CPU Sweetspot?

[GreyRadean]

Hello all. I have been out of the loop for the last few months (since my sig build), and find myself in the market again. This time to build my brother a new machine for his HS graduation gift.

When I was building my machine, the "sweet spot" was the Q6600 G0. Since then, the Penryn has shipped as well as some other options. Now, with Corei7 around the corner, I come asking for some augmentation in my research here.

What, in your opinion, is the current "sweet spot" in terms of price/performance/future proofing for the CPU market? Is it still the Q6600? or a Wolfdale core? maytbe wait for the i7?

I am all about doing my due diligence in research, but any insight would be helpful to me in finding where to research next.

Thanks
Grey

 

[3far4shot]

Depends if you want the best of the best of what coming out you need to wait for the Core i7, also does he game, photoshop, video edit, encode?

If you buy a Q6600 and OC it then that would be a very good option for future proofing and it is way cheaper then building a Core i7 system, if he just games you could always get a E8*00 CPU which is good for gaming, but its not toally future proof like the Quads are.

If he does alot of multiple things and plays games, like i said above(photoshop, video edit, encode) and you want the best then the Core i7 is the best bet, if you dont need the best, you can settle for a Q6600 OCed to maybe 3.2Ghz


Its basically like this:

E8*00(Wolfdales): Mostly Gaming usage with little multitasking. But OCed they can out perform the Q6600 in some apps.

Q6600: Mostly multitasking and some gaming, when OCed they perform well, and more future proof then the Duals with the extra cores.

Core i7: About to be the best of the best, all of them will be Quads and will be great for Multitasking, as of now the benchmarks aren't at its highest for games(since not many games use multiple cores for now) but when those games come out that use all the cores it will more likely outperform the Q6600, but it will cost you a whole lot of cash to build a Core i7 rig, just remember that.

 

[vexion]

What will he be using the machine for? Gaming? 3D design? Video encoding?

I'm not an expert by any means, but on sheer popularity I'd have to say the E8400 is the "sweet spot" for non-multicore applications (i.e., games.) It's the cheap end fo the E8000 series, and extremely overclockable (maybe a 30-40% increase on air easily, especially with the E0 stepping.)

If he'll be encoding video or anything, the Q6600 is the sweet spot. Also very overclockable, great price/performance point.

EDIT: 3far4shot beat me to it. Today the E8400 and Q6600 are probably your best "sweet spot" CPUs. Upgrading to Intel i7 requires a new motherboard that will take DDR3, the very expensive DDR3 RAM itself, and the likely very very expensive processor. But we won't know till they're released.

 

[Suprfire]

Q9550 E0 Stepping when price drops, i'm sure the deals or price drops are coming

Q6600 is still good for a while. So is the E8400

 

[dandragonrage]

All Core 2 Duos or better are fine for 99% of people, including people on this forum.

 

[mercury529]

I would tend to agree that the E8400 is a pretty solid choice. The Q6600 is also an excellent choice, and for a small amount more, it does offer a little more future-proofing.

 

[GreyRadean]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I failed to mention that he will most likely be using this for gaming, though with college around the corner... who knows.

As of this writing, The Egg has the E8400 for $170 and the Q6600 for $190.

With the difference so shallow, I am leaning towards the quad, but as many of you mentioned, I may wait a couple months for the i7 to push prices down a bit more.

Does anyone know if the B3 stepping is still in circulation? or should I be pretty certain of receiving a G0 at this point?

Thanks Again!
Grey