E6850 or Q6600???

I would go for the G0 stepping Q6600 as the difference between the 6850 and the Q6600 aren't great enough to notice, however what I do believe is that Crysis will benefit from more cores - that alone should be a decisive factor!!!

However I though for a second and remembered that you can hit 4.0 Ghz on the 6850 quite easily... so that will meant better overall performance in games, however the quad core will offer slightly lower performance, but over a much broader selection of programs and games - including those that are optimized for multiple cores...

In theory:
E6850 @ 4Ghz = ` 8Ghz of processing power
Q6600 @ 2.8ghz = 11.2Ghz of processing power

That's quite close - so IMO we will have to see some more benchmarks to really decide.
I would still go for the Q6600, however I must say that when I just began reading this tread I thought 'well, durr - the Q6600', now however I got a bit mixed up! :p


P.S. - to get the 4Ghz OC you will need some pretty good RAM as well as a new mobo probably... whereas with the Q6600 the only thing that will be holding you back is the temperature - roughly 3Ghz should be very achievable with a cooler like Thermalright Ultra Extreme.
 
Direct comparison of E6850 vs. Q6600: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=8

3D modeling & encoding = Q6600 clearly wins
gaming & gen usage = E6850 wins

Skip to the last page of article:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=16

Basically they say buy the Q6600.

You can overclock the Q6600 to get the same performance as the E6850 now.
Encoding sees a huge benefit now. often 40%
And in the future more & more apps will benefit from quad vs. dual.
 
chrisf6969 said:
Direct comparison of E6850 vs. Q6600: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=8

3D modeling & encoding = Q6600 clearly wins
gaming & gen usage = E6850 wins

Skip to the last page of article:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=16

Basically they say buy the Q6600.

You can overclock the Q6600 to get the same performance as the E6850 now.
Encoding sees a huge benefit now. often 40%
And in the future more & more apps will benefit from quad vs. dual.
Click to expand...

But can you overclock the Q6600 to E6850 performance without water cooling? If not,then a decent watercooled setup would kill my budget.
 
michael.pa2 said:
But can you overclock the Q6600 to E6850 performance without water cooling? If not,then a decent watercooled setup would kill my budget.
Click to expand...

Well depending on what you are doing with your PC the Q6600 could be faster at stock.
 
michael.pa2 said:
But can you overclock the Q6600 to E6850 performance without water cooling? If not,then a decent watercooled setup would kill my budget.
Click to expand...

You can probably do it with high end air and good case cooling.

All depends on the chip, and if it will do 3Ghz on default voltage (or under!). If you have to jack the voltage up to hit 3Ghz the likelyhood of needing watercooling goes up fast.

The new stepping of the quads is supposed to drop the wattage / heat considerably. But even if you can "only" hit 2.6, 2.8+ etc.... (not quite 3Ghz) You HAVE 4 CORES at that speed. Do you know how much power that is!!
 
Koko56 said:
In theory:
E6850 @ 4Ghz = ` 8Ghz of processing power
Q6600 @ 2.8ghz = 11.2Ghz of processing power
Click to expand...

What looks good in theory doesn't work so well in the real world. Each core has to be programmed in a game for seperate threads. In some games that do support dual core now most of the processes run on the first core and just a few run on the second core. You are not getting double performance just because it has a second core. I saw a benchmark for some game recently that supported dual core and the difference between the dual core and a single core was only 2-3%. I am still leaning towards the E6850 as I think that will give me more bang for the buck now and I will go quad when I see a compelling reason to. Others may feel differently but that is my take on it.
 
Well PURE gaming and nothing else I would go for the duals. If you plan on doing anything like PhotoChop you could benifit massively from a Quad.
 
I have Photoshop 4.0 and it benefits more from ram than processor speed. I like 4.0 so don't want to hear I am using an ancient version. And like hell I am paying Adobe $250.00 for an updated version every year.
 
chrisf6969 said:
The new stepping of the quads is supposed to drop the wattage / heat considerably. But even if you can "only" hit 2.6, 2.8+ etc.... (not quite 3Ghz) You HAVE 4 CORES at that speed. Do you know how much power that is!!
Click to expand...

It's zero extra power if the game hasn't been programmed to use the extra cores.
 
yeah I think I'm gonna have to go with the E6850, I was going to get a Q6600, but I thought about the horrible Pentium 4 D's...these just might be like them except quad cores.

and OCing to 4.0ghz sounds great....!!!;) :D :cool: :) :eek:
 
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=8

I mean, really, there it is, end of story. Read the one stinking page, most of it is a graph anyway, and do what is best for you.

