E8400 or Q9450

[lycros]

So I've got a system with an E6750 @ 3.2GHz. The motherboard being used it GA-P35-DS3L Rev 1.0.

I've recently acquired an E8400 and Q9450. I'd like to upgrade to one of them, but I'm not sure which one is the best choice. In either case, I'd set the FSB to 400 so the E8400 would be at 3.6GHz and the Q9450 would be 3.2GHz.

The computer is used for internet and diablo 2/3.

So what would you choose and why?



I've also got an arctic freezer 7 for the CPU cooler.

 

[InvalidError]

D3 works fine on my stock C2D-E8400 and I doubt D3 would make any use of the C2Q's extra cores.

On my PC, D3 only uses 50% of the CPU, which means that D3 is for most intents and purposes single-threaded.

 

[knightdog56]

Q9450 It has 4 cores plus 12 MB onboard cache, double of E8400. The only thing is it runs a little slower by 3.4MHz. The Q9450 runs @2.66GHz

 

[whooleo]

Q9450 It has 4 cores plus 12 MB onboard cache, double of E8400. The only thing is it runs a little slower by 3.4MHz. The Q9450 runs @2.66GHz

"Technically" the cache is doubled however, Intel's Core 2 Quads have two dies (2 Wolfdale dies in this case) and each die has 6MB of L2 which gives it the same amount of cache and performance per core as the E8400 if we disregard clock speed.