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Q6600 vs. E8400

1Wolf

1Wolf

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
Messages
439
I was wondering if maybe someone who knows far more about processors than I do might be able to set me straight on the game performance of the Q6600 vs. E8400.

Currently, my wife and I both have Q6600's overclocked to 3.33 Ghz.

The recommended system requirements for "Champions Online" were recently posted as an E8400 or greater.

I was wondering how a Q6600 overclocked to 3.33 Ghz stacked up against an E8400 in gaming?

I do realize that processor performance is not the sole determining factor in game performance. However my wife and I far exceed any memory requirements or video card requirements. I also realize that most games don't make use of the extra cores and I'm not sure if Champions does or not, but I'm assuming it doesn't for the sake of remaining on the side of caution.

Assuming maxxing any graphics/effects sliders and assuming more than sufficient memory and video card....Its how the CPU stacks up that I'm concerned about and I don't have any frame of reference to compare the two.

Thanks!
 
The Q6600 would certainly be no slouch. Keep in mind that while all cores might not be used, if the game supports at least 2 cores you will be in a situation where those two cores are sharing the same block of L2 cache on a dual but on a quad each core could potentially have it's very own block of L2 cache to work with.

Also keep in mind that as the computing world moves forward, everything from new apps to the OS are built more or less counting on some of that extra processing power. Even stuff like windows automatic updates, a virus scan, the indexing service, or an automatic background defrag can potentially pop up out of nowhere and nearly max a core. If you have cores to spare, that won't ever be an issue.
 
A Q6600 at 3.33GHz would most likely outperform a stock E8400 in any game. The E8400 is slightly faster clock for clock, but with an advantage in both frequency and number of cores, the overclocked Q6600 should still perform better.
 
Thanks everyone. I appreciate the answers and the advice. I'll relax and not fret about having to tear into these machines and upgrade motherboards, processors, and memory.

Thanks all :)
 
They're definitely tradeoffs. While the 8400 would generally be better for gaming, as games rarely use more than two cores, the q6600 is better in other productivity apps and stuff. Even if all you did was game though, it would merely be an incremental upgrade.
 
I'm amazed how long the C2Q 6600 has managed to stay current.
 
I love my Q6600, I just picked up another used.

I love the fact that I can run a 2 core VM and game on the same box :)
 
For how old it is the Q6600 is still a workhorse processor. It's got at least another year or two left in it's usefulness.
 
I have both Q6600 and E8400. I love them both.

Since I don't play games, I can't tell you regarding game performance. I do video encoding on the 6600 and HD play back on the E8400. I never regret buying those bad boys
 
AMDXP said:
It's not that old, perhaps 2 years.
Click to expand...

Since it's release how many series have Nvidia/ATI been through? Three? How many cpus have come out? 2 years seems an eternity in the computer world. I kind of left the "computer world" after I built my Q6600 machine, came back when I got an i7 only to find a ton of the Q6600 is service, and prices haven't even really dropped much.
 
I did the same.

I've usually had each computer for about 4-5 years before I upgrade.

My Quad is about 1 1/2 years old. I'll just push the boundaries of its overclock and just get new gpus and ram for the time being.
 
I used to try and do a mobo/cpu/ram upgrade every 18months or so, but my OC'd Q6600 seems like it will buck the trend. I put my current rig together close to 18months ago and I can't see any compelling reason to upgrade until at least next spring, maybe as far as next fall.
 
Well, from my upgrade path perspective the Q6600 is outlasting everything else. 02/02 got a P4 2.0, 02/04 I got an A64 3200+, 02/06 upgraded to an Opty 165, 02/08 upgraded to my Q6600. I don't see myself upgrading come February of 2010. Video card at most. With it OC'd to 3.6 it just powers through everything I throw at it. Not like the other processors I had which started to show their age at the 1.5 year mark.
 
I've only had three desktops before. The first was this:

AMD 486 100MHz, 8MB of RAM, 518MB HDD, 1MB graphics card, Windows 95.

We got new RAM to put in it so I was able to play some newer games - 32MB.

My second desktop got completely overhauled between ~1999 and now. It started like this:

AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) 700MHz, 128MB of 100MHz RAM, 19GB HDD, 8MB ATI Rage Pro, Windows 98 SE.

