Hi all!
 
So what do you think? Are people happy with their E8400? Benefits of using a Q9450 (whenever they arrive, anyone got a preview?)?  SSE4 rumoured patch gonna make a difference?
 
What about the Q6600, any users happy with that? More so than dual core?
 
Hmmm - all feedback appreciated!
 
Cheers
 
Doogz

I’m happy with my E8400, and I’d recommend using E8400 over the Q9450 for Crysis and gaming in general, pretty much the only properly multi threaded game is Supreme Commander.  I’ve read way to may promises that multi threaded gaming is around the corner, and been constantly disappointed with how badly games scale with multiple cores, I’ll believe all the multi core hype for gaming when I see benchmarked proof.  You only really need to consider quad’s if you’re into editing video or using commercial CAD software that is actually well threaded.
 
For Crysis performance comparing dual to quad cpu’s check here
Techarp
Expreview
The important bit of the Expreview article

 
I checked out the first link and the difference in FPS between a quad and dual is so small that it doesn't matter. The difference between the Q9450 and the E8400 @ 1280x1024 is .4FPS in the Ice stage, the most graphic intense area, and then @ 1920x1080 is .1FPS.
 
SO in a case like this, where it doesn't effect it enough to show a major difference, you could argue that a quad may benefit you in the end. Maybe later on down the line the CryEngine 2 will be further optimized for quads.
 
But its up to you. My Q6600 @ 3GHz runs Crysis very well in Vista and with most settings to very high. I am happy with it and wouldn't have gotten a dual either way. Besides the Q6600 roxors the soxors.

Well as you say, games are supposed to incoporate better use of multi-threading eventually, but as we all know games usually take a few years of development before hitting the market.  
 
So if your about to buy your CPU, and plan on keeping it a few years, I'd advise a Q9450. If however you find a E8400 quicker / a lot cheaper, go ahead.

 
Oh, depending on what mobo the OP has he could get the X3320(Q9300 Xeon) or the x3350(Q9450 Xeon). They are about $50 bucks less and have been shown to work in the Asus P5K-E series and a few Gigabyte boards.
 
Or he could just get the Q6600 and enjoy it. The SSE4.1 will only boost multimedia apps that support ut. I doubt Crysis will be able to utilize SSE4.1 at all.

Kind of a mute topic wouldn't you say?  Crysis is GPU limited and just about any C2D with a decent OC gets you in in the ballpark CPUwise.  It would be silly to base a cpu buying decision on a game that is GPU bound.

Since all of the top performing multi-gpu setups are really CPU Bottlenecked it's safe to say that the performance capability of today's high end gpu setups are indeed not realized because of this, so to say that crysis is gpu bound is unfounded.
 
Both the 3870x2 and the gx2 will only perform to potential....or closer to potential with clock speeds much higher than most are used to in any over the counter chip.
 
Myself and a few of my peers with multigpu setups have realized massive shader performance increases the more we crank up our processors. This is quite possibly why scaling in multi-gpu mode isn't so great in a lot of cases. This applies to both nvidia and ati before we get into a "my dad will beat up your dad" argument.
 
I will say that buying a quad core cpu at this point is still a waste of money.
I have recently in fact stepped away from a q6600 in favor of an e8400 since the e8400 is capable of a far better overclock and the results in shader performance with increased clock speed has gone up dramatically.
 
Lastly, it eludes me why everyone sees a game like crysis to be something of a benchmark when indeed is is one of the most inefficient pieces of **** code there is. based on that, if anyone is going to say anything, one could say crysis is just all bound up in general, and not the fault of cpu or gpu. it's just a piece of ****.
 
In respnse to the gentleman who mentioned it taking a few years to develop some games that will take advantage of 4 cores, i agree fully. And when they develop and release these games they will be far more efficient than crysis.
 
With all this being said, the best processor that money can buy from a cost effectiveness standpoint with the best returns for the gamer would definitely be the e8400 wolfie hands down....until there is anything in the game world that can take advantage of 4 cores that is, and even then, I'm not going to buy a 9450. I will just drop my q6600 back in since it will be a while before it's really obsolete in the true sense of the word.
 
Any of the current quadcore processors are far ahead of their time and people forget that the software world has a lot of catching up to do. I could care less what they make moving forward. it's a waste of money to buy anything, until the software catches up when for 200 bucks you can drop a wolfie in your mobo and tear it up at 4ghz+ with a nice multi-gpu setup.....with only 2 cores, better temps and less power consumption than a quad.

righteous, yours is pure opinion. Of course most is but what you think may not be true for everyone. Yes for some a dual core would be better since it can OC to 4GHz+ but others the quad will be better since it OC'es to 3GHz easily and runs smooth.
 
Plus some of us we can't just buy a dual core than a quad core. Budget limiting just sucks. So for some we opt for the quad so it will last us 2-3+ years. Then we upgrade when there is a large jump in performance, basically build a brand new rig.
 
But to each his own.

I had an E6850 OC'd to 3.5Ghz and it ran pretty cool and was really quite stupid-fast.  So I surmised that a Q9450 would have to be a neat experience, food for my virtual machines to munch upon.  I've taken the Q9450 to 3.4Ghz and guess what?  Even when I run up all my apps and my virtual machines I can't see the big difference...in fact I think the E6850 was subjectively a tad faster and it was objectively A LOT cooler.
 
General software has just not caught up with the Quads.  Its been said so many times before but for general computing a quad is just completely overkill today.  I should've listened, but I just had to have a Quad.  ...now I'm considering putting the E6850 onto this Rampage Formula and watching the magic show @ >3.7Ghz and letting the Q9450 space heater sit for a while.
 
I think that by the time software (outside of video editing/encoding) can exploit a Quad today's Quads will be considered old news and be undesirable by today's enthusiasts.

Since i've been doing autocad 2008 on a san diego core with 1gb of memory for the last year... going to the e8400 with 3.5gb(xp limit) has been night and day. I've already oc'ed it to 3.8 on air cooling with stock fan.. i put it back to stock settings.. due to my gfx card only being an x1950xt. Quads may be faster for video editing on benchmarks, but my computer does what it needs to very fast.
 
And for games.. well there are none currently out that i really enjoy anymore. WoW is old, and age of conan has a month still.. but it runs COD4 and CS:S very well... as it better.