E6850 Vs. Q6600?

[chris1784]

What do you guys recomend?? what's faster, a quad core 2.4 o dual 3.0? how can each be OCed?

 

[Opteron_Prime]

It really depends on what you plan on doing with it. On single threaded Apps the dual core will when but on apps that have more than 2 threads the quad will win.

 

[EV700]

The new G0 stepping for the Q6600 and Q6700 will make for good OC. You can take a look at the CPU charts and learn a decent bit about the Dual vs Quad scenario. Basically, the Dual 3.0 currently (obviously) out-performs the Quad 2.4 on single-threaded applications. I feel that the Dual 3.0 will continue to out perform, logically, the Quad 2.4 in double-threaded applications. Where the Quad 2.4 and Quad 2.66, etc, will pay off is in true multi-threaded applications, such as near and far future gaming and other applications which make use of 3+ cores (3D applications etc).

 

[mikeny]

I was planning on upgrading my E6300 gaming machine. I dont play FSP's and dont multi-task. I dont plan on Ocing but I might practice if I upgrade my system and use spare parts to practice overclocking. I was thinking of getting a mobo that supports both Quadcore and C2D. Should I go with E6850?

 

[EV700]

Here's a list of games that currently use more than 1 core:

This is a list of games with 2.5 threads or more

%u2022 Supreme Commander (THQ/Gas Powered Games)
%u2022 BioShock (2K Games/ Irrational Games)
%u2022 Microsoft Flight Sim X %u2013 (MGS)
%u2022 Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (Ubisoft/ GRIN)
%u2022 Stranglehold (Midway)
%u2022 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (Activision/ iD/ Splash Damage)
%u2022 Assassin%u2019s Creed (Ubisoft)
%u2022 Warhammer MMORPG (EA/Mythic)
%u2022 Unreal Tournament 3 (Midway)
%u2022 The Witcher (Atari/CD Projekt)
%u2022 Half-Life 2: Episode II (Valve)
%u2022 Tabula Rasa (NC Soft)
%u2022 World in Conflict (Vivendi/Sierra)
%u2022 Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (Gearbox/ Ubisoft)
%u2022 Fury (Auran/Gamecock)
%u2022 Alan Wake (MGS/ Remedy)

http://www.hardwaregeeks.com/board/showthread.php?t=32483

* Quake 4 (and Quake 3)
* Call Of Duty 2
* The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
* Unreal Tournament 2007
* Crysis (Far Cry 2)

http://wiki.extremeoverclocking.com/wiki/Multi-Threaded_Games

I'm sure there's more than that... and more to come.

In short, Quad will pay off around the corner. I'd actually go with the Q6700 if you're going to be gaming a lot. But, you need to consider which games you will be playing and how long it will be before you upgrade the processor again. Then make your decision of the E6850 vs the Q6700 after that.

 

[mikeny]

So it would be wise to have a mobo that supports both QuadCore and C2D.....get the E6850 then down the line go to Quad since E6850 has gone down in price. I saw the Q6700 as high as $650. Are the 45nm processors in 2008 anything special for gamers? I might go to Wow or Tabula Rasa but still I dont play FPS's.

 

[erloas]

I don't know how much I would believe the post about which games are going to benifit from more then 2 cores. I know at least one game on the list has had absolutely no specs at all listed for it, and especially at the time of that post wasn't even in closed beta so the only systems it may have been seen on was not quad core systems so there was no way to see how much it would utilize more then 2 cores.

There is also no guarentee that just because it has more then 2 threads that it will gain any real benifit from a quad core system. They could have 4 threads and one might take up 80% of one core and the other 3 combined might never use more then 30% of a second core. Not all threads are created equal and the likelyhood of all of the threads being able to run at full speed is highly unlikely. Most likely several threads will end up being controlled by a main thread so things will still be done in parallel but none of the side threads will benifit from being able to run faster then the main thread is able to use its data anyway.