E8400 or E2160 or Q6600?

[matty-hodgson]

The words video encoding should sway the decision towards a Q6600. I have mine overclocked to 3.0GHz at stock voltages.

Not too sure about the temps quoted by matty-hodgson as those are insanely low temps which you'd probably not even get with a decent water cooling kit, my Q6600 tops out at around 63,63,60,60 but have since replaced my rear stock adda 80mm fan with a yate loon and that's helped bring the temps down to around 59.

those temps i quoted are my temperatures, with a Scythe Ninja mini, i get around 35 - 40'C when i have my heating on when it's around 25'C in here, and i get down to around 20'C when it's about 5'C in here when i get home from being out a few days, 'cause i don't bother having the heating on. with the Intel Heatsink and Fan the temperatures will most probably be 10 - 15'C higher, i bought the OEM CPU so i don't really know how good it is.

EDIT: this is idle temps btw, upto around 52'C at full load.

[IAmATeaf]

those temps i quoted are my temperatures, with a Scythe Ninja mini, i get around 35 - 40'C when i have my heating on when it's around 25'C in here, and i get down to around 20'C when it's about 5'C in here when i get home from being out a few days, 'cause i don't bother having the heating on. with the Intel Heatsink and Fan the temperatures will most probably be 10 - 15'C higher, i bought the OEM CPU so i don't really know how good it is.

EDIT: this is idle temps btw, upto around 52'C at full load.

Those temps are still bloody good, what are you using to measure the temps? I use coretemp and takes temps after primes been running for at least half an hour. As I said in my original post if you've got a good case with good air flow through it then that will help immensely, for me my old Lian Li case with it's 80mm fans is beginning to show its age.

[Biscuit]

Im in a similar situation to you JPreston. I really dont think i can quite push to a Q6600 so its between the E8400 or E2150/2180. Ive already got 2GB ram and i plan to overclock it. Just cant decide if i would get much benefit over waiting to get a quadcore.

[matty-hodgson]

Those temps are still bloody good, what are you using to measure the temps? I use coretemp and takes temps after primes been running for at least half an hour. As I said in my original post if you've got a good case with good air flow through it then that will help immensely, for me my old Lian Li case with it's 80mm fans is beginning to show its age.

i use Core Temp 0.96.1 aswell, with a Coolermaster Stacker 831 with 5 120mm fans, can accomodate 9 though.

very good case.

in the case i had before this my temps were around 40'C idle on a cold day and got upto 50'C idle when it was warm outside the case :S

was far too hot!!

[atmadden]

You have a problem if you are going with a Q6600. Your psu wont be able to handle an overclocked Q6600. I had an akasa 460w psu and a Q6600 and it wouldn't overclock at all past stock and remain stable it would boot up to 3.8ghz but as soon as all 4 cores were in use it would freeze or reboot due to psu being unable to handle it. Bought a corsair HX620 and had it stable at 3.6ghz no reboots and prime stable.

[JPreston]

Yeah I figure I'll have to run the Q6600 at stock or at very modest speeds at first (I have a quite few hard drives as well). Online calculators say I should be just about OK with a Q6600 in my current set up. PSU upgrade will be along with my next graphics card, whenever that is.

What happened to your Q6600 then - selling it?

[atmadden]

Flogged it on ebay and almost got what I paid for it. For some reason it wouldn't go past 400fsb no matter what I tried which was odd but my E8400 is stable to at least 514fsb so far.

[s_kinton]

I had this excact same decision last week and went for a Q6600 in the end, with an Abit Dark Raider and 4Gb of RAM. Got it running at 3Ghz on stock volts, not tried any higher just yet.

The Q6600 is definitely the right choice here.

[shaffaaf27]

i sold my whole system, and reverted back to my packard bell of 3 years ago, well before i knew about Custom PCs. tbh for me the Q6600 wasnt doing much, and now ill be getting the Q9450, (arnt i an idiot )

[IAmATeaf]

You have a problem if you are going with a Q6600. Your psu wont be able to handle an overclocked Q6600. I had an akasa 460w psu and a Q6600 and it wouldn't overclock at all past stock and remain stable it would boot up to 3.8ghz but as soon as all 4 cores were in use it would freeze or reboot due to psu being unable to handle it. Bought a corsair HX620 and had it stable at 3.6ghz no reboots and prime stable.

