Q6600 or wait for Q9450?

[this_is_gav]

I presumed you were replying to my post about some of the Q6600s not overclocking beyond 3GHz, not comparing it to the Q9450?

I couldn't possibly recommend a Q9450 to anyone with a Q6600 either, unless your job is little more than CPU number crunching, encoding or rendering of some description.

[badass]

I love these figures being banded about. People shouldn't make things up just to support their arguments
Firstly, the 6% increase is at the same clockspeed. The Q9450 is a 2.66 GHz CPU so its got the same clockspeed as the £332 CPU and is 6% faster than that one.
Secondly, it is *NOT* twice the price or anything close to that.
The Q6600 is £158 at scan compared to the pre order price of £218 for the Q9450. The Q9450 would have to be £100 more to be twice the price.

I still wouldn't spend £220 on a CPU though when a Quad core is available for £60 less.

[Webby]

I don't think anybody is comparing the Q6600 and the Q9450 at stock speeds most people are talking about them at 3GHz ish (easily achievable OC in most cases for the Q6600 and I would assume for the Q9450 but saying that its lower multiplier isn't going to to help it there) so same clock speeds where the difference would again be back to the 6% difference from the changes in the architecture.

[Blitzen]

6% isnt £200 in my book

[NightshadowUK]

Don't forget SSE4 with the Q9450, it's bound to become quite useful when rendering / encoding.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

what im saying is not when its oc but at stock too. why pay £60 more for a 6% increase? im currently on a p4 northwood and if i can save that £60 it will be great has i can use that £60 for somthing else.

me and others are not stupid to pay that amount for little gain

[baius]

Saying that unless you are running something like Folding at home all the time (which will use 100% CPU load constantly) you probably won't see much difference in power usage during normal operation.

I'm waiting for Nehalem, when I'll go Quad Core, but I'd like to know the power consumptions of today's quad core CPUs (and systems) compared to dual cores. I've not really found a good resource for such a comparison. Any links???

(I think Solo Core is becoming old-hat, so I'm not so interested, but hey, if that's there too, fine... It may actually help predict trends for future octo-cores.)

I feel that the less that can be spent on power the better, and I do care about the environment, too.

Naturally, Intel is staying as "closed fisted" as they can on Nehalem specs, but I guess that will do somthing ppw (performance per watt) wise, i.e. they'll want to increase performance, but not at the expense of increasing power consumption. (They're actuallly doing well at decreasing it every generation.)

[nickp8]

The system in my sig uses 138W idle and 188W on load according to my Zalman ZM-MFC2. I use an Enermax Liberty 400W PSU and the system runs fine!

[Ciber]

Interesting thread. I'm continuing to wait to get quad core. Hopefully I can wait until ddr3 becomes more economic. My single core a64 4000+ isnt struggling with anything yet that I've noticed.