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It all depends on what someone does. A quad core is worthwhile for video editing, 3DS Max. Not so much for games beyond Supreme Commander right now. You mentioned AMD's probably decent quad core (which I pointed out I was waiting for), but you forgot the current AM2 upgrade market.

That market can benefit from a 95 watt quad or triple core, if the upgrader doesn't mind spending the cash now and then going Deneb or Nehalem with a new motherboard later. I agree that it's not worth it ditching an existing dual core for a quad, especially with a new motherboard purchase. Yet, if anyone has an Athlon 64 or P4 single core (hyperthreading doesn't count for much), and absolutely needs a new PC now, I'd say go quad core.

Not everyone wants to keep their CPU 4-5 years. I generally keep mine 2, which is why I'm leery of spending the cash now. If money wasn't an option, I'd go B3 on a 790FX board. Quad core's at least give good braggin' rights and boost 3DMark 06 scores. They aren't that far behind in games either.

I just don't think they're a good upgrade if you already have an Athlon X2 or C2D. Wait for Deneb or Nehalem instead.

For gods sake buy a Q9450 at least, I mean why rob yourself of 6mb of cache or two whole cores if you don't have to. Is it all that hard? Also as for "todays" benchmarks, how many people actually upgrade their CPU more than once a year? I use mine for at LEAST two years, no way I'd buy a dual core in todays market.

so what i also can do all those stuff with my e6600 i tryed to run 2 games (cod4 and r6v2) + google earth and lots of programs working everything worked smooth.

My reasoning why getting a Quad would be better:

1. You cant add more cores to a dual core, but you can overclock a quad. Meaning that if you get a dual, you're stuck with 2 cores.

2. Quads are technically better value for money. Take the Q9450 for example. Its 2.66ghz with 4 cores, for $360, which is $33.8 per ghz (360/ (2.66x4) ), thats $90 per core. Compare that to the Dual Core E8400. Thats $33.33 per ghz, or $100 per core. The Q9450 is only 400MHZ slower than the E8400, but has two extra cores for 80% more of the original price (360-200 / 200 X 100). TWO EXTRA CORES.

3. Software is going to only get more multithreaded, and quads are not that far behind duals in terms of performance to warrant getting a dual over a quad.


Reasons why to get a dual:

1. They are cheaper. Why buy cores you will barely use?

2. By the time software is really optimised by quads, the current quads will be obsolete.

3. The E8400 and co can hit 4ghz, the average quad cannot. Raw clock speed is still better for games.

4. Who watches a video while playing a game while surfing the web while decoding audio? Honestly do you really do 4 CPU intensive tasks at once on your computer?

Food for thought.

The Q6600 G0 is a 95w quad core. So are all of the Q9XXX series I believe. If AMD gets a 95w quad I will be suprised. Maybe with later steppings.

And I thought you swore to Deneb? Or is it if Nehalem is the better chip, and I doubt a die shrink of K10 will do wounders for it, you will get that?

Dual Core's with higher mhz is an AMD thing, intel offers quads around the same clock speed as the duals, its just not a difficult task for Intel with there current design, and since its now a core count trend now rather then mhz, the older your quad system gets, the more usage it will get to the extra cores and hence the longer usability/lifespan of usage, also thanks to AMD, slowing down the market .

The other factor is the upgrade path - dual now, quad later, the platforms are usually excellent for this too.

I'm thinking of getting an E8500 and OC it to 4Ghz on air with relatively cheap 8mb DDR2 (no paging file in Vista 64).
Then next year I'll get a new MB with the new socket and a nahalem with probably mainstream DDR3 by then.
What do you think of this for a gamer? OR go for a slower Mhz quad now?
From what I read games now prefer faster duals vs slower quads.
What games use quads now anyway and what about the ones in devellopment like far cry 2 ?

Although I've chosen my cpu (see previous two posts)... keep the debate between duals and quads running. There are lot of people out there who are looking for reasons to get a quad. I'll post my results when I have the system up and running in about a week or two's time.

I find it interesting people are so willing to dump higher performing duals. With a pretty certain guaranteed oc of at least 10% (4Ghz vs 3.6Ghz) and people are downplaying it. Thats close to half a Gig in speed. Throw that out, and no oc, and AMD is right there with Intel. So, in otherwords, being as Ghz makes a huge difference whether youre doing single or mulithread, you cant discount it. And if it comes for free, and most times cheaper, and you dont use video encoding, then why wouldnt you want a faster cpu? In that case, just go AMD

Maybe everyone is not into overclocking, espically with the concern that it will wear your chip faster?

Wow long thread, and nobody mentioned Flight Sim X. That is a big reason to get a quad core over a dual. Also who doesn't do a ton of crap at the same time on their computer? I catch myself doing that all the time. Music and MS Outlook, and a whole crapload of IE windows, with a whole crapload of tabs each, plus about 4 instant messenger windows. And that's if I'm NOT doing anything productive to boot. A quad is an easy choice over a dual in MY mind.

Like has been posted, multi threaded and using alot of single threaded programs are two different things. Single threaded apps AND multi threaded both run faster at higher clocks, and currently, a dual is clocked higher than a quad, dollar for dollar, without ocing, and they oc higher as well, which only points to the ability that theyre underclocked moreso than a quad

Well choose a dual then. Like the benchmarks show, duals BARELY beat quads in single threaded apps, and quads MURDER duals in multithreaded apps. dollar for dollar...quads ARE definately better. say what you want.

Is that taken from personal experience?, because I have both the Q6600 and an E8400 and the quad is only quicker at video encoding for the most part.

FSX... for gaming it's an exception and i do realize this. That doesn't discount the fact that a quad does scale better than a dual in terms of mult-threaded apps and multi-tasking.