It then went to this:

AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) 1.2GHz, 128MB of 100MHz RAM, 80GB HDD, 64MB nVidia GeForce 2 MX 400, Windows XP.

It now stands at this:

AMD Althlon XP 2000+, 512MB of DDR 400MHz RAM, 120GB HDD + 19GB HDD, 256MB nVidia GeForce 6200 (or something).

It's really slow right now and is in need of at least an XP reinstall but it could kinda do with more RAM too. My sister uses it as her main PC and believe it or not she's patient enough to play The Sims 2 on it (I wouldn't be, the loading times are ridiculous).

My laptop is as it was when I bought it except for a juicy 4GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM to replace the original 1GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM. If it was a desktop it would probably be totally different lol. I'm sure my current desktop (see sig) will receive an upgrade or two in the next 3 years (primarily a decent sound card + speakers as well as an SSD once SATA 6Gbps comes out) but I imagine it won't be as overhauled as the PC above. It doesn't seem like there'll be any reason to upgrade in the next couple of years, unlike the above PC which struggles sometimes with 720p video let alone 1080p. I think hardware is in a good spot right now where software has yet to catch up to it (unusually). That probaby excludes games and graphics cards but I don't play any recent games. :p
 
lol..I'm in the same boat, and of the same opinion, as pretty much everyone here. Thats why I had to ask the question and get some advice to begin with...

Just like many others, I was 'used to' that upgrade cycle. With this new game being released I kept saying to myself "Sheesh...I built these PC's 2 years ago...will they still let me max the sliders in a new game" and a feeling of impending doom set in...along with thoughts of spending money and tearing apart machiens.

On the other hand, I kept thinking that Fallout 3 was a relatively new game....and both machines ran that game perfectly.

Since the time they were built....we've added memory, upgraded the video cards, and overclocked them...but other than that...same old same old.

Only downside is that on my machine, I seem to be stuck at 3.33 Ghz and can't seem to overclock any further. Temps are nice and cool and I have room to go futher...but the damned 680i motherboard is just loaded with holes and problems. Its like walking through a minefield trying to find a stable area.

At any rate...it was certainly good news hearing that the Q6600 still remains pretty current :)
 
1Wolf said:
lol..I'm in the same boat, and of the same opinion, as pretty much everyone here. Thats why I had to ask the question and get some advice to begin with...

Just like many others, I was 'used to' that upgrade cycle. With this new game being released I kept saying to myself "Sheesh...I built these PC's 2 years ago...will they still let me max the sliders in a new game" and a feeling of impending doom set in...along with thoughts of spending money and tearing apart machiens.

On the other hand, I kept thinking that Fallout 3 was a relatively new game....and both machines ran that game perfectly.

Since the time they were built....we've added memory, upgraded the video cards, and overclocked them...but other than that...same old same old.

Only downside is that on my machine, I seem to be stuck at 3.33 Ghz and can't seem to overclock any further. Temps are nice and cool and I have room to go futher...but the damned 680i motherboard is just loaded with holes and problems. Its like walking through a minefield trying to find a stable area.

At any rate...it was certainly good news hearing that the Q6600 still remains pretty current :)
Click to expand...

A cheap upgrade to a P45 chipset will fix that right up.
 
1Wolf said:
lol..I'm in the same boat, and of the same opinion, as pretty much everyone here. Thats why I had to ask the question and get some advice to begin with...

Just like many others, I was 'used to' that upgrade cycle. With this new game being released I kept saying to myself "Sheesh...I built these PC's 2 years ago...will they still let me max the sliders in a new game" and a feeling of impending doom set in...along with thoughts of spending money and tearing apart machiens.

On the other hand, I kept thinking that Fallout 3 was a relatively new game....and both machines ran that game perfectly.

Since the time they were built....we've added memory, upgraded the video cards, and overclocked them...but other than that...same old same old.

Only downside is that on my machine, I seem to be stuck at 3.33 Ghz and can't seem to overclock any further. Temps are nice and cool and I have room to go futher...but the damned 680i motherboard is just loaded with holes and problems. Its like walking through a minefield trying to find a stable area.

At any rate...it was certainly good news hearing that the Q6600 still remains pretty current :)
Click to expand...

i'm stuck at 3.24 in my q6600.. so i'm jealous :)
 
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