i will be building a computer to play games on but not extreme gaming. im not going to do any video editing but probabley multi-tasking while im playing games. in the future will games be adapting to quad cores or duos?
I have my mind on the Q6600 but the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 is 45nm saves power, and a good price. but i dont think its as good as the q6600. what should i get. E8400: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115037
If you plan to keep the computer at least 2 years without upgrading (CPU) take the Q6600. If you upgrade every year or every 18 months take the E8400. Games are becoming more QC friendly but it's a slow process. The QC will last longer.
Like Andrius said, the E8400 should suffice for your needs if you upgrade frequently. The Q6600 suits my needs though. I used to have my computer encode late at night after gaming or working, but with my quad core I can do everything at once with no slowdown. If I wasn't doing that I would have gone for the E8400.
It so much fun to see this question get asked nearly every day in every way. Each time it gets answered I learn something new and the education is often entertaining. So, for today's episode of E8400 vs. Q6600 what'll we have?
If you're likely to overclock your processor (even if you aren't familiar with doing so now, folks here will help you) you can overclock that Q6600 well into the more-than-enough-for-gaming-for-a-long-time league and have the best of both worlds today. If you're not going to overclock than the E8400 has a higher stock speed which today's games will appreciate more than the 2 extra cores of the Quad.
Personally, I think the Q is the better investment, because as you're gaming you can be doing other things, like virus/spyare scanning or whathaveyou and have you games still run smooth. You'll likely hear that games will be written to take better use of the Quad cores.
So, as Andrius wrote, if you upgrade kind of often go with the raw speed today and get the Quad later, when games better exploit them. If this is a longer term investment then I'd recommend the Quad.
