Hey,

I have a GA-P31-DS3L Mobo, and I plan on getting a HD 4850. The only problem is, I can't decide which CPU- A Q6600, or an E8500.

I do the occasional video compression, in Premiere Pro, and I love to FRAPS in games. I often play games like Vegas 2, COD4, and sometimes RTS's like Supreme Commander. I have looked at the TH graphs, and noticed that the Q6600 is behind by a few frames in each game- will that really make a difference? Also- it appears like the dual is ahead in some quad-optimized apps. I heard that in 2009, the games will become more quad-optimized (Ie- Alan Wake).

I plan to keep this build until December next year, when I upgrade again.

And yes, I plan on overclocking. As high as physically possible with my GA-P31-DS3L, and 800Mhz RAM.

Your thoughts?
HateDread

The Q6600 will perform better multitasking and working with video encoding and the like. The E8500 is 45nm wich runs much cooler and uses far less power (big plus)and notciably faster than the 2.4 GHz. 65nm Q6600. Want faster = E8500. Want smooth multitasking all around powerful machine = Q6600.

I have all three of these chips running here in the room. Listed best all around performer from top to bottom.

Q9450
E8400 (E8500 is faster and even more OC'able)
Q6600

clock the q6600 to 3 ghz and it will easily last you until your nehalem upgrade.

Thanks for reminding me JK..

I was 'informed', by both a friend, and some benchmarks, that you see a minimal difference between dual at quad @ 3.2Ghz and up. Is that true? If it were- I get similar performance in games, but I get multitasking with it.

On a side note- will a quad help me FRAPS, and play a game at the same time?

Thanks!

The quad would be a good choice to go with, if you plan to have the machine for a few years.

But that's the thing- I don't.

As I said, this is only to last me until December 2009, when I'll do another upgrade.

Still, any other thoughts to my reply two posts up? ^

Be carefull with that board using a quad especially a q6600 (65 nm higher voltage requirments) that board has only 4 phase cpu power. I have a p35 ds-3l with a q9300 and i had hard time ocing it to 3 ghz. So in your case with that cheap board get a good dual core ex. e8500. The new 45 nm duals are 8-10 % faster clock for clock then the 65 nm duals. Just my 2 cents

Guys,

The term "game" has very broad definitions. There are no "games" which are 100% GPU bound or 100% CPU bound. There is always a certain relative interaction between GPU and CPU performance when gaming, so your best frame rates will be highly dependent upon which game titles you primarily run. Check out Tom's VGA Charts and gaming forums to determine whether your favorite titles are threaded for multiple cores, and to what degree they're GPU or CPU bound, which will determine your quad / duo processor selection.

For example, at the extreme CPU bound end of the frame rate spectrum is Flight Simulator X, which has been mulicore threaded since FSX SP1 was released last year. I tested an E6600 and a Q6600, each running on identical rigs overclocked to 3.6Ghhz. My tests showed that frame rates scaled nearly 1:1 with clock speed on both rigs, yet the quad showed frame rates which were an astonishing 80% higher.

On the GPU bound end of the frame rate spectrum, there are single threaded game titles which are so heavily GPU bound, that they are affected little by the number of cores, or extreme overclocking, while there are titles which are relatively balanced at 50/50 GPU/CPU during many segments of play. Regardless, game developers are steadily moving toward mulithreading, so the future undeniably belongs to quad cores. Given suitable hardware, quads will overclock closely with duos, so processor selection remains a matter of research, to determine which will best fulfill your software requirements.

Comp