I'm putting a new rig together and am split between two processors:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 CPU @ 3.00GHz 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz 1066FSB 8MB L2 Cache
I can get both for the exact same price; I want the one that will offer the best performance. Normally, I'd assume that more cores would be better, but the E6850 has a faster clock speed and FSB...
I'll be using XP Pro SP2 & Vista (32-bit), 2 GBs of 800 MHz RAM, and a nVidia GeForce 8800 GT. I don't plan on doing much (if any) overclocking. I plan on using the machine primarily for gaming (though for a while, it'll primarily being older games like HL2, Fear, and Oblivian rather than Crysis and UT3). And most of my gaming will be done in XP.
Which processor, performance-wise, is the better deal? Especially for older games that may or may not utalize quad-core.