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Intel E8400 Wolfdale

tyler811

Diamond Member
I went to the Microcenter in Madison Heights Mi and found the E8400 for $189.00 while Tiger Direct and Newegg have it at $239.00. The box says $239.00 but it is in their computer system for $189.00
 
Originally posted by: trance247
hmmm is this better for gaming than q6600?

Not necessarily. But because of the smaller scale, it consumes less power and is therefore cooler. This is esp. relevant if you leave your computer on all the time.
 
While this deal has already been posted several times, some slack is merited for pointing out again one of the few places which still have a decent deal on this hard-to-find (for now ...) CPU.

However, the link provided is dead and in reality this was always supposed to have been an IN STORE-only deal since day one. Not sure if MC ever actually shipped any on-line sales of this item or not ?
 
For most games, at this time, single core speed (not necessarily ghz) is the most important thing. That is, a single core CPU that ran 1.5x calcs per second would be better than a dual core that ran each individual core at 1.0 calcs per second. That single core would also be better for most games than a quad core with each core at 1.0 calcs per second.

However, having said that, future games (and even a few current games) can benefit from multiple cores. I would expect this trend to increase.

Depending on the type of games you are playing, it is probably far more likely that your GPU will give out before your CPU.

A final consideration is multitasking, multiple cores allow you to run some other apps/utilities while you game with less impact on your overall game performance.

There are a ton of google hits on this, so its a popular question; but there is no single answer.

Unless you do *heavy* multitasking, and price is roughly comparable, I'd go with the faster speed/fewer cores chip.

On the other hand, if you routinely fire up VMWare to run a virtual machine which you then use to RDP into your work box, while also compiling code in local programming environment, with bit torrent downloading multi GB images in the background and occasionally checking the score on the game you are watching in slingbox player, grab the Q6600.


 
HTPC Single core is perfectly fine. You want 2.4ghz or better for a HTPC.

Multi core can help if your doing a lot of re-encoding but I schedule mine to do it from 3am on so I dont care or I leave it in its regular format. Just be sure to get a tuner that does hardware encoding and you probably wont change anything.
 
With a Gigabyte GA35 DS3R and PNY 667 I have this steady at 3.7 gigahertz. They have it for $189.99. Awesome chip.
 
Can anyone near Madison grab one of these for me? I live in Lansing, MI, but might not be able to make it out there before the sale is over.
 
Originally posted by: drbrock
which is better for a htpc, single core or multi?

If you want to play encoded HD material, you'll need a dual-core CPU. At minimum: (for x264 1080p)

Intel E4500
AMD 4600+
 
Wow didn't realize there were multiple threads on this. Got mine for $190, I think they raised it to $200 now. Plenty in stock near me as of yesterday (at least 10 on the shelves).
 
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