The Q6600 vs E8400

PangingJr

O i would buy P45, but that's mostly because i already used P35, so, of course, i want to play with a newer chipset board.
however, the overall specifications of P45 is better than P35, and the boards that are based on these two chipsets, as of now, are at about similar prices.

Syndicate2083

Roger that, Ill check it out. Im not a huge asus fan after my last 3 mobos from them. I hope if I get one of their P45s i wont be dissapointed. (M2N boards)

Zelig

That can be done, by playing with affinity settings. However, in the vast majority of circumstances, leaving it to the OS to manage cores is a better solution, particularly with newer operating systems such as Vista.

Syndicate2083

Huh, didnt know that. About the affinity thing. Overall yeah I'd think that most of the time leaving it to the OS would work out fine.

ChaosMinionX

If you plan on Crossfire with ATI cards...dont buy P45 the 8x 8x PCIE2.0 really gimps performance....

I would suggest an Asus Rampage Formula

kris23

you tried the P45? how bad is it?

swimtech

I just went through making this exact same decision - went with the Q6600 over the 8400 for reasons of longevity and overall value, sacrificing some gaming performance due to the 8400's higher clock speed.

I figured it like this though, knowing I'd be overclocking this thing 24/7.

Reading tons of stuff here and elsewhere, I figured I'd likely be able to clock an 8400 at 3.6Ghz full time, a Q6600 at 3.2Ghz - without (overly) stressing the processors, and without spending much extra on cooling. Then I looked at performance benchmarks for those processors at those speeds. For anything other than gaming, the Q6600 was a better performer - and often by a very large amount (30%+).

Plus, programmers are concentrating on writing their apps now to utilize more cores (and more than just two now...). Their efforts should pay me benefits a year or two (?) from now that I would not otherwise see if I'd bought (just) a dual core - regardless of clock speed. The price difference between those processors was just $30.00 two months ago - and its about the same now. For the performance, I figured that $30.00 spent should bring me a lot of value.

I'm not disappointed - in any way.

Edit: The price difference between a Q6600 and an E8400 is just $10.00 now! Whoa...

PangingJr

i will always/only use low end graphic card, and when more than one cards in use it will be only for using with multple monitors, but not interested much in a gaming graphics performance.

P45 interest me much more than X48, it's a whole lot cheaper and one of it should give me some fun in overclocking a wolfdale, as seeing on the net these days that a TPower I45 already hits 724 FSB with a E8500, so i hope to see that myself can get a 600 FSB for once in my overclocking career, lol.

Syndicate2083

Thats a positive outlook. I'm curious however, what benchmarks were different compared with gaming. The primary function of this bad boy is for that and if there is negligable performance increase in most gaming benches, for now I'd probably stick with the slightly cheaper E8400, and move into a Q9xxx as they drop.

-Syn

kris23

whats the point? why not get a Q6600 and upgrade to a 9 series later.......

the 45nm cores are too new and as such, too sensitive, get a matured Q6600 which can take the beating of heavy OCing, heat output and voltage, youll like it better, trust me on this

swimtech

The Q6600 review HERE at DH by Zardon is an excellent starting point that gives an idea of the performance between a 2.93Ghz dual (X6800) and the 2.4Ghz quad (Q6600) across differing applications (get an especially good look at the Extreme Multitasking and Misc. Applications benchmarks - I think these areas apply well to the way a lot of folks now routinely use their computers in Windows day to day) and THIS review at X-Bit Labs, done almost a year later, gives a wider view with regard to current processors (and a good idea of how quad performance compares to dual performance both at stock and reliably overclocked). There's a lot more out there too. Took me weeks to get a good look at them all.

The Quads shine with media apps (my wife works with those - gotta justify it to her too huh?), and other apps are improving with the Quads gradually all the time. Unreal 3 is one game that now does better with lower clocked Quads than higher clocked Duals - a trend likely to pick up momentum, I think.

