I've been searching this forum to see if anybody has actually tested any of the released penryn procs against the 65nm Core 2's. Mainly performance and energy consumption. I hit a ton of threads and read through them and they pretty much say the same thing. Somebody needs to post a couple of stickies about this.
Dual core versus Quad. Sit and ask yourself what software you are planning to run on your machine. If you have a machine right now and are going to be using the same software, open up task manager and watch the cpu utilization while your using and check first that it's utilizing all the cores you have. You can also right click on the process and select set affinity and see if you have the option to use all cores. Also, I believe it's been pretty well established that gaming for the most part, dual cores at this time would get the nod over quads because not that many games are made to utilize all 4 cores.
If you're doing video editing, 3D rendering or something along those lines, better chances those types of software right now will utilize more cores so going with a quad may be more inline. If you don't know research your software and see what the specs on it state.
If you are going to surf the net, email run office apps etc just get a core 2. Chances are you could run a P 4 and be fine.
If you still aren't sure get what you think you can get by with but get a system board that will support most of the procs you are considering. Pick one, test it if it doesn't perform, RMA and step up to next.
Penryn versus the rest? If that's your questions, the penryns are supposed to utilize less energy. Tom's has a spec on energy use of a Q6600 versus a E6850 so basically I think that's going to be the biggest difference between the penryns and their older equivalents. Meaning Q9450 vs Q6600.
Seems like a lot of people waste a lot of time on here over analyzing every little thing when 2/3's would not honestly be able to notice a difference between a Core 2 Duo dual Core and a Quad in their everyday use.
Dual core versus Quad. Sit and ask yourself what software you are planning to run on your machine. If you have a machine right now and are going to be using the same software, open up task manager and watch the cpu utilization while your using and check first that it's utilizing all the cores you have. You can also right click on the process and select set affinity and see if you have the option to use all cores. Also, I believe it's been pretty well established that gaming for the most part, dual cores at this time would get the nod over quads because not that many games are made to utilize all 4 cores.
If you're doing video editing, 3D rendering or something along those lines, better chances those types of software right now will utilize more cores so going with a quad may be more inline. If you don't know research your software and see what the specs on it state.
If you are going to surf the net, email run office apps etc just get a core 2. Chances are you could run a P 4 and be fine.
If you still aren't sure get what you think you can get by with but get a system board that will support most of the procs you are considering. Pick one, test it if it doesn't perform, RMA and step up to next.
Penryn versus the rest? If that's your questions, the penryns are supposed to utilize less energy. Tom's has a spec on energy use of a Q6600 versus a E6850 so basically I think that's going to be the biggest difference between the penryns and their older equivalents. Meaning Q9450 vs Q6600.
Seems like a lot of people waste a lot of time on here over analyzing every little thing when 2/3's would not honestly be able to notice a difference between a Core 2 Duo dual Core and a Quad in their everyday use.