Q6600 Vs E8400

[azianai]

So i've been browsing a ton of forums, and this debate is raging everywhere.
Just wondering whats the better buy, the E8400 or the Q6600 right now. If both were same price (which microcenter sells both at 199.99 right now; B&M for the Q6600)

[screwballl]

it all depends on your use, if you are into gaming then the faster speed dual core will perform better, if you do more media related stuff then the Q6600 will handle that stuff better. It all depends on your usage.

[Parker]

Originally Posted by screwballl

it all depends on your use, if you are into gaming then the faster speed dual core will perform better, if you do more media related stuff then the Q6600 will handle that stuff better. It all depends on your usage.

But, you do have to take into consideration that COD4 and Crysis now utilize all four cores in gaming.

[Capper]

There are only a handful of applications that take advantage of more than two cores......and telling people to use the affinity feature is a waste of time.....at least for the short term I think the easy answer is a faster dual core processor....and bulk up on the memory.

[drew and not u]

You'll get more raw speed from the E8400, and more multi-tasking and multithreaded power with the Q6600. Like they said, depends on your usage.

[screwballl]

Originally Posted by Parker

But, you do have to take into consideration that COD4 and Crysis now utilize all four cores in gaming.

right it all depends on what it is used for... newer games may use all 4 but some slightly older games may not... and if it coupled with a video card 8600 or lower then dual core should be more than good enough in most cases for games like CS:S and such

[azianai]

Yeah because I'm currently offered a very intriguing offer, my buddy's offered to buy my E3110 that i haven't used for the price of me getting a Q6600 (199.99 B&M at Microcenter). For someone not really familiar with the OCing scene, which would probably be a better fit for me. I know the Q6600 can be clocked to 3ghz at least on air, the E8400 people have gotten 4ghz on Air, so i got a small dilemma now lol.
I'd just be gaming and watching vids with my 8800GTS G92 so i guess i wouldn't need the quad core per say.

[Stormcrow]

I'd go with the E8400, the improvements to the architecture will be noticeable in all applications you do, especially since developers (developers, developers, developers) are just now really getting into the groove of adding in dual core support to their programs and games. I've got my E6600 tweaked up to 3.4GHz and am more then satisfied with the results, a E8400 pulling 4Ghz with the added cache would make mincemeat of anything you could want to do and ask for more. By the time Nehalem rolls around would be a good time to jump to quads I'm thinking.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I'd go with the E8400, the improvements to the architecture will be noticeable in all applications you do, especially since developers (developers, developers, developers) are just now really getting into the groove of adding in dual core support to their programs and games. I've got my E6600 tweaked up to 3.4GHz and am more then satisfied with the results, a E8400 pulling 4Ghz with the added cache would make mincemeat of anything you could want to do and ask for more. By the time Nehalem rolls around would be a good time to jump to quads I'm thinking.

LOL nice Ballmer reference. :P

I would recommend a dual core. I've asked myself the same question, with a small difference. Wait for Q9XXX "lower end" series or buy a E8400. I couldn't be happier with my E8400 and 4GB of RAM. It eats anything I throw at it. I would be hard pressed to find a use to 4 cores, let alone two considered a tons of apps are not yet coded for dual core. Most of the apps out there are patched for dual core at best, nothing coded for the ground up to make use of it and work in tandem. So far the problem that seems to arise with many dual core optimized (see the deal? Optimized, not coded) is that there's a huge overhead, giving you only a slight boost compared to what it could give you.

[Thomtom]

You may want to consider how long you want to keep the processor for.

After all more and more apps and games are going to start being written for more and more cores!

I personally went for the Q6600 just to be a bit more future proof and lets be honest saying you have quad core sounds cool (for a short time probably)

And yes Q6600 does seem to overclock well. I have mine at 3G easy but felt I did not need to go further (although I probably could).

As the others guys say it all depends on what you do!

PS: Does Vista remember the affinity you assign a program and if not is there a way to do this?