here goes another Q6600 vs E8400 post, but this time, with a twist?    
 
E8400 offers future proof gaming and i guess will last me a good long time, but, as i have read in a topic somewhere, supreme commander (a game) works better on quads than duals, thats where im stuck, i have supreme commander and guess what? i wanna play it =P any suggestions on what i sould do?

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] 317%2C1310
 
Doesnt seem like it makes much difference to me, at 1024 anyways.
 
Personally id just go with the Q6600 and overclock it to around 3ghz althought it is a whopping $20 more on the egg at the moment :S

the graphics card is going to matter more than q6600 vs e8400 imo
 
i'd get the 6600 because of the huge improvements in video editing and 3d rendering, but for straight gaming either is good

I'll say E8400 to annoy everyone else, and to say you can overclock the bejesus outta it so it almost performs like a stock Q6600 .

 
dont they have the same stocks lol? and yea i heard the E8400 can OC like a"bejesus"  im guessing 2 things
 
1. less cores, less heat?
 
2. is it more stable?
 
oh right forgot to ask my stupid question, what the hell is FSB on CPUs and MBs?

It's 2008, not 2005...get a Quad.  

 
 
by the time duals get outdates itl be like in 2 years, by that time my whole comuter will be outdated anyway, same with the Q6600, itl prolly be the slowest CPU on the market in 2 years, the way technology is advancing....

People use Supcom to justify the money they spent on a tech that is ahead of its time still.   Even if you actually play supcom, the gains are minimal.
 
 
And BTW, according to that link, a 4ghz wolfie will smoke a 3ghz quad, even in the infamous Supcom  (crappy game anyway)

eh, i wouldnt be suprised to see games coming out this christmas or around there that will start utilizing multiple cores, it might be a little sooner then everyone thinks, also yes supreme commander has been optimized to multithreading, and ive read that quite a few people seen a huge diffrence going from a dual core to a quad, i choose the quad because a. its more horse power for the money, even a oc'd e8400 can only net you around 8.8 gigs total horse power, and b. multithreading is starting to come online, sure im going to have to upgrade in 2 years or so to have something competitive on the gaming side of things, but by then the dual cores will be having there issues with both cores being used in most things, also i still havent seen anyone with a dual core, that can show me anything besides benchmarks, that a higher clock brings about better game play vs quad with a mild oc.

if you read the latest article regarding what gets you better gaming, its your GPU thats going to boost your gaming the most, not you CPU

The OP is getting ready to drop up to $2K.  For some that's significant $$.  I'm sure the OP will do more on this new rig than play games.  Is an OC'd E8400 going to give him 20+ fps more than an OC'd Q6600?  I doubt it.  ...but I could be wrong.  Perhaps the OP may experiment with video editing or virtualization.  Perhaps the OP will experiment with virtualization while gaming.  ...or running a viruscan/spyware scan while gaming.  Cases in which case a quad would, how do they put it..."wipe the floor" with a dual-core.  I tested this 2 days ago just for the fun of it.  I took out my Q9450 and put back in my E6850 and OC'd it to 3.7Ghz.  Fired up Lost Planet and tried to do my standard virtualizations...XP and Ubunto simultaneously.  My rig simply rebooted.  It didn't cry, beep, or sneeze, it just rebooted.  Fair enough.  Tried again, ...BSOD. Last night I put my Q9450 back in and mildly OC'd it to 3.4Ghz and ran the same test.  I tell you I was able to play Lost Planet @ 1600x1200 (@ 19-21fps) while I had Ubunto and XP VMWare virtual machines running in Vista 64.  So, I'm sorry, but I'm sold.  I may sound arrogant, forgive me if I do, but for ~same money I just can't see buying a dual-core when an OEM Q6600 can be had at MicroCenter for $180US.

So I stand on, "It's 2008, not 2005...get a Quad".  No need to stress that this is my opinion any more than I need to say the Earth orbits the Sun.

Agreed. GPU is more important in most games (there are always exceptions such as the case of FSX). Try and get a good/better GPU.

 
Yeah, but what else you are capable of doing while gaming is a function of CPU, not of GPU.

 
try running a pentium 4 with a 8800 and see what happens? ill bet you that you'll see some smoke com'in out with playing some top-notch game, CPU's definetly affect your gameplay online, in many ways which im to lazy to explain, or just type =P.  
 
still i have known some facts but no one has told me he stability in these two CPU's!  

does the earth really revolve the sun? or is it our imagination wooohohohohohohoohohohohoh
 
no-one answered my stupid question "what is FSB"?

 
front side bus

 
lmao i meant what it does XD

 
lol...  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_side_bus

Crysis plays better with a quad too.