E8400 VS Q6600 for gaming?

E8400 can most likely overclock faster. However my Q6600 purrs along with a 1200 mhz overclock @ 3.6 ghz and chews up any game I throw at it quite handily.
 
The E8400 purrs along too at a cool 4Ghz if you get a decent chip. ;)
 
Neither should be a problem for gaming provided the Q6600 is overclocked to some degree, but since few games can make good use of more than two threads, the E8400 is generally considered better for gaming since it can normally clock higher.
 
I have been thinking about this question myself, for my own upgrade. For me it really comes down to upgrade cycle vs future games. IIRC supreme commander is the only current game that takes advantage QC, however future games like alan wake will be increasingly able to take advantage of those cores. So if you upgrade infrequently it makes more sense to overclock a q6600. If you upgrade fairly regularly its probably better just to get a 8400 now and a quad when you need one. The one variable that will have most impact is how fast do you think the gaming industry will get out games that take advantage of those extra cores.
 
E8400 is faster for gaming if you get it to 4.5GHz on air but the Q6600 is still good if overclocked to 3.4GHz range. But most games that don't take advantage more than 1 core would fun faster on a E8400.
 
Anything above 3.0GHz, dual or quad, will give you nearly the same exact framerate in 99% of games. At 3.0GHz you ensure that in the vast majority of current games your GPU is the limiting factor when running high resolutions, no matter if you're running an 8800 GT or a pair of 9800 GX2s.

There are several CPU scaling benchmarks out there (Hit up the Google) that showed zero performance increase going from a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo to a 3.0GHz Core 2 Quad on a single 8800 GTX. So since 2.4GHz is enough for a single 8800 GTX, its rather safe to assume anything at 3.0GHz is going to be enough for anything else.

There are reasons for having a CPU faster than 3.0GHz, but gaming is not one of them.

Here's a good link for CPU scaling on an 8800 GTX. You'll see that the faster CPUs only made a difference in CPU bound games like simulations and strategy games.
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=672
 
i only play shooters, and the only shooter i've seen that produced any noticeable improvement when switching to a quad was crysis. q6600@333fsb with a gtx posted better min, max, avg than e4300@333fsb with a gtx. i couldn't increase any in-game settings, but the gameplay overall was smoother. unfortunately, i really don't care to play anymore of crysis, so whatever performance boost gleaned from 4 cores is for naught.
 
Thanks for doing the footwork and getting us more links UtopiA. Really gives people an idea of how little CPU matters at high resolution in most games.
 
NKDietrich said:
Thanks for doing the footwork and getting us more links UtopiA. Really gives people an idea of how little CPU matters at high resolution in most games.
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This is precisely why I've been pushing quad-core in general (and the Q6600 in particular) since the SLACR Q-series parts became the generally available part. If anything, this is more true now given availability issues with E8xxx (Wolfdale).

Further, the few game types that still scale even relatively with CPU frequency (sims and RTS titles) are also among the most likely to take advantage of multiple cores (Supreme Commander is the most obvious example).

Given that the SLACR Q6600 (even with stock cooling) can crank to 3 GHz reliably on most (if not all) motherboards that support it today, and that once you go even to 3 GHz, if the game is *not* GPU-bound, it will more easily take advantage of more cores than further overclocking (even Crysis darn near walls out at 3 GHz in terms of CPU-related performance gains on any multiple-core CPU; in fact, the gains from the two additional cores on a Q6600 at the same 3 GHz easily-attainable clocking outweigh those obtained from maximized air-cooling any dual-core available to date). Therefore, unless it truly is all about the e-penis, given current pricing, quad-core (not just Q6600, but also Q9300/Q9450) wins in terms of usable bang-for-buck over any dual-core.
 
