E8400 or Q9550

I dont think the e8400 will bottleneck any card on the market atm.. even at stock speeds but yh go for the cheaper processor unless u wanna be a bit more future proof.

i just think that it will be a long time, many direct X into the future, before i need more than 2 cores to run a game. and even by then, 4 cores would be enough.

The q9550 would be a 140$ processor, and i'd just buy that.
i think a dual core would last me just long enough. i think the timeline would go like this.

2009- Great for games (high Ghz)
2010- First games utilizing quads (Still a great CPU)
2011- MAYBE first time i need to step into medium Quality
2012- (if we dont all die) All of a sudden intel has somethin new, i7 and ddr3 are the new dual cores + ddr2 so i could prolly get it for really cheap.

By then, i'd prolly be to engrossed into school and work for me to even care about upgrading. so i think a dual core oc'd to 3.5-3.8ghz range would go along just fine

another question BTW If I have phenom 9850 it will last until 2010 ? Well that's nice.

When will my CPU become a bottleneck for my computer. For example 2 4870 x 2 Graphics cards would be too much for my CPU to handle and I won't the maximum FPS out of it  

i think a E8400 OC'd to 3.6ghz and beyond would be great for PC games for at least the next 2 years. I am not looking at getting Max frames on ultra high quality in games in 2010. That is unrealistic. Just looking to be able to play my fav games without having to resort to polygon textures (exaggeration).

Dual Core 3.4Ghz won't be a minimum requirement for awhile.

I am still just starting to see 3.0ghz Pentium 4 as a minimum requirement (and that is some high end games too)

my e8400 doesn't bottleneck my 2 260's and i play everything max details on a 24" screen. the quads have came down enough in price that it makes the decision tougher though.

that is stuff i want to hear, someone with a dual core defending it. I am tired of people who feel all high and mighty about their quads. Honestly, i am the type of person who would admit if a lower end model is really good, but so is the quad.

Look, i am not trying to get a system that would be amazing for the next 3 years, but be able to play my fav games well into 3 years, i dont care at ALL if OMG it wont play on high, whatever, i just want to play them. I think the E8400 is the way to go in my case

E8400 and give it a mild OC, 3.6ghz or what not. Youll be fine.

God Quad, other choices are silly, its like saying "i dont want to futureproof, i want obsolite"

What will a quad give me, a year more at best?

Already most games coming out in 2009 are not going to take advantage of anything more than 2 cores because they been in production for at least 3 years. So if intel is just starting to try to get developers to code for multiple threads, the closest time frame i can see a game i wanting to play even remotely gaining any performance out of a quad, will be in 3 years.

I am not flaming quads, at all, i see the benefits if you video edit and encode or whatever. Just i don't think it is a reasonable option just to say you have 2 extra cores.

The E8400 has amazing benchmarks, what makes these benchmarks even more amazing, this processor is now only 160$ it stands up extremely well in games with 250-300$ processors.

My point is, just tell me the E8400 Overclocked would more than be enough for today's games, and games into 2010. More games are GPU dependent anyway.

If in a quad core enabled game i get 130fps on the E8400, and 146 fps on a Quad, i really don't care, a few extra frames is a worthless comparison.

i dont get it

In ur eyes if u kno the answer y ask?
U kno the advantages of each, decision is ur own

i am just waiting to see someone give proof that a quad core is actually future proof and the dual core would be dead by the end of the year as everyone proclaims.

ok here

2 good new games are using Quads. L4D (no tests have shown whether a quad helps, but its not very taxing) and San Andreas which has shown to benefit from quads. Windows 7 is coded to use quads better and separate the load of a program among the different threads (from microsoft announcements). but whether duals die, i doubt it...we dont kno what the future is, its just we kno that everything will eventually go multithreading. That can mean next month, year or decade for all i care

Considering Windows 7 is nothing but Vista SP2 (and Vista already allocates out/uses extra cores)......I wouldnt bother reading into that too much.

of course but its like Vista on steroids from what i hear...

They get rid of that "ask permission" crap?!

No. But it doesnt come up as much on its default setting. And it is super super super easy to turn off in windows 7 as apposed to just super super easy in Vista. It has a slider that corrosponds when you want the warnings. Just read one article out of the 20k of them on the net.

ah thats some good news

I made that admin account to stop them, just never bothered to us it

Vos17, rather go with the E8400, because as you say you will never do any multithreading. Personally if I was in your situation I would get an AMD processor, simply because it is so much cheaper, and if you only play games and surf the web you will never need an Intel, imo. You can save a good $250 if you get an AMD Athlon x2 with an AMD mobo. That $250 can be used on something thats more important and which matters to you, like a better graphics card.

Getting a quad for "future-proofing" or brag rights is ridiculous. And so is getting an Intel CPU when you will never particularly need it.

Hello all...
im pretty new here,and i dont know how old this topic is.
But my succestion would be that buy the E8400 first...
When u think its not enough then the prices of the quad cores have already been lowered...
Since the Core I7's came out...
Good luck  

Well I just saw this thread lol.. and Prices right now are looking really good for the quads.

E8400 right now is about $180 - $200 and Q9550 is about $250 so it's about $50 - $70 more.

Should we wait longer for the prices to dip a bit more before we buy or is this a good time?

Damn dirty thread necros...

And for the record, wait for i5 to come out, that should push Core2Quad prices down.

*bites onto my E8400 chip*

i know its been a LONG time since this thread was last posted in, but i must say... the e8400 is STILL 189.99.. i paid 199.99 in june 2008. so much for the prices going down when i7 and i5 were around..

I do not forsee the C2 prices dropping. When Intel fully shifts production to the i3, i5, i7 CPU's (if they haven't already), there won't be anymore Core2's.

+1 Because they haven't, the Q9550 and E8400 cost more now than when I bought either of mine a couple of years ago. And now that's out of the way this thread can go bye bye's.