Core 2 Quad Q6600 vs Core i3 4150 vs Core 2 Duo E8400

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tanmayvij

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Jan 15, 2016
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I'm currently using a Core 2 Duo E8400 and while the single threaded performance is satisfactory, the low multi-thread performance makes me feel I might need an upgrade. I have two choices: spend over $100 on a Core i3 (I'll go for Haswell instead of Skylake) or get a Core 2 Quad Q6600 for just $30. I'm confused between the two. I'll be doing both gaming as well as video editing (more of gaming). Technically, C2Q (4C/4T) should be better than i3 (2C/4T) but the fact that C2Q was launched over 6-7 years back and is based on the 65nm architecture (worse than my C2D's 45 nm) makes me more confused...

If I could play games like GTA 5 etc on low settings on my current processor, I'd upgrade the GPU instead of spending on the CPU... I don't do any heavy video editing, only 1080p 30 FPS 1-2 min clips. Plan to use Adobe CS4 instead of current gen versions...

I'm on a tight budget so don't wanna end up wasting money.. Is an i3 worth the upgrade?
 
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Trafalgar747

Trafalgar747

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Nov 7, 2015
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The i3 will cost alot more as you will also need a new motherboard and if you have ddr2 ram you will have to buy ddr3 ram. The Q6600 isnt much of an upgrade. What graphics card are you using right now? You may be better off with a graphics card upgrade instead of a processor. Also how much ram do you have? 8Gb is a minumim standard for gaming as games such a GTA 5 will get extremely low performance with 4GB RAM.
 
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Trafalgar747

Trafalgar747

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The i3 is definitely better, no doubts about that, but it will cost more than $150 to upgrade to the i3. If gaming is more important, a good graphics card is important. I myself own an E8400 and it actually performs surprisingly well on game like BF4, Planetside 2, and everyone know how CPU intensive Planetside 2 is. If you want more performance from your current processor and will be upgrading your graphics card, you cant turn cpu intensive graphics low and should perform fine.
 
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tanmayvij

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I currently have a GT 710 2 GB and I've seen GTA 5 run at 720p 30 FPS lowest settings on this GPU which is fine with me.

Also, I currently have only 2 GB DDR2 RAM. If I want 8 GB RAM in my system, I'll have to buy a G41 motherboard as the G31 only supports up to 4 GB RAM. So I guess as of now I should buy a G41 motherboard and 8 GB RAM for my PC?
 
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Trafalgar747

Trafalgar747

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Those do need atleast 8GB of memory, but are mostly CPU intensive. A graphics card would help 3D designing etc and obviously gaming, but if you want much better performance in serious photoshop kind of work, a powerful processor is important, mostly the number of cores/thread over single core performance. Do you have DDR2 or DDR3 memory? May i ask how much you are willing to spend for the entire PC upgrade? Id say get the Q6600, $30 isnt much and it will give you better performance in photshop etc and slighly better gaming performance, and upgrade to a $100 brand new GTX 950. That would cost $130 in total.
 
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tanmayvij

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A GTX 950 costs around $200 in my country :( I don't do any high-end editing work, just a student, and I use those softwares for leisure & learning. I have DDR2 @ 667.
 
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