Mithent said:
Neither should be a problem for gaming provided the Q6600 is overclocked to some degree, but since few games can make good use of more than two threads, the E8400 is generally considered better for gaming since it can normally clock higher.
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yeah, what he said. If you intend to hold onto it long enough for games/apps to actually all 4 cores, then MAYBE Q6600, but otherwise 8400 should clock much higher w/good cooling.
 
i'm looking into a dell system built around the q6600...3 gigs of ram, 500 gig hd for 500 bucks. no monitor, crap vid card. but i think i'm gonna take the plunge unless i can find something at teh dell outlet...
 
IMO, that's not an easy question to answer flat out. Neither will likely be bottlenecking you in games, it'll be the graphics card. There won't be too much of a difference noticed between the CPUs. The E8400 is flat out faster though in most games since few utilize 4 cores, and it of course has a higher clock speed. However, as the list of games that can continues to grow, the Q6600 will start to be faster.
 
What is it that people aren't getting??? :confused: I mean seriously folks!! Stop giving ignorant advice please. It's been proven over and over that almost all games are GPU bound if you have appx 3.2Ghz or better, yet people keep saying that the 8400 clocks higher and is better for gaming.

I guess some people just don't get it. If it were me and I had to choose between a 6600 at 3.6 and an 8400 at 4.0 (knowing that anything over 3.2 will not bottlenech anything) the Q6600 would win hands down. Especially since it just hit $180!

Do some googling if you don't trust what I say, it's all over almost every web site that talks about hardware.
 
PGHammer said:
This is precisely why I've been pushing quad-core in general (and the Q6600 in particular) since the SLACR Q-series parts became the generally available part. If anything, this is more true now given availability issues with E8xxx (Wolfdale).

Further, the few game types that still scale even relatively with CPU frequency (sims and RTS titles) are also among the most likely to take advantage of multiple cores (Supreme Commander is the most obvious example).

Given that the SLACR Q6600 (even with stock cooling) can crank to 3 GHz reliably on most (if not all) motherboards that support it today, and that once you go even to 3 GHz, if the game is *not* GPU-bound, it will more easily take advantage of more cores than further overclocking (even Crysis darn near walls out at 3 GHz in terms of CPU-related performance gains on any multiple-core CPU; in fact, the gains from the two additional cores on a Q6600 at the same 3 GHz easily-attainable clocking outweigh those obtained from maximized air-cooling any dual-core available to date). Therefore, unless it truly is all about the e-penis, given current pricing, quad-core (not just Q6600, but also Q9300/Q9450) wins in terms of usable bang-for-buck over any dual-core.
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QFT. My Q6600 Chews up anything including crysis @ 3.0GHz. Plus, when I turn back to my desktop to get work done, the quad rips through everything. :)

Q6600 FTW, especially @ $180.
 
baleedit said:
What is it that people aren't getting??? :confused: I mean seriously folks!! Stop giving ignorant advice please. It's been proven over and over that almost all games are GPU bound if you have appx 3.2Ghz or better, yet people keep saying that the 8400 clocks higher and is better for gaming.

I guess some people just don't get it. If it were me and I had to choose between a 6600 at 3.6 and an 8400 at 4.0 (knowing that anything over 3.2 will not bottlenech anything) the Q6600 would win hands down. Especially since it just hit $180!

Do some googling if you don't trust what I say, it's all over almost every web site that talks about hardware.
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That old myth about clock-frequency is still in people's heads (despite first AMD, with the Athlon64, then Intel itself with Core/Core 2, making a mockery out of that myth). If that old myth were even close to true, then a P4 Northwood 2.6 would still be ahead of most, if not all, stock Core 2 CPUs (instead, even the latest Core 2 derivative, the infamous Celeron DC E1200, smacks the 2.6C from pillar to post).

Given the utter lack of CPU bottlenecking at 3 GHz (pretty much regardless of what game you play) and that more and more titles are indeed taking advantage of more than two cores (and there's actually an operating system that also takes advantage of more than two cores), why bet on tall overclocks with questionable benefits as opposed to the very real and measurable benefits of two more processor cores?

