "Concurrent Operations" 62 81 30%
DivX 6.6 65 64 0%
Xvid 1.2 43 45 5%
H.264 QuickTime Pro 7.2 189 188 0%
iTunes 7.3 MP3 encoding 110 131 -16%
3ds Max 9 SP2 4.95 6.61 33%
Cinebench 10 5861 8744 49%
Excel 2007 39.9 24.4 63%
WinRAR 3.7 188 180 5%
Photoshop CS3 70 73 -4%
Microsoft Movie Maker 6.0 73 80 -9%


Most programs and games currently benefit more from a higher clocked DUAL than a lower clocked QUAD. At the time being, 2 > 4. Get the E8400.


" It's mostly what I would expect-- only rendering and encoding tasks exploit parallelism enough to overcome the 25% speed deficit between the dual and quad core CPUs. Outside of that specific niche, performance will actually suffer for most general purpose software if you choose a slower quad-core over a faster dual-core.

However, there were some surprises in here, such as Excel 2007, and the Lost Planet "concurrent operations" setting. It's possible software engineering will eventually advance to the point that clock speed matters less than parallelism. Or eventually it might be irrelevant, if we don't get to make the choice between faster clock speeds and more CPU cores. But in the meantime, clock speed wins most of the time. More CPU cores isn't automatically better. Typical users will be better off with the fastest possible dual-core CPU they can afford."

-Codinghorror.com


also, http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/195/Ask-Tim-Quad-vs-Dual-Cores-for-Gaming
 
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iurytx

New Member
Ok i decided to go with the dual (that chart really helped jevery).
I also decided to overclock it. How high can i over clock it and what cooler would i use.
 

DirtyD86

banned
Ok i decided to go with the dual (that chart really helped jevery).
I also decided to overclock it. How high can i over clock it and what cooler would i use.


victory for the righteous :)

you can get it to at least 4.0ghz if you try. there are plenty of forum posts on this subject, both on CF and other boards on the internet. try a google search with your motherboard model and E8400 and see what pops up.

as for a heatsink and fan, everyone has their preferences, but i would suggest the 9700 or 9500 zalman, or the v8
 

Backwoods166

New Member
Go Quad, dual is the past. There is no point to buying an inferior processor because it benchs a few points higher on few things. These two cpus are basically equals, just one can handle twice as much stuff. And for those saying that Games and apps don't use all four cores that has been disproven here by ScOut.

Edit:
Ok i decided to go with the dual (that chart really helped jevery).
I also decided to overclock it. How high can i over clock it and what cooler would i use.

All you did was shorten the time until your upgrade. =/
 
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jevery

Active Member
You will notice the speed difference when OCed. There’s about a 30% difference in speed between mine at 3.1 Ghz stock and 4.3 Ghz OC measuring with Super Pi, (15.4s vs 10.9s to 1M places). In the end I doubt that you’d know the difference whichever one you chose. I originally was going for the 6600 then changed my mind after comparing a lot of the benchmark charts.
 

Backwoods166

New Member
overclocking is the same as buying a higher clocked CPU for the most part (baring different manufacturing). CPUs sold at different clock speeds that are the same manufacturing line are the same CPU, one seemed to run a little better in the factory so it was sold as a 2.8, one seemed to need a little more voltage so they downclocked it to a 2.4, thats it. the q6600 or better quads easily OC into the mid 3Ghz, mine at 3.6 isn't hard, 3.4 at almost stock voltage.

To reiterate my point previously. The socket 775 quads are the medium grade right now, duals are the past. Even if they are clocked higher, they are on their way out. If all else is equal (price, benching very close) go quad. Duals work great, they OC great, they are great CPUs but they are at the end of their life. Get a quad, OC it to desired Ghz, and you got 2 extra cores that are going to make your cpu useful into the future.
 

just a noob

Well-Known Member
hard telling, only real way to tell is to get the chip, some people can get their e8400 to around 4.5ghz stable, and some people can get their q6600 to 3.8ghz stable
 
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