e2220 vs q8400

[bsalzetti]

So I recently decided to buy a quad core and with the set up I have now I can play crysis, COD4 and all those games max settings, will I see anymore performance increase with the q8400? Also I ordered an aftermarket cooler for it as well which claims to keep the processor at about 35c under load.




Gigabyte ga-ep45-ud3p
4gb kingston hyperx
Nvidia Gefore 9800 gt 512mb

 

[Spikesoldier]

yes but that same money is better spent on getting a better video card for a higher gain.

how much ram the new card has to have is going to depend on your monitor's size.

you might want to spend the money you budgeted for the cpu on the video card, and overclock the e2220 you have well past the stock speed of the q8400. having two more cores is not going to help you in every game, a better video card and cpu speed will.

 

[yh125d]

Well first of all, you're not getting anywhere near max settings in crysis


Second, yes you will


Third, 35c under load is probably 10-20c overrated.

 

[betasub]

A quad at 35C under load? Not with air-cooling - unless your ambient air is chilled to below 10C.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: betasub
A quad at 35C under load? Not with air-cooling - unless your ambient air is chilled to below 10C.

When did an E2220 become a quad? BTW, an E2220 @ stock speed, with a large aftermarket cooler @ 35C under load (not Linpack load, obviously) should be quite easy to achieve.

 

[faxon]

is your E2220 OCed? if not, the E2220 can usually achieve a 100% overclock with a cheap aftermarket cooler, effectively doubling your chips performance. however, getting a good fast quad and overclocking that will be even better. more games are starting to take advantage of quads now, and a few of the ones i have played that do (FC2, Crysis, UT3) have pretty substantial gains in some areas. i gained almost 20FPS minimum in FC2 for example going from an E5200 @ 3.2ghz to a Q9650 @ 4GHz on a 9800GTX 512mb @ 1680x1050. it's to late in the game now to be spending money on high end GPUs, unless you have old hardware you can sell to subsidize the cost of it, or you have money to burn (which i doubt you do, or you would have an i7 system)

 

[Denithor]

First, understand this - you aren't going to run Crysis at max settings on a 9800GT no matter what CPU you put in there. Not going to happen.

A quad will help in many games (not all) and the list where it helps is growing. Most PC games today are ports from the consoles. The "real" consoles - PS3 & X360 - are multicore. So the games being created are optimized to take advantage of several cores. And this trend will accelerate going forward.

But even with that said, a lower-end 9800GT paired with the fastest i7 965 available still won't play Crysis at max settings - the GPU simply isn't up to the task.

The next generation of video cards is right around the corner - DirectX 11 cards should be available in the next few months. So what you might consider doing is upgrade the CPU now and then plan to upgrade the GPU later once the new cards are out. Either to one of the new cards or to today's top models at much reduced prices when the new ones launch.