(Those of you near a local Fry's and/or MicroCenter should be paying even stricter attention, as both chains are running in-store-only sales on the retail Q6600; in neither case is the price more than $200. This is not just quad-core for the price of dual-core; this is quad-core for *less* than dual-core.)
 
football76 said:
QFT. My Q6600 Chews up anything including crysis @ 3.0GHz. Plus, when I turn back to my desktop to get work done, the quad rips through everything. :)

Q6600 FTW, especially @ $180.
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Good grief what an informative post. This post alone has won the argument.
 
PGHammer said:
That old myth about clock-frequency is still in people's heads (despite first AMD, with the Athlon64, then Intel itself with Core/Core 2, making a mockery out of that myth). If that old myth were even close to true, then a P4 Northwood 2.6 would still be ahead of most, if not all, stock Core 2 CPUs (instead, even the latest Core 2 derivative, the infamous Celeron DC E1200, smacks the 2.6C from pillar to post).

Given the utter lack of CPU bottlenecking at 3 GHz (pretty much regardless of what game you play) and that more and more titles are indeed taking advantage of more than two cores (and there's actually an operating system that also takes advantage of more than two cores), why bet on tall overclocks with questionable benefits as opposed to the very real and measurable benefits of two more processor cores?

(Those of you near a local Fry's and/or MicroCenter should be paying even stricter attention, as both chains are running in-store-only sales on the retail Q6600; in neither case is the price more than $200. This is not just quad-core for the price of dual-core; this is quad-core for *less* than dual-core.)
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Yes but since the E8400 @ ~4Ghz gives at minimum ~3-5 boost over a Q6600 @ ~3.6Ghz it will make a huge difference if you're at a low fps (20-30, talking about Crysis here). At that fps every little boost matters, but once you hit around 40 the same ~3-5 difference really won't make a difference.
 
Brahmzy said:
Good grief what an informative post. This post alone has won the argument.
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I'm sorry if I offended you. I didn't know I was supposed to argue here, I was simply voicing my opinion. Notice the "QFT," I was simply agreeing with what had been quoted. Games are GPU limited beyond what today's CPU's are capable of. That is my belief anyway, my experiences have shaped that opinion. Therefore I will be utilizing the evga step-up program to get a 9800GX2 or GTX. :)
 
tenub said:
Yes but since the E8400 @ ~4Ghz gives at minimum ~3-5 boost over a Q6600 @ ~3.6Ghz it will make a huge difference if you're at a low fps (20-30, talking about Crysis here). At that fps every little boost matters, but once you hit around 40 the same ~3-5 difference really won't make a difference.
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However, Crysis is also one of those games that supports greater than two cores (in fact, even with Crysis, the scaling from adding cores exceeds the scaling from additional clock frequency), so even worst-case (Crysis), the myth is still trainwrecked, especially with Q6600 at $200 or less (retail SLACR). If the price difference were $15 or $20 at most, then the argument *might* hold up, but not at $50 (and especially not with an apparent FSB Wall starting to show up for any 1333 FSB processor overclocking, which has already started to appear with both Wolfdale and Yorkfield, especially Yorkfield) in Q6600's favor.

Then there's the availability issue: Wolfdale (E8200 or E8400) is hit-or-miss (even e-tail); it's easier to get a Yorkfield (even OEM) than it is to get a Wolfdale right now (and considering that a Yorkfield is two Wolfdales sharing the same processor package, that should strike folks as somewhat strange). Q6600, the older quad-core, is, in the preferred SLACR configuration, extremely plentiful, not to mention extremely inexpensive (for a very understandable reason; this is Q6600's last year). It can reach 3 GHz on not just air-cooling, but with the stock HSF, and on most motherboards that support it. What's more, at the same clock speed, even in Crysis, a quad-core performs better than a dual-core. In fact, because of the way Crysis scales with multiple cores, and with the current pricing structure, E8400 trails not just Q6600, but even Q9300 in terms of bang-for-the-buck CPU for Crysis. So bringing in the single CPU-bound game available today does little to advance your argument.
 
