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You killed it.

Actually the Q9300 will have less cache than the Q6600.

Personally I'll be going with the Q9450. I'm not that into overclocking, and I'd just rather get the newer CPU cause it's... well, new. And improved.

There is no point in buying a quad core for gaming atm and there wont be in 2 years. If you are looking for max performance per $ now and in the future then 2 cores is all you need. There are some very nice AM2+ setups with X2's that offer far above and beyond future upgradability then any Intel system and cost a good chunk less now and will cost less later.

FYI:
Crysis is a single player game. Building a system for a single player game is futile. The multiplayer is so unpopular its not even funny. There are more people playing the older COD then Crysis multiplayer. COD4 is in the same catagory. More popular online play but not by much. Neither of these games keep gamers buisy for long. Crysis is the ONLY game that uses 4 cores and barely does so at that.

Almost every major title coming out is offering 64bit clients. Far better performance per $ then a quad core atm.

In the end what is the flipping point of buying a NEW system that instantly requires you to OC the piss out of it shortening its life and increasing risk a INSANE amount just to get it on par with gaming performance of systems that cost 30% less. I dont care how many of you have q6600s OCed because I see piles of them for sale and tons of burned out MBs because of them then any other chip in history. Our local builder shop is selling Q6600s used for next to nothing because costumers trade them in for better 2 core gaming rigs. To make a q6600 work you are very likely looking at a 1 year life of your system. If you are VERY lucky 2 years.

I'm glad you always have such a profressional opinion jersey.

I get a good laugh out of it.

Did jerseygamer say he builds / sells PCs? LOL!

I guess you can make up anything on the net these days...

To say on topic, I think cnumartyr has covered the topic pretty well. The only thing I would add is that power consumption is likely to be much lower on the Q9450. It should hit its FSB wall at or close to stock volts, which should make it considerably cooler than say, a Q6600 @ 3.6GHz 1.4V.

I'm glad I form my own opinions on hardware and things... It's one thing to go to Best Buy.. I think I'd rather buy from there than Jersey.

What about SupCom? Source engine (which I happen to play almost exclusively btw)? UT3? STALKER? (both of which I plan on purchasing)

I'm sure most big games that come out this year will utilize multi-core processors just fine.


Does everyone NEED a quad-core? No.
Is there any reason NOT to get a quad-core? With the prices for them as low as they are, No.

That's exactly what I was looking for... cleared a lot up in my mind. I think I would stick with a Q6600 then too. I think you are right in saying that penryn truly only shines with the QX.... I am personnally going to wait until my proc cant play new titles at high res with decent frame rates. It is very tempting however to upgrade to a super o'cable intel. It sucks to think that i'm only o'cing about .34 GHZ while you guys with the kentsfield quads are getting a 1.5 GHZ o'c easily.

Dude... do your research or ask someone to do it for you... I hope you dont give advice to friends. I agree with what you said about the games being sucky on multiplayer but man... Crysis uses the heck out of quad core procs. Also an o'c quad will last longer than a year... they have been out for over a year!

Hi again

I am leaning much towards the Q6600 now, since the Q9450 can still be quite some time in the future. Release may be close, but there's probably going to be a high demand for these cpu's so it could begin to take a long time before I would get one in my hands.

So what motherboard would you recommend for a Q6600?

I am looking at:
Asus P5K AiLifestyle Series
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4

Which of these would you take, or maybe some third option? The prince range is the price of these boards Preferably not higher.

Asus P5K-E w/ 0602 BIOS

Completely agreed! I dont like the Gigabyte! Only other option for me would be the MSI P35 Platinum.

Found here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813130097

What's the difference between P5K-E and P5K? Where I live I can only find ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP AiLifestyle Series, when I search for P5K-E, but the user reviews of them aren't many and they're not as positive as the P5K.

Okay just to be sure of some things I will go ask them:

If I go for a P35 board, some not overly expensive ram (like Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400, 800 MHZ), would the benefit of the Q9450 be enough to justify waiting? As I have said I come from an old PC so everything is getting replaced.
I am eager to get a new PC now, but I _could_ wait if it payed off in the end.

I just find it so difficult to decide when some ppl say one thing, others another thing.. I'm not feeling I have the proper knowledge to make a reasonable decision without some qualified help.

Oh I would say make sure you know which cpu you are getting before you get your ram. I am no expert but between the two one might work better than the other on that ram. But then again I hear ram speeds don't make much of a performance difference.

It's just that I don't want to buy more expensive ram+motherboard if I take Q9450.. Then I think it's becoming too expensive over a Q6600.