(And I should add that just because 'you know who' did an article does not mean I believe it, nor should you. However, similar results and conclusions are all over the web, agree with earlier mulitcore testing of applications, and I happen to agree with the results and the conclusion is all. Not that you should believe anything I say either, make up your own mind. )


I do suggest one should consider if you keep boards/CPUs for a long time (2 years or longer) it would probally be best to get the quad, the software will catch up fast. A 10% hit now will eventually turn into a 100% improvement. Long term the quad a better investment. If you buy CPUs every generation, and a new board every year buy whatever floats your boat. This time next year you will not have either CPU anyway.
 
Totally depends on how they end up overclocking. If the quad can hit ~3.2 on air i think its a pretty easy decision.
 
Sorry if I'm not very on-topic and helping here, but anyway...
I know that I myself have asked the same question as asked here many times, and I know that I'm no better myself. BUT there is a HEAVY amount of threads on this subject on this forum now and the number is growing.
Am I the only one who sees the need for a pinned thread which answers and discusses this problem? Just to get rid of this question, so that other issues can be discussed.
I've done some research into quad cores vs dual cores after I posted myself, and I've come to the conclusion that there is no definite answer to which one the user should buy.

It's like cars really if you look at it the right way.
Lets say you want a car that can go over terrain, climb mountains and pack all the hiking gear in the world, you go buy a Four-Wheel Drive Landrover. It doesn't go 200mph, but it can pull a lot of stuff around.
If on you other hand you want to race your buddies through town at midnight, you spend your money on a Lancer Evo 8, it does go 200pmg, but it can't pack a shed load of gear.

See the difference? if you want to do a lot of stuff at the same time or pull heavy loads (rendering or video encoding etc) you would probably be better off with the quadcore. if you want to game the night away and go blazingly fast, but don't really have much other use, you buy the Dualcore.
BUT then again, games might later on take all the advantage of a quad core. So it's all a matter of what needs you have, and wether or not you believe in the future.

At any rate, I would be more than willing to explain this more in detail in a longer post, if people around here agree that we have need for such a thread.
Wether or not it'll be a closed one, or an ongoing discussion, but my point remains: We need ONE SINGLE thread that people can refer to for information on this subject. Multiple threads asking the same question doesn't go anywhere.
 
IMHO the future we have been speculating on from the moment dual cores first hit the market about 1.5 years ago is finally here, at least the beginning of it. You see this with Anands Lost Planet benches, next month Bioshock, then Crysis, all multithreaded where more cores will benefit. I say if you upgrade your cpu every 6 months to 1 year then go dual core and get quad next round. If you plan on holding on to your cpu for 1.5 years or more get quad now.
 
SafeFire said:
Sorry if I'm not very on-topic and helping here, but anyway...
I know that I myself have asked the same question as asked here many times, and I know that I'm no better myself. BUT there is a HEAVY amount of threads on this subject on this forum now and the number is growing.
Am I the only one who sees the need for a pinned thread which answers and discusses this problem? Just to get rid of this question, so that other issues can be discussed.
I've done some research into quad cores vs dual cores after I posted myself, and I've come to the conclusion that there is no definite answer to which one the user should buy.

It's like cars really if you look at it the right way.
Lets say you want a car that can go over terrain, climb mountains and pack all the hiking gear in the world, you go buy a Four-Wheel Drive Landrover. It doesn't go 200mph, but it can pull a lot of stuff around.
If on you other hand you want to race your buddies through town at midnight, you spend your money on a Lancer Evo 8, it does go 200pmg, but it can't pack a shed load of gear.

See the difference? if you want to do a lot of stuff at the same time or pull heavy loads (rendering or video encoding etc) you would probably be better off with the quadcore. if you want to game the night away and go blazingly fast, but don't really have much other use, you buy the Dualcore.
BUT then again, games might later on take all the advantage of a quad core. So it's all a matter of what needs you have, and wether or not you believe in the future.

At any rate, I would be more than willing to explain this more in detail in a longer post, if people around here agree that we have need for such a thread.
Wether or not it'll be a closed one, or an ongoing discussion, but my point remains: We need ONE SINGLE thread that people can refer to for information on this subject. Multiple threads asking the same question doesn't go anywhere.
Click to expand...


Agreed, Can someone sticky this thread perhapps?

