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Core2Quad or Core i5

S

Stoly

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 26, 2005
Messages
6,706
The time has come to upgrade my pc. Its currently a core2duo E4500 with 4gb of ram.

The easiest/cheapest upgrade would be to drop a Core2quad, but is it the best route, or is a core i5 better.
 
depends on what games you play, or video card/moniter you use. if you arent going the 5850 or 5870 route a q6600 would be on par with what you got. if you dont feel like spending the 800$ for new mobo memory processor video card
 
i5 Fan here.

spend the extra 50 bucks and get something thats a little more up to date.
 
As KaizerDan mentioned, it depends entirely on what you plan on doing with it. What kind of video card do you have? What resolution is your monitor? What does your budget look like? Paper or plastic? These question need answers!

EDIT: Wow, it's been a while since I checked out the high-end C2Q chips. They are still freaking expensive! LOL. Paying $100 more than an i5-750 for similar (or inferior) performance in an LGA 775 socket is just crazy, in my opinion. You could do the i5 and a motherboard for the same price as a drop-in Q9550. Of course, you'd still have to upgrade your RAM to DDR3, so you will end up paying more, in the end. But again, this could all be a moot point if you're just looking for a "smashine" for your 8-year-old. As an aside, if you're going with a whole new setup, an Athlon II X4, motherboard, and 4GB of DDR3 would only cost you a smidge more than a serious C2Q.
 
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At the moment, I think i5 is the way to go. Core2Quad is pretty outdated.
 
I'd say it depends on whether or not you live near a MicroCenter. If you do, go pick up a Q9550 for $180 and call it a day. If you don't then i5 would be a great choice.
 
Tnx for the input.

I think I'll settle for a Q8300 in the mean time and wait till next year for a major upgrade.
 
First of all, if you want a 775 quad core get an OEM q9300 from Tiger for $140 and overclock it, your results will vary but 3.5 should be easily achievable with decent airflow and heatsink. Next if you have an oem copy of windows, a decent MOBO, stick with the q9300 for awhile until you go with a new build. A new mobo, new ram, new windows, new CPU will set you back a lot more. Not worth the performance increase at this time in my opinion. Any money you save would most likely be better spent toward upgrading your video card (depending on what you have now. Would help to know what your system specs are.)
 
Stoly said:
why?
Click to expand...

1/3rd the cache of a normal yorkfield, and a multiplier so low that you are guaranteed to hit the FSB limit of your motherboard long before you hit the limits of your chip.

Even an old-school Q6600 has twice as much cache and would probably clock higher.
 
GotNoRice said:
1/3rd the cache of a normal yorkfield, and a multiplier so low that you are guaranteed to hit the FSB limit of your motherboard long before you hit the limits of your chip.

Even an old-school Q6600 has twice as much cache and would probably clock higher.
Click to expand...

in most cases you are right... the q8xxx series of processors are terrible...

that being said my wife is running one, a q8200 @ 3,150MHz... its not bad for what it is, however I only paid around $25 for it :D

but a q6600 will be faster per clock but not by too much

here is a break down

q8xxx

Pros:

-Quad Core
-low power draw

Cons:

- low multiplier
- tends to be a bad clocker
- low l2 cache


q6600

Pros:

-8mb L2 cache
-most will hit between 3.2GHz and 3.8GHz on air
-most can hit decently high FSB

Cons:
- they tend to run hot
-some of them will not OC for crap, lucky to hit 3.0GHz, these tend to be the most recent released q6600
-some people had issues with these chips on Asus p5k motherboard and others like it

the truth is that these processors are trading blows, the q6600 is better in some things while the q8xxx is better in others...

it just comes down to what you can get for a good price

if I had to choose (mainly cause I have had both) I would get a q6600 G0 or the Xeon variant which tends to clock well... I knew a guy with an x3210 that hit 4.0GHz on benches and 3.8GHz 24/7
 
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