Q6700 or wait for E8500???

Hello mate and happy new year
well E6750 @ 3.6 will be enough, its a very powerful CPU,do u have any single problems with it ?

Remember, upgrade when u really dont get the performance u want

Why not get a Q6600 and overclock that? Save more than $200 compared to Q6700, and I bet you won't notice a difference in real life between overclocked Q6600 and overclocked Q6700 . You need a VERY good hard disk to actually use even a stock Q6600 at max.

Ok thats fair enough that the price difference between the q6600 and q6700 is not worth it. But surely an E8500 at anywhere above 3.8 ghz (which it can apparently easily reach, especially on water) is better than a q6600 at 3.2ghz which seems to be most peoples limit even with water cooling??

It depends on the type of application. In most games the E8500 will beat the Q6600, because cores 3 and 4 of the Q6600 do nothing. In applications that know how to use 4 cores (like DVD Shrink or SQL Server or IIS) the quad will win. We've had several threads about this in the past, most of them about Q6600 vs E6850.

Looking at the overclocked 8800GTX in the OP's sig, I'm guessing this is a gaming machine. OK, E8500 sounds better than both Q6600 and Q6700.

Is it worth upgrading from E6700 to E8500? What kind of applications are you guys using that manage to max the overclocked E6700 and want more???

if your going to wait for the new dual cores e8500 then conisder it againts a new quad not the q6700/q6600. But then again who actually knows for sure if the quads are coming out on the 20th so it might be a choice between e8500 and a q6600.

I was using an Abit IP35-e, a G0 Q6600, and a 550w Xclio greatpower with an AC Freezer 7 Pro in a Xclio BK Case (two 250mm fans)

Overclocked to 3.6GHz without effort. Voltage at 1.42 Stable.

Just FYI.

(Edit: I immediately put the FSB to 400, the voltage to 1.4, and it worked, though unstably. So that's why 1.42)
(Edit 2: Orthos stable at 50c)

The q9300 is listed as Jan 20th but the q9450 and q9550 are just listed as Q1 Jan. (thas what most of the sites say.)

The annoying thing is that most boards support the dual cores, but only the Intel chipsets will support the quad cores.
I think this is Intels way of fighting back for Nvidia not allowing them SLI support on their boards. No SLI for Intel and No 45nm Quad support fo Nvidia. You guys may remember a couple of months ago, rumors of the X38 supporting SLI came around again. This must have been when the two companies were having talks but they obviously couldn't come to an agreement. Thats what I think happened anyway...

That's a good measure to go by. Right now, I don't see any game using a quad core well, let alone taxing one, though 3DS Max benefits. I'm in a similar boat on the AMD side of the river of technology. I'd rather wait for the 45nm Phenom's but the performance of the X2 3800+ in one system is getting a bit behind, while the X2 4600+ in the other still seems to be doing okay.

So, do I get 65nm Phenom with a bug that I'll not be likely to encounter or wait for 45nm and maybe better thermals than 95 watts? Right now, the per core performance of even the $189 Phenom 9500 is better than the Athlon X2 by a decent margin, and close enough to the Q6600 to make me happy.

Our ASUS 690G boards at least have a bios available for Phenom, even though it's HT 2.0 with DDR2 667. So, should I wait for 45nm? Heck, I could wait for Swift, but that might be pushing it back a bit.

Yes I just googled it and apparently the Q9300, Q9450 and Q9550 are all delayed. Striker Extreme can't take one anyway so I'm not worried but I know quite a few on this forum are waiting for them. 45 nm by the way lol

suxors...looks like im going with a dual anyways, until they start making realistic daily software that will use quads, then upgrade again (prolly when nehalem hits market...maybe)

Thanks closed_deal good find. That means I may wait around for this BIOS to be released and then get one of the 45nm quads. thats great news thanks.

are the new 45 nm faster clock for clock? or do they just produce less heat and better for overclocking? I dont think their will be a performance increase in games from a 3.0 c2d to a 4.7 c2d or i might b wrong.

Some arithmetic operations (division, especially) are faster, at the same clock, because that part has been redesigned and improved. Also, there are new SSE instructions which will bring major speed improvements in video encoding (but you need new software that is aware of them). Apart from that, AFAIK, yeah, it's just better overclocking and less heat and lower electricity bills. It's also cheaper to make 45nm chips than 65nm so I guess Intel could sell them for less.

What happens in games depends on game and resolution. For example FSX is CPU-bound so a faster CPU will help. Most games are GPU-bound so a faster CPU won't make a difference. At larger resolutions the CPU is less important and the GPU more.