Equivlent Quad to an E8500?

[Grubs]

Hey guys, building a new gaming PC and checking out processors. With the recent price drop of the E8500 to $200, I can get a ton of power for a very small amount of money. However, I'm also considering going for a quad core to make it more "future proof" for quad applications.

The only intensive thing this computer will be doing is gaming, fairly high end stuff (crysis to marvel at graphics, WAR beta, FC2, etc), so I won't see much benefit from a quad core until games are actually going to start taking advantage of them. If an equivalent quad processor isn't too much more then it might be worth it.

Also, whatever I get, I'm gonna OC it. People seem to be getting nice overclocks on the 8500, up to 4Ghz and past without too much trouble. I'm thinking the raw Ghz the 8500 puts out will make it the best for gaming near this price point. Will a quad core give me equivalent gaming power for not too much more money? Thanks

 

[jimmysmitty]

There is no quad core that can OC to 4GHz and give that raw performance near the same price point.

Now the QX9650 can easily get to 4GHz but it will cost too much.

I say go for the E8500 and if need be get a Quad in the future when they are cheaper and more taken advantage of.

 

[B-Unit]

The flip side of that is a Q6600 can hit 3.4-3.6Ghz pretty easy IIRC, and anything over 3.2Ghz you'll never see the difference in anything but benchmarks.

 

[KyleSTL]

Get a Q9450 for $330 and DDR2 1000/1066 ram and crank it up to 3.4-3.6 on a good motherboard (P35-DS4, P35-DS3R, P45-DS3L, P43-DS3L, any X38 or X48). The performance between a 3.6 quad and a 4.0 dual in games will be fairly neglegible, but you'll have much more theoretical power in programs that utilize 4 cores (video encoding, etc) and the ability to do things like p2p and virus scans while you're gaming (whereas with a dual you'd never even try such an idea).

Or a Q6600 as b-unit stated for ~$200 aswell. Both are good choices.

 

[Grimmy]

All I can say, is if your going for a quad, be sure you get a MB with a good chipset to get that nice OC.

 

[jimmysmitty]

^Preferably a P35/P45 or if you want the extreme OC (and want that extra 3-5MHz on the FSB) the X38/X48.

Right Grimmy?

 

[Grimmy]

Heh.. ya.. umm.. don't get a 650i chipset. :lol:

 

[jimmysmitty]

^Hehe.....

 

[zenmaster]

The Q9650 will be out soon for about $500 and OC fairly well.
Still you are talking about quite a premium over the Q6600.

 

[th_username]

QX9770