I'll give you one title that still eats up a quad. FSX. The reason that I built my Q6600 system- that and some light video work.

I've been live for less than one week and I'm impressed. I'm coming form an A64 3200+ 1gb 'o ram

to a Q6600, 4gb ram (and sata II drives) FS is far better, but still could be faster at max detail (And I'm running max detail)

If you run FSX, you'll understand. 20+ FPS on the ground at a major airport is a big deal. Especially with every slider fully to the right, and running the PMDG 747. Amazing.

Now if I can bring myself to lower some of the sliders!
 
PGHammer said:
That old myth about clock-frequency is still in people's heads (despite first AMD, with the Athlon64, then Intel itself with Core/Core 2, making a mockery out of that myth). If that old myth were even close to true, then a P4 Northwood 2.6 would still be ahead of most, if not all, stock Core 2 CPUs (instead, even the latest Core 2 derivative, the infamous Celeron DC E1200, smacks the 2.6C from pillar to post).

Given the utter lack of CPU bottlenecking at 3 GHz (pretty much regardless of what game you play) and that more and more titles are indeed taking advantage of more than two cores (and there's actually an operating system that also takes advantage of more than two cores), why bet on tall overclocks with questionable benefits as opposed to the very real and measurable benefits of two more processor cores?

(Those of you near a local Fry's and/or MicroCenter should be paying even stricter attention, as both chains are running in-store-only sales on the retail Q6600; in neither case is the price more than $200. This is not just quad-core for the price of dual-core; this is quad-core for *less* than dual-core.)
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This is so misleading it makes my head hurt.

First off a P4, amd64, and a core2 are not the same at all. They are different in many ways. So comparing clock speeds and saying a P4 at 2.6 is slower then an AMD64 or core2 is not an argument at all. Compare core2's at different speeds. A 3.0ghz one is going to cream a 2.4ghz one.

So clock speed is still vary important, but you can't measure it when comparing completely different chips that have nothing to do with each other. Unless you want to compare apples to corn chips.

The e8400 is a newer generation chip then the q6600. It runs cooler, OC's better, and unless you can really leverage those other 2 cores is the faster chip. The real argument for comparison will be when the quadcore 45nm chips hit.
 
Most games are limited by the current graphics cards so clock speeds alone won't make that much different in games beyond a certain point, however games are now using quad core but it's unclear if it will help when games arent CPU limited.

I'd take a Q6600, E8400 seems like a short term purchase with no real gains in current games and CPU's for me are long term purchases, 1-2 years usually.
 
I upgrade every year anyway, so "long term" doesn't mean anything in my case. I have the e3110 (xeon version of e8400) and I have no regrets. If the Q6600 gets cheap enough for me to look at trying it out, by then something else will be out that I'd rather try instead and I'll spend the extra for that ;)

They're both good processors. Honestly, I would probably choose the q6600 over the e8400 because it's so much cheaper right now. When I bought the e8400, i looked at price compared to q6600, clock speeds, and overclock potential of both processors. The e8400 won out. Or e3110 in my case.
 
Agreed with everyone who posted so far that the GPU is the main bottleneck for gaming HOWEVER.......

1 point that has not been brought up is the L2 cache.

Q6600 has 8mb L2 cache, or 2mb per core. This is good.

E8400 has 6mb L2 cache, or 3mb per core. This is better. :)

You will have 50% more L2 cache which will allow for a smoother experience, gaming or otherwise. (4mb total on 2 cores for the Q6600, 6mb total on 2 cores for the E8400).

Q6600 is more future proof as more games and other program WILL become multi-threaded in the future.

Its quite the toss up though. For gaming, they are both rock solid processors and you should be happy with either one.
 
