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Quad cores vs dual cores

Forum CPU & Components : CPUs - Quad cores vs dual cores

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I am trying to order a new computer for my office. We are a payroll service and use a program that run off of Microsoft Access. It does many calculations with tables and uses databases. I'm trying to figure out the best CPU for the money for this computer.

I'm debating between the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200, Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, Intel Core 2 Duo E7500, AMD Athlon 2 x4 620, and the AMD Athlon 2 x4 630.

As far as the prices I'm looking at on Dell(I know, I know) the x4 630 and the Core 2 Duo E8400 are the same price.

The Q8200 and Athlon x4 620 are $20 less and the E7500 is $60 less. I just want to know if it is worth spending the more money for the next card up. I also know that Dell doesn't price their "upgrades" accordingly sometimes.

Thanks for any help.

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If they are the same price I would go for the Core 2 Quad Core, even if it's overkill for what you do.

------------------------------ Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference
Reply to dunklegend

kamikazimunkey wrote :

Can you post links for the systems you're looking at?

Maybe there's a better option, than the ones you saw.

Look at an icon on the bottom of the page that says "Dell Deals", they usually have better configurations for the money in that section.

------------------------------ Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference
Reply to dunklegend

With the information you've given us it's very hard to know what kind of load your system is going to have. If you're a "payroll service", does that mean your company earns it's money by doing the payroll for other companies? That would suggest that you do a *lot* of payroll. But the fact that you're worrying about price differences of $20-60 suggests to me that you're a small operation.

And it's also very hard to know what the characteristics of the application are. My gut feel is that it's not going to be all that terribly CPU intensive unless you've got a *lot* of data to process, and even in that case you may find that your bottleneck is the disk subsystem rather than the CPU.

But really, you're in a much better position to answer than we are this since you already have the program and can look at how it runs on your existing system to see where the bottlenecks are.

Message edited by sminlal on 11-11-2009 at 06:02:50 PM

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Forum CPU & Components : CPUs - Quad cores vs dual cores