I <3 my quad, I'll never go back to duo...I NEVER Lag...ever.
~Leo
EDIT: If you want a good cheap processor that's a quad core, and easy to overclock, get a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz. I've got it overclocked to 4.2GHz right now stable, I had to up the voltages a little more than I would have liked, but I hardly had to increase the multiplyer or FSB to get it to where I wanted it, mainly just the voltages...and it still runs close to stock tempatures even with that much of an overclock.
What Abaddon said. Don't get Q6600. It's being phased out quickly by the newer and faster 1333 FSB processors like Q9xxx series.
Spec is right in a way you can get more speed for old games from those new dual cores by over-clocking them. But the gains are pretty negligible meaning that they don't allow you to go to the "next level of setup options in games", like moving from medium to high level of detail.
All the modern a bit better end quads and duals can handle the games well. It's almost always that the vid card is the bottleneck.
What I'd do now is (I own E8750, over-clocked it to 3.2GHz) if given a choice between new duals and quads. I'm almost perfectly happy with E8750. Very rarely I've noticed that I'd rather have a quad (doing some vid encoding etc.) than a dual. But me being always a perfectionist it always gnaws a bit. If given the said choice I'd buy a new Q9xxx quad and over-clock it modestly (just for the kicks and because I can, not really would need the extra push). And then there's always the prospect of The Game that really uses the quad for it's advantage.
I know from a personal experience that changing the processor is always "not really justifiable", because you need a new mobo anyway in most cases, after you've made your initial purchase.
A comment on the mobo. It looks very solid on spec-wise. 1600FSB gives you the option to up-grade later. DDR2 is a good and solid choice. The DDR3 is in a bit of limbo right now because it does not just deliver price/performance at the moment. You can get later the second 4850 to go as cross-fire when you need to have the next up-grade in speed. The rest of specs are yadda-yadda super-this-and-uber-that marketing bull. They are all the same.
I agree on the DDR3, while it is avaliable, it's not avaliable en-mass at this point and time. A lot of the major companies like CORSAIR and Kingston have DDR3 on their higher end RAM sticks, but you're looking at paying at least 300-400 dollars on one 2gb stick of RAM for DDR3.
DDR3 is not worth the purchase right now, it'd be putting me out the price of a new video card, new CPU, new motherboard even if I bought the right one. I wouldn't even be taking full advantage of the capabilities of it.
In terms of what I need out of a system though? I need RAM and I need CPU power, I tend to use my systems more modding and other related tasks far more than gaming. CPU power along with RAM are my true bottlenecks when running current generation modeling software, slow render times and large page files. Abbadon, Looqas? I'd love to get something like a Q9300 but its out of my budget, as I've already mentioned I don't want to break that thousand dollar mark too heavily.
In the future I may have more money to spend, but for the time being I'm locked into a very distinct little corner. Besides, as of right now I've tracked down a Q6600 that's price at a three dollar difference to the E8400. Everything is open for debate though, so you have me thinking.
Yes, the Q9xxx series are better to overclock as the die size was changed...
But, you still need a good motherboard to push it 4Ghz and above as that requires the FSB to run above 400Mhz. The most critical part in the system is the mobo, spend you money on that and buy cheaper processors + aftermarket coolers to overclock.
If you're not looking for overclocking extremes, Q6600 is a very good buy as it can do 3Ghz easily and
gives you the 4 cores (as I see from what you said, you're using modeling apps, you'll need it).
I'm not sure why Abaddon was lagging with a C2D - I'm sure that's not related to the CPU being 2cores or 4 cores, as older games (like FL) use only 1 core... If you start the app, assign the app to core 1, everything
else goes on core 0 - all happy:)
Never had a problem with running FL on my T5600 even at mere 1.8Ghz !
Also, if you have a top-of-the-line graphics card, you'll need a faster processor to take full advantage (not neccessary to have more cores, but faster) - Something to do with the Core freq + FSB + PCI clock rates.
Usually higher end graphics cards perform best at full options+reso when cores are doing around 3Ghz+.
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' Wrote:Also, if you have a top-of-the-line graphics card, you'll need a faster processor to take full advantage (not neccessary to have more cores, but faster) - Something to do with the Core freq + FSB + PCI clock rates.
Usually higher end graphics cards perform best at full options+reso when cores are doing around 3Ghz+.
FSB also dictates the data transfer rate to and from RAM to CPU to Vid card. The CPU is the middle man who dictates the pace. Oversimplifying the thing: all the data transfers goes through the CPU at some point. That's why you need to have a fast CPU to feed the fast vid card with instructions what to do.
Q6600 is not a bad choice if that's the only choice of quads you can make. I just had a disticnt recollection that you can get one of those newer quads for the same price. I need to check my local price grabber (even though it does not help you since you Turkish are limited to one supplier.)
Allow me to breakdown the pricing on CPUs in my region, there happens to be a big jump between the series one Quad Cores and the newer 1333 Quads. Prices are grabbed from three local retailers I know to be reputable and reliable.
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
NCIX: $198.36
Anitec: $199.95
CompuTrak: $179.00
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
NCIX: $225.99
Anitec: $219.95
CompuTrak: $201.00
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300
NCIX: $313.60
Anitec: $299.95
CompuTrak: $294.00
As you can notice, there is a fairly substantial jump in price between a Q6600 and a Q9300. While its only about a hundred dollars it adds up in the end, if I could I would but I 'm finding it hard trying to fit it into sub-thousand dollar, or even slightly over thousand dollar build. Money is tight and I need to make sacrifices, unfortunately.
I get my Q6600 around 160 euros and Q9300 for 215 euros. And think Canadian dollars beat euros in exchange rate. Unless you really do use US dollars in your figures. Then the prices are about even here and there.
Funny. I recalled that Q6600 and Q9300 were pretty evenly priced. Must be that Q600 has come down substantially. And just checked. They were more or less the same 3 months ago before the summer I last checked.
All my prices are in Canadian dollars, which while not off by all that much is still at a different price range than the United States. If I could buy some items at the US price it would make this a lot easier on me...
One thing I don't personally like about Q9300 is that is has a castrated L2 cache size of 6MB. Whereas in it's bigger brother's Q9450 and Q9550 have double that 12MB. Even Q6600 beats it in this regard with 8MB L2 cache.
And if this L2 size talk is total Hebrew to you I'll put the good quote from Wiki here
Quote:A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the data from the most frequently used main memory locations. As long as most memory accesses are to cached memory locations, the average latency of memory accesses will be closer to the cache latency than to the latency of main memory.
And while this seems very overly dramatic it really has real world implications as well making bigger cached processors more powerful if they are running at the same clocks as the lower cached processors. You can google about reviews if you are interested to see the difference in applications.
But while this is certainly a plus it should not sway your decision to some way or another really. The main difference by far between processors are due to different clock frequencies.
Which ever core2 Intel you choose I guarantee you'll be grinning like an idiot the first time you put it to test and use:D
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