I asked the question about 2 specific processors. But in the end the discussion here is about Dual vs. Quad and there is alot of valuable information.
 
Perhaps the real question is when will software catch up with the hardware.How many games really take full advantage of multi cores?For that matter,how many programs even take advantage of 64 bit?By the time programs do catch up,the two CPU's in question could be consididered out of date.
 
Multitasking (your OS) can use the 4 cores though I doubt it will be maxed ever. The same was the case in single core vs. dual core. Dual core provided a smoother experience over single core. Well imagine if you're a serious multitasker, 4 cores should be able to provide a slight advantage over 2 cores.

Lets say you're using a program that can use dual cores AND you're multitasking doing several other things. Then Photoshop might be using 2 cores, and your other 2 cores, are being used with your virus scanner, music player, email prog., etc...
 
Sounds like a great opportunity for the [H] to get a pre-release build of Crysis and run some e6850 vs q6600 benchmarks for us!!
 
I'll probably buy Crysis if it gets good reviews but it's not really my kind of game so it's not that important to me. The next cpu I buy will be my first mutlicore cpu and I'm more excited to see how Falcon 4.0 performs on multicore than Crysis. This game was designed to be smp aware way back in 1998.
 
just one more question, if at the same speed (say both at 3.0ghz), the q6600 would be exact same as the e6850 in programs that does not take advantage of multicores right?
 
fe_918 said:
just one more question, if at the same speed (say both at 3.0ghz), the q6600 would be exact same as the e6850 in programs that does not take advantage of multicores right?
Click to expand...

Well the indervidual cores on the Q6600 are slower than the e6850 but only by 10-20% (I think) but the real advantage is with multi-tasking.
 
fe_918 said:
just one more question, if at the same speed (say both at 3.0ghz), the q6600 would be exact same as the e6850 in programs that does not take advantage of multicores right?
Click to expand...

Yes, but the quad core would cost you a lot more than the dual core so if you want bang for buck the E6850 would be the better choice.
 
Gatticus said:
Yes, but the quad core would cost you a lot more than the dual core so if you want bang for buck the E6850 would be the better choice.
Click to expand...

but after july 22 e6850 = same $ as q6600?..

im going to start my graphic design major in college this fall, and i enjoy making movies out of games/my dv footages on my spare time, so i guess q6600 is a better choice for me.

i wonder what mobo should i get now, always planned on a gigabyte ds3 for overclock the dual cores i planned on getting before, does it work just as well on quads?
 
Ive got it easy.. Coming from an AMD 3500+ either of the 2 will be a massive upgrade.


Was planning on the Q6600 but I dont edit video, rarely edit pictures and my games consist of 75% MMORPG / RPG games and bout 25% FPS / what ever is hot at the time. Im really really thinking that a E6850 would better fit my needs.

I keep hearing about Crysis, Allen Wake, etc but considering Im running a 7950gt I wonder if I might not be limited enough by my vid card that the differences in CPU's wouldnt be noticed????


Or mabay Im get enough of an improvment coming from a 3500+ that I wouldnt miss the %10 difference by chosing the Q6600 over the E6850???


Gesh.. I thought picking out a mobo was hard
 
after doing maintenance on my car (timing belt, brakes...) .. ill most likely get the Q6600 since i do alot of multitasking and usually have Lightroom + Photoshop running at the same time along with other programs in the background.

Right now im using E4300 with Gigabyte DS3 board .. and I use that as my file server to replace the Dual P3 1ghz thats been running for years lol. Ill just need to find me a nice cheap cheap board with the basics and onboard video and ill be set :D
 
Mons said:
Sounds like a great opportunity for the [H] to get a pre-release build of Crysis and run some e6850 vs q6600 benchmarks for us!!
Click to expand...
There are actually quite a few recent and upcoming titles that are designed to take advantage of multithreading, with the Alan Wake devs going as far as saying that to try and play their game on a single core is just foolish although possible with hyperthreading (albeit at a huge performance penalty).

Tom's Hardware has done a CPU shootout, and one of the games they have tested that is designed to take advantage of multi-core CPUs is Supreme Commander (which is getting a HUGE expansion soon btw).

842392677_00ccfd4fb5_o.png


Surprisingly though, the dual core 6850 still scored higher. However, games like Alan Wake and Crysis may give the performance advantage to the quad-core, not counting all the 2008 titles (unless you're planning to upgrade your computer every 12 months). It sounds like you really can't go wrong with either though, with each having little advantages here and there, and they are the same price.
 
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