E8400 or Q6600? - Which would you buy?

[Bhavv]

Hi. I would like to create an opinion poll of which of these two processors people would rather buy today, and would appreciate if you provided your opinions on the two.

I have seen and discussed both sides of the debate to death on other forums - There are some people that believe a higher clocked E8400 gives more bang for buck, while others believe that more cores still offer better performance.

Both of the proccessors cost around the same price now, so lets take price out of the disscusion. Although in some places one could cost more then the other, the price on both processors is appealing enough to make either a very good buy for the money.

I personally got the E8400 after I heard it could clock to 4 Ghz and higher, and that it does. I am currently limited to a 450 Fsb and 4.05 Ghz due to my ram being unstable at higher frequencies, but I have been able to orthos stress the CPU at 4.275 Ghz and it was stable for over 2 hours. Unfortunately my Ram causes system freezes at higher frequencies though, and it is super PI 32m unstable anywhere over 900 Mhz. I have some new ram on order which should allow me to push my CPU even furthur. Basically, as an overclocker and gamer, I chose the E8400 over the Q6600.

Feel free to share your opinions on which one you would rather buy and your reasons too.

[teodor_ch]

if you update your system every 4 years then quad
if you update more often 1-2 years then the dual

again, games? dual core
encoding? quad

[Blitzen]

Q6600 is extremely good in games (as is the dual core.

This subject has been done to death on a few occassions now (search for them) but the fact remains that the Q6600 will still be around long after the dual cores are with the dinosaurs.

Try the benchmarking (although synthetic).
Put a Q6600 in the rig at 3.6ghz and test.
Then replace it with a E8400 @ 4.0ghx using all the same equipment as before and test.

The E8400, although a higher clock speed, will come off second best.

if you update your system every 4 years then quad
if you update more often 1-2 years then the dual

again, games? dual core
encoding? quad

I do a complete rebuild every year and to my mind, the Quad offered the best performance vs value.

[this_is_gav]

Gaming: E8400.
Multimedia work: Q6600
Combination of both: Q6600

[Bhavv]

Yea I upgrade something like every 6 months and manage to sell my old parts for almost full price on Ebay o.O. I already a better 2x2 Gb ram set on order to replace my poor 4x1 Gb. The new ram cost £70, I sell my current ram for £35 a pair (Still costs £43+ delivery brand new).

I want to see an article of the Q6600 vs the E8400. I read one comparing the Q6600 and the E6850 which left me thinking 'But the E8400 would be better then the E6850'.

But when I see quad cores capable of similar speeds or higher then my E8400 for a good price, I'll upgrade again

I would say now, to buy whichever one is cheapest. like recently on Newegg the Q6600 was $180 while the E8400 was still $210, so in that case deffinately buy the Q6600. But if the prices are the other way around, then buy the E8400 for games, or pay a bit extra for the Q6600 on a multimedia PC. They vary just about everywhere.

[teodor_ch]

I do a complete rebuild every year and to my mind, the Quad offered the best performance vs value.

99% of the games performs worse on a Q9300 or Q6600 than a E8400 (even without overclock)

i suppose you encode >33% of the time you spend on your pc

[-iceblade^]

what of the issue of chip degradation? it's not known just how long the wolfies can handle overvolting...

whereas the quads can take a real beating

3.6x4 sounds a lot better than 4.5x2 to me

[teodor_ch]

3.6x4 sounds a lot better than 4.5x2 to me

i agree, but when it comes to gaming you will probably have to choose between 3.6x2 vs 4.5x2 (the latter make it 4-4.2 to be more realistic)

[Clunk]

CPU-Z Validator 2.1

[Bugbait]

Depends on what you use your PC for. As others have stated, for most games, especially non-FPS a higher clocked dual core will outperform a quad. I say non-FPS since very few non-FPS games use more than two cores, assuming they're multi-threaded at all. I don't game as much as I used to so if anyone knows different please correct me. I moved from a Q6600 (@3.6GHz) to a E8200 (@4GHz) for my main PC. I could've gone the E8400 but I wanted to see how high I could push an E8200. My WoW (CPU dependent) framerate doesn't drop as much as it used to when the immediate area is densely populated with other players.

Since I was building a new HTPC I didn't feel the need to multitask as much so I've moved the Q6600 into the HTPC for simultaneous downloads, decoding, encoding, etc.

[Blitzen]

99% of the games performs worse on a Q9300 or Q6600 than a E8400 (even without overclock)

i suppose you encode >33% of the time you spend on your pc

You got anything to back that up?
If so, how much worse? Not noticeable as the difference is so minimal.

The Q6600 (or any quad) has the best of both worlds <------fact.

[teodor_ch]

You got anything to back that up?
If so, how much worse? Not noticeable as the difference is so minimal.

The Q6600 (or any quad) has the best of both worlds <------fact.

even though not the most reliable web site...
check the different benchmarks
Desktop CPU Charts - Tom's Hardware

[Hicks12]

even though i have an e8400 id still say the q6600 is the way to go...

q6600= &#163;140
e8400= &#163;170 (from scan)
i like my dual core but its not worth &#163;170 by any means, i got it for just under &#163;125 at launch and i was worth it then when the q600 was around &#163;160, now i would go with the quad even if the e8400 was around 130.

Dual core is best at games, at this time but that will change. Thing is, quad and dual core they dont really matter because games are hardly cpu intensive anymore except for the odd few like supcom( which still isnt that bad) and then you have the gfx cards being the bottleneck.

Voted q6600.

[Blitzen]

even though not the most reliable web site...
check the different benchmarks
Desktop CPU Charts - Tom's Hardware

They are all old games and all on 32Bit.

Neither core is overcloked either to make the comparison.

i agree, but when it comes to gaming you will probably have to choose between 3.6x2 vs 4.5x2 (the latter make it 4-4.2 to be more realistic)

Dont you mean 3.6 x 4?

[Timo]

I use my computer mainly for multimedia (music production, graphics (2D and 3D), encoding, video editing), and a little gaming.

So it was always going to be a quad for me. A dual never entered the equation.

Depends what you want to do on it.

Surely gaming is often more dependent on the GPU, than the CPU?

Either way, E8500 is around the same price-range as the Q6600, and the Q6600 could just be OC'd to 3.GHz or more, which would make it a moot point. I'd never go with a dual, given the similar price and the Q6600 overclocking potential.

[TAKTAK]

IMHO quaddies all the way, they may not be the best at the moment due to poor utilisation but it a couple of months time quaddies will pull ahead of the pack by miles.