When I built my system at the time, I picked the Q6600. Why? I do my upgrades every 24 to 36 months depending on how much money I have (bills > gaming). I did this upgrade back in December when I was a lucky bastard (literal term) winning a Geforce 8800GT from the last nVidia Geforce LAN. Let's keep in mind that during that time I was rocking with a AMD Athlon64 3500+, 2GB RAM and a ATI x1300XT. Playing Crysis at the LAN was pretty interesting at 10-15 FPS and still managed to get top 5 some how, and CoD4 was just damn fun (go go midnight tournaments!)

I took the quad core on the notion that since I don't upgrade that often, I try to consider my long term options in the event I can't upgrade for awhile. I already knew that dual core was already pretty damn nice, but looking at the benchmarks, I considered the difference acceptable and pulled the trigged on the quad core. After 4 months, I'm not regretting it, as my system feels so damn snappy and I can do hella things on it and it won't lag (well, unless I'm doing Crysis plus video conversion, then I'll be RAM starved).

Man, I wish I gotten my Q6600 for that cheap. :(
 
get a quad and overclock...you'll thank us later.

the 3-5 frames a sec I may or may not loose is a tradeoff I'm willing to take for the multitasking ability I gained from the extra two cores.
 
It's funny, but some of you guys think that with an E8400 you just roll over and BAM! 4.0!

Sorry, but I've been trying for 2 weeks to get a stable 3.8 with a Chilltec TEC cooler and 8 GB of ram. Best I've gotten is 11 hours on Ortho before it blue screens.

So now I'm down to 3.6 stable with stock voltages except the Ram.

Performance wise, I had a Q6600 and traded up for the E8400. For my upgrade, everything is better now, especially since I also upgraded my OS to Vista 64bit.

CounterStrike Source stress test scores jumped by 14.6 fps (274.6 now). Other than that, it's really hard to see speed differences.

Video encoding has gone from an average of 35 minutes to roughly 25, but part of this is probably due to the 8 gigs of DDR2 that's now recognized and a 4 GB readyboost drive helping out.

In any case, if one of you has managed a stable 4.0 with the E8400 I'm certainly interested in your settings.
 
pfft, your all wrong.

X3350 or Q9450 FTW. There, it's over. New thread please... :)

 
Dawgdoc said:
Agreed with everyone who posted so far that the GPU is the main bottleneck for gaming HOWEVER.......

1 point that has not been brought up is the L2 cache.

Q6600 has 8mb L2 cache, or 2mb per core. This is good.

E8400 has 6mb L2 cache, or 3mb per core. This is better. :)

You will have 50% more L2 cache which will allow for a smoother experience, gaming or otherwise. (4mb total on 2 cores for the Q6600, 6mb total on 2 cores for the E8400).

Q6600 is more future proof as more games and other program WILL become multi-threaded in the future.

Its quite the toss up though. For gaming, they are both rock solid processors and you should be happy with either one.
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Except for one thing: Q6600 has four cores (not just two). And, unless you're running XP32, those other two cores won't simply *switch off* (Whether XP32 will take advantage of four cores is problematical at best; however, XP64 or almost any version of Vista can, and will, schedule processes over all four cores). That is 8 MB total cache for Q6600, compared to just 6 MB for E8400. Less cache per core vs. more cores: that is the trade-off with E8400 vs. Q6600. There is also a price difference right now, and that is where even E8400 loses, and the losses continue to pile up, as the admittedly lower-tech Q6600 is cheaper, and will be just as usable down the road (if not more so) as any dual-core (if more applications take advantage of greater than two cores, any dual-core CPU will be effectively screwed).

If you upgrade on a two-year or longer cycle CPU-wise, don't buy dual-core (any dual-core), as you are basically setting yourself up for disappointment (if not disaster)
 
sd11 said:
This is so misleading it makes my head hurt.

First off a P4, amd64, and a core2 are not the same at all. They are different in many ways. So comparing clock speeds and saying a P4 at 2.6 is slower then an AMD64 or core2 is not an argument at all. Compare core2's at different speeds. A 3.0ghz one is going to cream a 2.4ghz one.

