- Mar 21, 2004
- 13,576
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Some time ago I upgraded from an E8400 to a Q6600.
Ironically, I once argued that the E8400 obsoleted the Q6600: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=e8400+obsoletes+q6600
The E8400 was faster in all games at the time. faster in every app except half life map/mod compiler, and when you go into video editing, the improvements done on penryn + the SSE4 speed optimizations make it faster than a Q6600 for common encoding types...
Over the past year I have seen things change. I have seen more and more games able to handle 4 cores, the HEAVIEST of games. Games like supreme commander, and UE3 games like mass effect.
MPEG4 type encoding (divx, xvid) became less valuable as x264 took over for high def encoding, and x264 does not benefit at all from SSE4.
I also learned to overclock, which tilts the balance in favor of the quads...
The biggest change, and the one that made me make the switch, was the "save open tabs" feature in chrome and firefox. Firefox first put in "remember open tabs". And I found out that I am a tab whore, I can have hundreds of them open, last week I upgraded from 4GB to 8GB because I was filling up my ram with tabs...
Than chrome came about with opening at least one process per tab, giving at perfect scaling for at least N cores where N=number of tabs from last session, I just had to make the switch. I finally had something where the Q6600 simply demolishes the E8400...
It is interesting to revisit the ideas of the past. To look at what changed. I was wrong to say that the E8400 obsoletes the Q6600, not that it wasn't better in every way, it is simply that it's dominance was transient.
At the time the only thing people could tell me was faster on the Q6600 was the half life compiler and that it will be "future proof"... But future proofing is bunk, when the future arrives its cheaper and better that the "future proof" hardware you buy today.
A few months later I started saying it "depends on your usage" instead of recommending one CPU over the other, and at the end of july I bought myself a Q6600 to replace my E8400 for 185$. I left it lying around until december where I sold the E8400 for 120$ (yea, stupid to wait, I know). So the cost of the switch was 65$. But those 65$ allowed me to have the better processor for the first 6 months, before they switches places...
Today, I cannot recommend the E8400 over the Q6600 for anyone. The future arrived and for where it matters, the Q is better... there are still rare situation where the E rules, but they have become so rare, and it is generally it lacking.
Ironically, I once argued that the E8400 obsoleted the Q6600: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=e8400+obsoletes+q6600
The E8400 was faster in all games at the time. faster in every app except half life map/mod compiler, and when you go into video editing, the improvements done on penryn + the SSE4 speed optimizations make it faster than a Q6600 for common encoding types...
Over the past year I have seen things change. I have seen more and more games able to handle 4 cores, the HEAVIEST of games. Games like supreme commander, and UE3 games like mass effect.
MPEG4 type encoding (divx, xvid) became less valuable as x264 took over for high def encoding, and x264 does not benefit at all from SSE4.
I also learned to overclock, which tilts the balance in favor of the quads...
The biggest change, and the one that made me make the switch, was the "save open tabs" feature in chrome and firefox. Firefox first put in "remember open tabs". And I found out that I am a tab whore, I can have hundreds of them open, last week I upgraded from 4GB to 8GB because I was filling up my ram with tabs...
Than chrome came about with opening at least one process per tab, giving at perfect scaling for at least N cores where N=number of tabs from last session, I just had to make the switch. I finally had something where the Q6600 simply demolishes the E8400...
It is interesting to revisit the ideas of the past. To look at what changed. I was wrong to say that the E8400 obsoletes the Q6600, not that it wasn't better in every way, it is simply that it's dominance was transient.
At the time the only thing people could tell me was faster on the Q6600 was the half life compiler and that it will be "future proof"... But future proofing is bunk, when the future arrives its cheaper and better that the "future proof" hardware you buy today.
A few months later I started saying it "depends on your usage" instead of recommending one CPU over the other, and at the end of july I bought myself a Q6600 to replace my E8400 for 185$. I left it lying around until december where I sold the E8400 for 120$ (yea, stupid to wait, I know). So the cost of the switch was 65$. But those 65$ allowed me to have the better processor for the first 6 months, before they switches places...
Today, I cannot recommend the E8400 over the Q6600 for anyone. The future arrived and for where it matters, the Q is better... there are still rare situation where the E rules, but they have become so rare, and it is generally it lacking.
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