I'm building a gaming PC. I've got to go Intel since I've already bought the mobo, and I've got 3GB of DDR2-800 RAM. I'm currently stuck between going dual-core with the Intel E8500 or going quad-core with their Intel Q9300. I'll probably be running some newer and older games, which makes me want to go with dual-core, but I don't plan to replace this computer until two or three years.
Depends on if you will only be playing games, if you get into any video encoding, or highend photo editing, and still want to be able to usefully use
your machine while that stuff is going on. Then i would go with the Quad.
Now if you want absolutely fastest framerates in your games, its probably
going to be the dual, because of the raw speed. I mean benchmarks in
most games prove that the E8500 is blazing fast.
On the other hand (If i had three hands hehe.) Longevity wise I think
the Quad will benefit you more since more, and more things, wether games,
or appz will start being multithreaded for Quad core stuff.
I cant even load 4 cores playing crysis even though crysis does use 4. Personally I'd overclock the daylights out of an E8500 on a good reliable X38 board. If I was determined to go 4 cores, I'd get a Q9450.
why do people even ask these questions if you go with the quad your system will last longer eventually everything is going to move over to multi thread for longevity i would go with the quad hands down !!!
Keep in mind that multithreading is the future. A quad will at least stand a chance against the 8 core Nehalem, to be released at the end of this year, but a dual will be completely outclassed, no matter how high clocked.
I say get the 8500.. As this is what I did... By the time more apps and games use the multi core of the quads, you would be able to very cheaply get yourself an older quad such as the 9450.. I say the 9450 as an older choice, because, by the time enough games and apps take advantage of multi cores, the 9450 may be a bargin bin dream....
then there will be better quad out then. why get the old one when the better one is available?
It's not so much better quad than octo core. Nehalem comes out at end of this year, remember? That's in 6 months. Besides, Intel is bringing back ht with Nehalem, that's 8x2=16 threads!
Getting an expensive dual at this point makes no sense. A year or two ago, it would. But not anymore.
16 threads to do what? Cook you dinner while washing your car?
Hmmmm, I don't know for sure, but I think I have found a use for 16 thread capabilities.....
Decompressing 1GB WinRar Russian Porn files while video editing the best scenes from your last download at the same time watching a HD full screen movie and crunching a spreadsheet.
Of course that is taking multitasking to the extreme.
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I am old enough to be your grandfather.
It was born a Dell, it was made into a computer by StevieD
I play a game, or I surf the net, or I do something else. Notice the keyword "or". I rarely do more than one thing at a time, so 2 threads is more than enough for me. Now if I could get my CPU to bake me a pie while I was typing this I'd gladly dedicate a thread to that.
This is funny, not one mention of all the encoding thats soon to trash any quad core being done by gpus. If the OP is gaming, and intends to not oc, getting the highest Ghz is the most important. Doing encoding is a gpu job, not a cpus. Cpus have shown how innefficient they are encoding vs a gpu. I say, get the faster dual
This loyalty toward old hardware makes no sense. This is exactly like the single core vs dual argument from a few years back. Now all games are dual optimized. And even the earilest dual core cpus, like the e2140, are very much alive and chugging along, still being brought by people for budget gaming rigs, while all single core cpus that came after that are completely worthless for gaming. History is the best indication for future trends. Seems like some people just perfer to fall into the same hole twice.
^ True, but my primary gaming rig is my flaming fast Athlon XP! It plays most games alright at 1024x768...
Seriously I won't ever wanna evolve my computer into some kinda monster, high powered machine if all I ever do is use Firefox whilst playing itunes and drawing in painter (I mean like 95%).
Message edited by amdfangirl on 06-24-2008 at 02:54:25 PM
This is funny, not one mention of all the encoding thats soon to trash any quad core being done by gpus. If the OP is gaming, and intends to not oc, getting the highest Ghz is the most important. Doing encoding is a gpu job, not a cpus. Cpus have shown how innefficient they are encoding vs a gpu. I say, get the faster dual
Yes because CUDA works soo well.... BTW you forgot to mention the GPU encodeing is done on a second card not running GUI interface, useing "optimized" code. GPU's might help in encodeing but they sure the hell aren't going to rule it. With repects that a GPU has no logic to open edit save that file it's useing a compiler to set up everything, all in all sounds like a Itainium setup and we all know how the industry took that.
