• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Dual or Quad core?

R

raynich

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 13, 2006
Messages
91
I'm in the midst of a partial system upgrade/rebuild and I'm stuck on whether to get the 3.0 ghz duo, or the 2.3 ghz quad. I feel the duo would out perform in most things, but would I be better to go quad as I won't be upgrading again for a while. I mostly do gaming, with a bit of video/picture editing, but not much.
What do you think?
Also, I will be putting 4 gigs pc8500 and a p45 board, either asus or gigabyte
 
Just about any game is going to be fast enough on the 2.3ghz quad, and future games will be multi-threaded. I would not go dual core in a system I was building today. The GPU is going to be the bottleneck most likely. Go quad and never look back.
 
Right now I have a 8800gts 640, would it be smart to get an SLI board to allow another one in the future? If so, what would be a good choice for a board, considering a 150 or less (lower the better) budget. Also, if a board is advertised as "Crossfire Ready" does that mean it will only work with crossfire and not SLI?
 
I would not go SLI on a non-X58 motherboard, because nvidia's chipsets have a bad reputation. Your opinion may differ though. And the only boards that do crossfire and SLI are the certified x58 boards (which afaik is every x58 except intel's.) I would get whatever P45 asus or gigabyte offers that you like and can afford and then get one of those ~$200 gtx 260s, or get one later when you can afford it.
 
If you don't have a board yet, you should wait for Phenom 2, maybe it will be better than C2Q or at least it will lower the price of the C2Q.
 
So I bought a Q6600 (2.4) and clocked it at 3.0 with air. When I encode to h.264 my cpu is pegged at 100% across all 4 cores. Encoding to xvid seems more io limited than CPU on my system since I only get like 20% usage in autogk.

My advice is go quad and OC it to 3.0 so you don't lose in any applications.

My DX38BT is a pain in the ass to work with, but if you can manage with it, it's got great value. Major warning though, it sucks to OC with.
 
raynich said:
yes, the 8200 is what I was planning on getting.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115055
and if it wasn't for that price I would definitely go a little higher.
Click to expand...

Sorry of myself to come off as naive in my previous post of what you will get. That definitely is a nice price for that processor. :cool:

Zero82z said:
Will you be overclocking? If so, the Q6600 would be a better choice than the Q8200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017
Click to expand...

mryerse said:
So I bought a Q6600 (2.4) and clocked it at 3.0 with air. When I encode to h.264 my cpu is pegged at 100% across all 4 cores. Encoding to xvid seems more io limited than CPU on my system since I only get like 20% usage in autogk.

My advice is go quad and OC it to 3.0 so you don't lose in any applications.
Click to expand...

I've heard of OC'ing the Q6600 to 3.0Ghz will make it awesome and superior for hefty tasking/rendering.
 
Would I need to get aftermarket cooling if I was to oc a lot? The reviews are mixed, some say aftermarket is necessary?
 
Yes; with a quad-core CPU, aftermarket cooling is necessary to reach higher overclocks.
 
What do you suggest? I have a scythe infinity cooler now, and I love the temp it keeps my cpu at, but the dang thing is so ridiculously big that I have to take it out to take out my ram. I would have to get something much smaller and more managable.
 
What a behemoth - you can't take your ram out with it on..

Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme (TRUE)
 
TRUE sounds great, but adds another 50 bucks to my price. Is there a more budget friendly cooler?
 
Q6600 w/ a Xigmatek 1283. The Q6600 has more cache and a higher divider than the Q8200 making it easier to OC. Well, not the cache, but the cache helps with apps and such. Plus the price is very nice right now on the Q6600.
 
If you go with the Freezer 7 Pro I wouldn't expect 3.4-3.6 Ghz. Mine runs pretty hot at 3.0. But I'm happy with 3.0 so I'll leave it there for a while. YMMV, but I'd expect at least 3.0 with a $20 after market cooler. Others here probably have better cooling advice than me.
 
I'd try it with the Scythe first and see. It is a pretty good cooler and you could always buy a different one at that point if you don't like the performance of the Scythe.

I'd just try it out first and see.
 
I'm gonna stick with my scythe for now, depending on how it fits and how it cools my new cpu, I may get a xigmatech. thanks guys.
That is, Assuming that my scythe fits on LGA775, I'm not sure I would have kept the mounting bracket
 
It still amazes me that an older proc is still one of the best bang for the buck on the market. Long live the Q6600! :)
 
raynich said:
I'm gonna stick with my scythe for now, depending on how it fits and how it cools my new cpu, I may get a xigmatech. thanks guys.
That is, Assuming that my scythe fits on LGA775, I'm not sure I would have kept the mounting bracket
Click to expand...

The Scythe is still a very good cooler, so you'll be able to get in some very nice overclocking with it.
 
HydroBudz said:
It still amazes me that an older proc is still one of the best bang for the buck on the market. Long live the Q6600! :)
Click to expand...

Have one @ 3.2GHz with a Scythe Ninja Plus (came out when dual core was "the thing"). I imagine while the Q6600 will be surpassed in features, it will remain a solid processor for years to come.
 
Does anyone know where I could get a mounting bracket to mount on the 775 socket. All I have here is for my current (and dead) 939 socket.
 
Zero82z said:
Yes; with a quad-core CPU, aftermarket cooling is necessary to reach higher overclocks.
Click to expand...

That depends on how tall you plan on going.

With the SLACR series of the Q6600 (I'd be surprised if you can get anything worse than that today), 3 GHz on air (with stock cooling) is quite feasible unless you screw up on air flow in the case. Even better, the Q6600 costs less than even E8400.

Again, quad-core for *less* than dual-core (as long as you can be content with 3 GHz) with stock cooling. With the money you'd save, you could always put that toward an aftermarket cooler (if you want taller overclocks).
 
With games only using one core, quadcores have a hard time beating dual cores; most often they loose. Dualcores can be clocked higher, and since only one core will be used by the game thread it will end up being the fastest.

SMP Games are coming, but for now game programmers are lazy and create their game in a medieval endless-loop design.
 
Enlightenment said:
With games only using one core, quadcores have a hard time beating dual cores; most often they loose. Dualcores can be clocked higher, and since only one core will be used by the game thread it will end up being the fastest.

SMP Games are coming, but for now game programmers are lazy and create their game in a medieval endless-loop design.
Click to expand...

+1 for a faster clocked dual core. By the time games fully take advantage of quads they will be mainstream anyways. It really isn't economical to take the herculean task of programming for more than two cores if the majority of their potential market doesn't have quads if you really think about it...
 
Enlightenment said:
With games only using one core, quadcores have a hard time beating dual cores; most often they loose. Dualcores can be clocked higher, and since only one core will be used by the game thread it will end up being the fastest.

SMP Games are coming, but for now game programmers are lazy and create their game in a medieval endless-loop design.
Click to expand...

Same argument was made when single-core chips were all the rage and dual-cores were just getting popular. Look where we are now. Quad-cores are a much better long-term purchase than dual-cores are.
 
Zero82z said:
Same argument was made when single-core chips were all the rage and dual-cores were just getting popular. Look where we are now. Quad-cores are a much better long-term purchase than dual-cores are.
Click to expand...

But take a look at the architectures that were in place at the time, K8 and Netburst. By the time dual cores were fully utilized by a majority of apps Core 2 has pretty much made them obsolete. It will be the same way when quads are the norm - Orochi and Sandy Bridge will be the lead architectures then, outpacing what's available today.
 
I've been wondering also if I'm gonna get those cheap Q6600 G0's to replace my E8400, which can reach 4.5ghz though not stable. I'm gonna buy GTA IV and I've read that game responds well to quad cores.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top