Upgrade to a Q6600 or wait for an E8400?

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football76

Gawd
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Jan 23, 2008
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Hey guys,
I recently "stumbled" into some excess scholarship money that I can spend (as long as it's school related I'm ok. PC is school related in my book. :) ). I was thinking of picking up a Q6600 from microcenter while they have them for $200. Do you think thats a good idea or should I wait for E8400's to become more popular (and easier to find)? The most demanding things I do are crysis and heavy researching (i.e. multiple firefox, word, excel windows and of course music then theres the DVD backups). I'm planning on passing along my E4300 to my parents. BTW, how CPU demanding is crysis? will I see much of a change in FPS with an OC'd 6600 with my 8800gts?

I will likely be keeping my current cooler to OC a bit: Rosewill RCX-Z3
 
Thanks, I looked that over but I want to compare between an OC'd E4300 @ 3GHz, a Q6600 @ 3.2GHz and an E8400 @3.6GHz. I know no one has all three to test out first hand for me but with your background knowledge what do you think? Is it worth it to upgrade and if so which way?
 
LOL I have all three.

The E4300 to me is nice and fast.

The Q6600 I have a mild overclock of 2.9 on it and it does all. I don't game so can't tell you about gaming.

The E8400 flys.

All are on different motherboards and all have different software installed and running. I do DVD back ups on all three and I can't complain about speed but then again I am picky about my media that I burn with and I usually burn at a lower speed for stability.

I personally feel that the E8400 is the best of these 3 but they all are great. I also have a 754 NForce AMD 3700+ that is my media center. A 165 Opteron on a A8N-E motherboard that is fun to use plus I picked up a Dual Processor Opteron Server here a month ago and it does the job as well.

Pick your poision LOL
 
That is too funny! Did you OC the 4300 much? Mine seems to be maxing out around 2.7-3.0 stable. I'm leaning towards the q6600 only because I can drive down to MC and pick it up tomorrow if I want... :p Plus I think a 6600 will play nicer with my GB 965p-ds3.

Any other thoughts?
 
With the 4300 I have it on a ASrock motherboard so I'm limited to 300 FSB. I have it at that and no problems.

Yes 3.6 with the E8400 is easy, just raise the FSB and there you go. I have it with the Gigabyte P35C and I'm tired of messing with all those setting in the BIOS. 3.7 is fine for now. Ordered a IP35-E yesterday, should have it sometime next week and will put the E8400 in that and move the Q6600 from my IB9 to the Gigabyte then.
 
I say go for the Q6600 now. I do all of the stuff you mentioned, and it flies. It is amazing for DVD backups- if you have multiple DVD drives, it has no problem doing more than one at a time.

My main computer also doubles as my PVR, so it's always encoding and converting videos. I can play Crysis while it records shows in full quality without hiccuping. More importantly, I can run 4 instances of Videora to convert my videos into ipod format, and it'll still blaze through half hour tv shows in around 10 minutes (thats 4 in ten minutes, not ten minutes each).

Its a very versatile proc.
 
Most e8400's hit 4Ghz, but it could be a dud or a stud - doesn't seem to really be any inbetween. If you get a dud, you will know the minute you start OCing. There are some rare chips that do 4Ghz @1.2vcore - that's insane. To compare, look at what I need to get 4Ghz - what I have is what I consider mainstream (and fairly common). OTOH, some have to pump 1.35 or so vcore to get 4Ghz, those are duds...

However, those duds should still do 3.8Ghz easy at 1.25 or so vcore.

Regardless...unless you want to take a chance, I'd rather take a q6600 now and do 3.6Ghz. However, that endeavor requires a mobo that has a cool-running PWM area (*i.e. take Abit off your list).
 
I guess this thread is probably the most relevent for me. I am currently in the market for a new cpu (my e6600 for whatever reason won't stably overclock past 3.0GHZ and I'm no longer happy with it running multiple applications or team fortress 2). I guess for everyday tasks I do occasional dvd ripping/burning. Internet,music,im, lots of windows open. I guess here's what im wondering... would it be better to get the e6600 to keep other tasks using the other cores? Or just bump up the speed (get the e8400) and run say, team fortress 2 faster? As it stands I'm pretty sure that I'm GPU bound for team fortress 2, as its always showing 100% in the history while my second core is maybe at 10-15% throughout that time period. Also one last question that I cannot seem to answer for myself. Is my e6600 (on an asus p5b) at 3.0GHZ comparable in performance to the e8400 at 3.0ghz stock speed? I mean obvoiusly it would be nice to have a 4.0ghz powerhouse overclocked e8400. But then I wonder if I wouldn't be "ok" having a e6600 overclocked to 3.0GHZ, but then i figure that won't help me much for teamfortress 2 :/ *PULLS OUT HAIR*
 
well 3.0ghz is pretty darn low. If you get a q6600 you will probably be able to get higher than that. 3.2-3.5 is a reasonable guess.

The e8400 will be about 2-10% more efficient per clock depending on the application.

It sounds like neither a q6600 nor an e8400 would give you a *huge* performance boost for what you do, but both would help a little bit :p
 
Riles said:
I say go for the Q6600 now. I do all of the stuff you mentioned, and it flies. It is amazing for DVD backups- if you have multiple DVD drives, it has no problem doing more than one at a time.

My main computer also doubles as my PVR, so it's always encoding and converting videos. I can play Crysis while it records shows in full quality without hiccuping. More importantly, I can run 4 instances of Videora to convert my videos into ipod format, and it'll still blaze through half hour tv shows in around 10 minutes (thats 4 in ten minutes, not ten minutes each).

Its a very versatile proc.
Click to expand...

I ***just*** installed my Q6600 into my HTPC, like 45 minutes ago.. Even on my little mATX board, this processor hauls! I even took the time to take a little screenie.. I feel 3.6ghz - 3.8ghz is very do'able. This was my VERY first attempt to OC on this setup and it did it without even blinking.


3dmark06firstrun.jpg
 
officermartinez said:
I ***just*** installed my Q6600 into my HTPC, like 45 minutes ago.. Even on my little mATX board, this processor hauls! I even took the time to take a little screenie.. I feel 3.6ghz - 3.8ghz is very do'able. This was my VERY first attempt to OC on this setup and it did it without even blinking.
Click to expand...

What motherboard are you using? I'm increasingly thinking something is wrong with my Asus Motherboard. I just can't get my FSB that high. But then again I can't get my CPU to 3.0ghz without high voltages...
 
I just upgraded my system to a Q6600. It's sitting on an Abit IP35-E. I'm at 3.2 stable using a 356x9 multi. I primed for 13 hours without a hiccup. Hopefully I can achieve 3.6.
 
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