So clock speed is still vary important, but you can't measure it when comparing completely different chips that have nothing to do with each other. Unless you want to compare apples to corn chips.

The e8400 is a newer generation chip then the q6600. It runs cooler, OC's better, and unless you can really leverage those other 2 cores is the faster chip. The real argument for comparison will be when the quadcore 45nm chips hit.
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The 45nm quads (Yorkfield) have already begun to appear....and things are looking awfully grim in terms of overclocking.

And I was comparing a *slower* dual-core (and a Celeron dual-core at that) to my P4 2.6, and coming up short (in short, the older CPU had the clock-speed advantage, and I completely ruled out overclocking either). Basically, the only advantage the Celeron would seem to have is the extra core (smaller cache, and slower clock speed, yet it eats my Northwood-C's lunch); by your argument, that shouldn't happen. Any non-Celeron Core2 would naturally wax the same Northwood-C (cache advantage, instruction set advantage, etc.) not to mention that Allendale (let alone Conroe) is not hobbled by that extra-long Netburst architecture that all the Northwoods (and especially the C) are infamous for, and is also closer in clock speed to Northwood-C. However, the first of the dual-core Celerons gives up a gigahertz in clock frequency to the Northwood-C, and has no more on-board cache. No, it's not a fair test; in fact, it is deliberately skewed in Northwood-C's favor! So why is the Celeron kicking P4 butt?
 
Apallohadas said:
It's funny, but some of you guys think that with an E8400 you just roll over and BAM! 4.0!

Sorry, but I've been trying for 2 weeks to get a stable 3.8 with a Chilltec TEC cooler and 8 GB of ram. Best I've gotten is 11 hours on Ortho before it blue screens.

So now I'm down to 3.6 stable with stock voltages except the Ram.

Performance wise, I had a Q6600 and traded up for the E8400. For my upgrade, everything is better now, especially since I also upgraded my OS to Vista 64bit.

CounterStrike Source stress test scores jumped by 14.6 fps (274.6 now). Other than that, it's really hard to see speed differences.

Video encoding has gone from an average of 35 minutes to roughly 25, but part of this is probably due to the 8 gigs of DDR2 that's now recognized and a 4 GB readyboost drive helping out.

In any case, if one of you has managed a stable 4.0 with the E8400 I'm certainly interested in your settings.
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I take it you're running 4x2GB sticks of RAM? Why did you do 8GB to begin with? 98% of folks will never use more than 4GB. The memory might be the reaon you're limited. Vista is pretty finicky on memory and your motherboard is probably finicky about running 4 sticks as well. Take 2 out and see if can go any higher.
 
Brahmzy said:
I take it you're running 4x2GB sticks of RAM? Why did you do 8GB to begin with? 98% of folks will never use more than 4GB. The memory might be the reaon you're limited. Vista is pretty finicky on memory and your motherboard is probably finicky about running 4 sticks as well. Take 2 out and see if can go any higher.
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He stated that video editing/rendering is a primary use (and video work is a notorious memory pig); it's certain he's running an X64 version of Windows as well. Also, until recently, 4 GB sticks weren't exactly commonplace (also, he likely upgraded from 4 GB).

The *motherboard's* sweet spot, however, may not match that of the user. For such work, I tend to prefer high-end, if not workstation, system boards (because they can swallow larger amounts of memory reliably).
 
PGHammer said:
He stated that video editing/rendering is a primary use (and video work is a notorious memory pig); it's certain he's running an X64 version of Windows as well. Also, until recently, 4 GB sticks weren't exactly commonplace (also, he likely upgraded from 4 GB).

The *motherboard's* sweet spot, however, may not match that of the user. For such work, I tend to prefer high-end, if not workstation, system boards (because they can swallow larger amounts of memory reliably).
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Hit it on the head.

I really should upgrade my motherboard to something along the 'latest and greatest' lines, but I'll wait until there's a cut and dry 'best' board.

The 680i I'm using now cost 229 and I plan on squeezing the living daylights out of it.
 
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