I'm running my Q6600 @ 3.0 and have had it at 3.2 both prime stable, settled for 3.0 just cause of heat issues, I'm only using an Enermax 430w jobbie but my GPU isn't the worlds best and power hungry like the 88xx series.

[Wh@l3fish]

Looks like you're leaning towards the Q6600 here, but i'll just throw in my tuppeny worth.

I was in the same situation as you, excpet I went for the E2180 because then I could upgrade to the newer quads when they come down in price and applications require more cores. More imprtantly, when I've got some more money to pay for it all!

I've only done a small overclock to 3Ghz on standard voltages, with a stable temp of about 35C after a few hours of playing oblivion

So my advice is get the cheap chip, and OC it. Unless you've got more money spare of course

[atmadden]

Gotta admit I would get the E2160 and have some fun clocking it until the situation gets a bit better. You will get back most of what you pay for it until supplies settle down. The major drawback to to the Q6600 is the power consumption which is the main reason I dropped it in the end. I don't do much media encoding so went back to dual core. They say quad core will be more utilised soon but it isn't at the moment. Just my opinion.

[ACiD303]

I recently went through a long decision making process of deciding to go C2D or C2Q, some software I need for my course don't even install because of old instruction sets on the Athlon . . . went for the Q6600 based on media encoding and video/3D rendering capabilities.

The E8400 has SSE4.1, in which allegedly will surpass a Q6600 (which supports SSE3) in the latest encoding/rendering packages that support it, but I've not seen any hard evidence of this yet.

Like most, I bumped the Q6600 up to 3.0GHz on stock voltages, which is more than I really need as I upgraded from an Athlon! I'm using the Arctic Freezer Pro 7, which I can't hear even under load, it's actually nice to have a system that doesn't compete the noise levels of a Harrier Jump Jet when switched on (my Athlon!).

My system overhauls happen every 4-6 years, I'm pretty confident the Q6600 will see me for at least the next 4 years.

[freddie]

Hmm. I'd get the E2160, overclock a little bit. Is your motherboard Penryn compatible? If so then I'd look to get a 45nm quad later in the year when prices are down to where they should be.

By that time more programs would be ready to use 4cores...probably.

[Biscuit]

In begininng to lean towards the P2D option, means you can put a bit of extra cash towards a nicer mobo with bigger feature set ready for the future C2s. Im maybe considering the asus x38 that runs DDR2...

[duffy]

Hello all.
I suggest that if you can afford it get the Q6600.I have one on a Asus P5Q-deluxe OC'ed to 3.25GHZ with no voltage increases and everything on auto and stock heatsink and fan.My system goes into a reboot loop @ 3.50GHZ without touching anything in the bios.I will be trying later to see how high I can go and still be able to boot and run stable without touching any bios settings other than the fsb.The Q6600 will burn a movie,surf the web,download files from the net and unzip a 7GB winzip game file and run @ 54-57 Celcius.From the reviews if read about the i7 series cpu, the price versus performance increases is just not worth it.For most games right now a good dual core(say e8600)is more than enough for now.I went with the Q6600 as I do a lot of burning and video converting and I wanted the extra oomph of the four cores for that,also I will not have to worry about upgrading for a couple of years at the least.Besides most games are more gpu intensive than cpu(i7 940 with a ati radeon 3500 series is gonna be slower and choppy playing crysis on high,but change the gpu to a Geforce 285 and your gonna crank)For example I play crysis,left4dead,oblivian,metal gear,jericho all on high setting(game auto selected)and all play fine.So in short buy what you need but plan so ya dont have to upgrade for at least 2 yrs at the current level of software develpment.In real life apps anything faster than the Q6600 is just a wast of money,considering if heard claims of the Q6600 being over clocked to 4.0GHZ on high quality air or liquid cooling and matching the i7 940 in performance and sometimes beating it out with the right memory,gpu,cooling and motherboard.