I admit looking at the reviews a tad askew though. Rather than look at the models for the processors (just too many to digest), I concentrated strictly on the speeds of the CPU and the number of cores they had, as tested, allowing for some differences due to cache size of the newer duals and quads, and interpolated results in my head (educated guessing...) to account for that. I knew ahead of time what speeds the processors would clock to (from the forums here at DH and by reading member's specs - XtremeSystems forums, HardForums, AnandTech's etc...) with good mainboards, and based my decision on what I was pretty darn sure I could do myself with the higher than average quality components I selected to use.

Basically then, what I have in my overclocked (3.2Ghz) Q6600 is the very close equivalent of a QX9650 or an E8500 at stock, for example. You could apply the same logic to the duals.

Edit: I know, this logic really only applies if you're going to overclock. Well, with today's better mainboards and latest Core2 iterations, overclocking about 30% is very easy to do reliably.

Syndicate2083

Thanks allot for that response, well done.

So anyone have any recommendations for boards aside from the Rampage, or the P45 chipset, which got a negative mark in this thread?

Thanks allot everyone!!

-Syn

swimtech

I really wanted a superfast gaming system too, but here's the heart of why I chose the quad I did over a fast dual core...

I really forgot to mention that moderately overclocking the Q6600 equals or betters any advantage any existing dual core at stock has - and even overclocking an 8400 or 8500 to 3.6Ghz (only a 12.5% CPU clock speed advantage over 3.2Ghz...) will likely show only a barely perceivable difference over the overclocked quad in the toughest to run games like Crysis, 'cause that's really about the video card anyway. Windows itself though, and other apps, benefit immediately from the extra cores - the extra cores (even right now) give much more practical benefit than a large clock speed advantage does. The benchmarks show that.

I was a little surprised though to see that my system beat a system with an E8400 at stock with an 8800GT card installed in 3DMark06, Here. Not that it means this system will run Crysis or Supreme Commander better, but it does have the overall horsepower.

I've given myself the advantage of the dual core clock speed in present games, and opened up the present and future software development advantages of quad computing by designing myself an overclocked quad system. You could too - and it costs essentially the same - or crank your gaming further by running the CPU at stock and getting a strong video card.

Once I realized that, along with the opportunity to fiddle with quad overclocking, affinities, and so on, I realized I was giving myself the opportunity to learn more, do things faster, and have more fun with the system in a broader way.

I've actually been aching to say this somewhere, thanks for listening...

Syndicate2083

not a problem at all! It's been a while since I really dug into my system like this and switching to intel has further left me in the 'lurch' so to speak, so believe me, it's been a pleasure reading!! Thanks again for all the info.

-Syn

swimtech

...and about your mainboard,

I looked at the 780i boards at NewEgg (the prices on 790i boards are just ridiculous!!!) and saw THIS Asus board in comparison to the XFX board you were looking at. The Asus board looks to have better voltage regulation and cooling, with essentially the same featureset. I wouldn't sweat the memory rating - your existing ram should work in it ok (the Asus site shows it takes DDR2 800 ram ok).

Since you want to do SLI with your existing 8800GT you really do need to stick with an NVidia chipset.

The offboard audio card the Asus board has should give a slight edge in noise over an onboard solution as well.

And consider THIS Corsair PSU over the Cooler Master unit you are considering. It's of higher quality overall, the single 12 volt rail design saves you headaches, and it's only a little more expensive.

Syndicate2083

Yeah, Id like to go SLI, at this point im staying nVidia, but that wont come for a while anyway, got to find a new place when I go back to the states and whatnot.

The asus looks good, not to concerned with the sound as I have an x-fi platinum at home for the rig. Love the PSU and the single rail though, very nice. I have heard some stories about the cooling of that xfx boards nb and how the fan blows onto the VC. Looks like you can just get some double side tape and mount the fan upside down and it blows air away from the VC in the opposite direction, as opposed to directly onto the back of it hah.

Really appreciate the time, thanks a bunch!

-Syn, just another week or two before I order, and flying back august 1st!!