E8500 or Q9400

[Beitzel15]

E8500 Duo or Q9400 Quad for gaming?

I dont want fanboys, I want which is the smartest, best buy for gaming.

 

[boulard83]

E8400 : 6 MB L2 3 GHz 1333 MHz
E8500 : 6 MB L2 3.16 GHz 1333 MHz
Q9400 : 6MB L2 2.66 GHz 1333 MHz
Q9450 : 12MB L2 2.66 GHz 1333 MHz


My opinion:
E8400, decent Air-cooling your good to reach 4.0ghz.

If budget is HOT Q9450 and higher.

Ever considered AMD ? P2X4 920 and 940 seems to be doing damn good. + the AM3 are supposed to fit in AM2+ socket ... your system going to be futurproof !

AMD Phenom™ II X4 920 2.8ghz
AMD Phenom™ II X4 940 3.0ghz

 

[Nik_I]

for gaming, don't bother with quad core unless your main games are supreme commander and FSX. otherwise, buy an E8400 and overclock it to 4Ghz. and as boulard83 said, AMD's new phenom II's are actually good. the phenom II x3's are able to compete with the core 2 duo 45nm cpu's while still being able to overclock a fair bit. i just ordered a phenom x3 710, and from benchmarks i've seen, it's about dead even with the E8400, but has a one core advantage.

 

[boulard83]

GTA4 .. VERY cpu intensive ! if you plan on playing this game ... QUAD can be a good idea, My duo OCed to 3.6 runs @ 89% avg use when playing .. pretty HIGH

 

[xthekidx]

GTA4, and FSX are the only games that you would buy a quad for, otherwise get a duo. Only a couple games can utilize all 4 cores of quads these days, most only use 2 cores and the other two cores idle. The higher clock speeds of the dual cores will make the games smoother, and duos can overclock higher than quads.

 

[Beitzel15]

So E8500 it is..... Im going to be playing COD5, Company of Heroes, BF2...and some newer games when they come out.... Would the E8500 Duo do better than a a Quad?

I wanna get the best for the games...

 

[fullmetall]

I use the E8500 for gaming, COD4&5, nascar ARCA, its great, even though E8400 is supposibly still the best Duo than any other duo, E8500 is +1.

 

[boulard83]

Your fine with a DUO. btw, i play GTA4 with my DUO and its still very smooth ...

 

[Beitzel15]

So with a GTX 285 SSC video card, 4 gigs of ram & a E8500 @ 3.16, i might OC to 3.5, (if i can figure out how will run Crysis, Company of Heroes, Cod4/5 very smooth?

 

[fullmetall]

You'll be just fine. E8500 will Run anygame, other than that, it depends on your graphics card which is a gtx 285 so your fine.

I play Farcry 2 on high, and im using 3870x2 with an e8500, switch in and out the 3870x2 and the 4870 sometimes.

 

[boulard83]

E8500 + GTX285 your good for lotta fun !