Extraneous Upgrading... E6700 -> QX6700 ? Worth it?

[GnomeCop]

Currently I have a Core 2 Duo E6700 Engineering sample in my system it is overclocked to 3.6ghz on air without needing any adjustments to the cpu or memory voltage. It idles at about 41-43C and under load its in the high 50C range.
Needless to say, I'm pretty happy with this setup.

However I just got the opportunity to upgrade to a QX6700... for about $850... I have quite a bit of extra cash from ebay and the fs/ft forum, so its tempting. The only thing is, I am not guaranteed such a good overclock on the new chip especially with the added heat...

Does anyone think its worth upgrading to quad core and selling the old chip for a nice chunk of change?

 

[LouPoir]

I dont know - but let me know if you want to sell you E6700

 

[Slugbait]

You'll have a hard time getting a good price for an ES proc.

I personally believe that quad-core has diminishing returns so soon after getting the E6700. You might get more enjoyment tricking out your video subsystem, getting a bigger or second monitor, etc

 

[JAG87]

850 before you sell your cpu?

then yes, you can get around 350 for your chip which makes the upgrade cost 500. totally worth it when looking towards next year. source engine will be multithreaded, crysis, alan wake, UT2007, all will take advantage of multicore. and hey, if you dont game, you can always encode 4 DVDs are once, or 1 in a quarter of them time.

 

[GnomeCop]

I am pretty much set in the the video card and monitor aspects of my system, not much higher I care to go in each. That's why I was looking toward the CPU. Still on the fence about this so, any other opinions are welcome. Thanks.

 

[w00t]

can you actually use the quad cores? that's the question you need to ask yourself

 

[GnomeCop]

heheh thats a good point...
A lot of stuff I get because of this hobby it not really stuff I need though

 

[biostud]

I would wait until the software you use are able to take use of the four cores, unless you do lot of stuff that can utilize all four cores a faster dualcore CPU is probably faster.

 

[Rubycon]

Using a pair of Toshiba SD-M1612's ripping to a fast SCSI array, DVD shrink will rip two movies on average of 5 minutes (for both) and often the (combined) CPU utilization will be over 90% on four cores.

Ditto for encoding. Works well and runs cool.

For most gamers and users right now you would be better off with a highly o/c C2D. Check in the the 4GHz club over at xtremesystems.org forums.

 

[GnomeCop]

hmmm 4ghz club... sounds interesting, might be time I got back to overclocking to see if I can push this chip past 3.6ghz...

ok, forget quad core for now. thanks guys.