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.

You can start a stickie yourself. Just edit your first post, and post as much information as possible. I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate this, rather than answering every single "Q6600 vs. E8400" question.

"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."



Um, except for one minor problem.

If your game or app uses 2/2 cores, what's left over for background services? Nothing. You are better off leaving 2 cores for background processes and allowing the other two to be fully utilized in the game or app. If I had my way, I would leave at least 2 cores for the OS (and messaging or other services) and have the max number of cores set aside for the app or game you want to use. If Crysis uses 4 cores (and it does, as well as many other games and apps), then for absolutely optimal performance, you would need 5 or 6 cores to offload the OS and other services from the ones that Crysis is using. Does that make sense?

So don't knock the Quad. It is absolutely, 100% usable today for anything. But I agree that if you're not doing anything but web surfing and Office, just stick with a dual-core.

FYI. Sorry I'm short on time writing this. FYI I'm not knocking anybody with this thread and it's definitely not a one size fits all thread. Some people enjoy having debates in these forums trying to squeeze every last ounce of performance and definitely that's more than ok. This post is meant more for people on a budget and want to get something but get caught up in a lot of these discussions and I think end up more confused than before when they started. The point of this was to try and give those persons insight to where they hopefully don't agonize as much and be equipped to make a decision with less effort and feel good about it so they can move on and put their new pride and joy to use.



Leo2kP, I agree with everything you said, but that's why I mention open your apps and take a look at task manager. The person looking will hopefully know what games they play and if they also want to do video editing in the back ground. I would just about wager persons who do a lot of multitasking such as you speak, this thread probably isn't that useful to them anyway.

A small correction: Crysis does not utilize over 2 cores. You do not see any performance gain by having a quad core processor.