E8400, E8500 or Q6600 at 3GHz

[baldinie]

OK, building my new PC's and i can get a E8400 or E8500 at the same price (but i here the e8400 overclocks better), or for £5 more i can get a Q6600 that comes guranteed to run at 3GHz with a 1333MHz FSB. which one is best? i'm going to be mostly gaming, and i here to quads are better in strategy games and so on.

Rest of the spec is a P45 mobo (either ASUS P5Q or a Gigabyte P45-DS4)
500GB HDD, 4gb OZC reaper 800HMz RAM, and a HD4870 (or maybe a GTX260 if its still on offer at just £20 more than the HD4870 when i come to buy it all)

SO which CPU?

Thanx in advance guys.

ALSO, what cooler for overclocking the Q6600 if ya recomend that CPU, the arctic freezer pro 7 seems popular.

 

[loftie]

It depends what you want. The dual will be better in games. I've heard that the quads run a better. When I upgrade, which will be hopefully soon, I'll be going for the q6600. I'm less bothered about losing 20fps in a game then having pc slow down if I'm doing some heavy multitasking.

What site are you looking at by the way? Also have a look at the Western Digital Cavier Blue 640GB. Read reviews saying they were very fast.

Good luck with your build

 

[xringx]

I have had the recent pleasure to run both the E8400 and the Q6600.

I am currently running the E8400 Oc'd to 4.0Ghz. I had the q6600 OC'd to 3.6Ghz.

I am not sure I have noticed a difference in games, but I think I notice a slight difference in basic windows apps. programs coming up, switching etc.... And I would give the slight edge to the q6600.

But the difference is so small that I am talking about feel only. I am not sure which one I want to put in my machine for good and which to put in wifes...

 

[jevon]

I'd probably rather have the E8400 running at an easy 3.6Ghz with DDR2 than the Q6600 running at an easy 3.0ghz. Getting the Q6600 to 3.2-3.4 shouldn't be too bad though either as long as you have a decent heatsink, so in that case I'd go for it for the long haul - more and more programs and games will be multi-threaded for quads+ as time goes on.

 

[cd14]

They say UT3 is multi-threading, but man my E8400 sure feels faster than my Q6600 even at the same speed. I can even see that on 3Dmark06 it's generating more frames. Number crunching it's the other way around, but most E8400 will hit 4.0 (with a decent motherboard) which can even things out. Quads will generate a lot of heat too so consider good aftermarket cooling for overclocking.

 

[baldinie]

cool, well the Q6600 comes with a guarantee to run to 3GHz, the E's dont have such a guarantee. Does no one rate the E8500? same price but running faster than a E8400 already. All from www.eclipsecomputers.com, and www.ebuyer.com, and I'm also looking at www.overclockers.co.uk since i have a 10% off everything voucher for the next week. which takes a £666 build down to just £600.

Also, am going to get the corsair TX 750W psu, and the RAM i'm unsure off. I wanted the 2gb cos it ran at 4-4-4-12 at 2.1v but at 2x2GB the fastest is that Reaper running at 4-4-4-15. I assume 800MHz RAM will be up to the job when overclocking the CPU to 1600MHz FSB. (with a 1:1)

 

[loftie]

Cheers for the info on the sites, lucky having a voucher for overclockers! And thats the same psu and ram i was looking at

 

[PEEPs420]

I personally don't think there are any guarantee's when it comes to overclocking but my experience has been that most c2d's/c2q's (45nm/65nm) will overclock well. The e8500 should be just as good if not better than the e8400 depending on your components. My q6600 run's at 9*380 (3.4ghz) and my e8400 runs at 9*400 (3.6ghz). Gaming is so smooth that I can't tell the difference between the two. You might pull more frames with the e8400 but what's the difference between 200 and 210? The place where I do notice a difference is when I'm running a bunch of apps on my desktop, q6600 is obviouly the king. As for your ram go with more ram (especially with 64-bit) your timings might be looser but you have more ram which makes the system run alot smoother. Also, ddr 6400 (800mhz) should take you to 400fsb but again there is no guarantee.

My General Opinion:
q6600
4gb 1066mhz ram
good overclocking mobo (p35/p45, x38/x48, 780i/790i)

 

[baldinie]

yeah, think am leaning towards the quad, with the tunic heat sink. but still thinking of just 2gb for now, can always just add another 2gb later on with no effort. and am going to get a P45 mobo. Decided by the time i'd add another card, i might as well just sell the one i have and get what ever's better at the time.

Thanx for everyone's help.

 

[baldinie]

ALSO, powercolor (spelt wrong "colour") have released an OC'd HD4870 with a new cooling system. NO MORE NOISY AMD/ATi REFERENCE FAN! WOOT!

 

[BIZWIZ]

that's nearly my specs!!! i think you can check out the 8500 with the biostar tpower p45 or the asus p5q pro boards---serious oc possible. also check out seagate 7200.11 500gb hdd with 32 mb cache

 

[baldinie]

am gettin the seagate 500gb 32mb. and is the e8500 a good overclocker. when they first came out the reviews said that the e8500 didn't o/c very well. mostly 'cos its just a higher clocked e8400 to start with.