Q6600 or E8400

[spathotan]

Im new to the forums, and im sure this has been posted before but....

I currently have a Q6600 @ 3.0ghz with 4GB of DDR2-1066 OCZ Reapers. Ive been checking over some benches on toms and what not, but im not sure if those can be trusted or are concrete.

Anyways my question is, is it worth upgrading to an E8400? Assuming I can sell this Q6600 for around $140-$160, that would make the E8400 $50 give or take. I use my PC for gaming 99% of the time, that other 1% is running web browsers and music in the background while im playing games., MMO's being my speciality (AoC currently).

My board is a MSI P35 with the newest BIOS which supports 1333FSB and 45nm obviously. And I think ive read before that a processor swap does not require a reformat, is this true? Thanks in advance.

 

[zfooz]

Man i've had so many screwy issues with my E8400.. I would definitely keep the quad and only upgrade to a new one with the new quads are way cheaper..
Really the CPU probably won't make any difference unless you have an uber badass video card or SLI/Crossfire

 

[zfooz]

only motherboard swap requires some changing of things .. still not a reformat though video,cpu,ram, hd, etc doesn't require really much of anything but single drivers which any os will detect

 

[spathotan]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yea.....ive read on a few different sites that the 45nm's have issues with the temp sensors or something. The Q6600 benches significantly higher in basically every test there is and thats at the stock 2.4, mine is at 3.0. I just wanted some input on actual people instead of some graphs.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: spathotan
Thanks for the quick reply.

Yea.....ive read on a few different sites that the 45nm's have issues with the temp sensors or something. The Q6600 benches significantly higher in basically every test there is and thats at the stock 2.4, mine is at 3.0. I just wanted some input on actual people instead of some graphs.

In "every" test? I don't think the Q6600 will beat the E8400 on any single threaded or two-threaded app.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: spathotan
The Q6600 benches significantly higher in basically every test there is...

http://xbitlabs.com/articles/c...uad-q9300_9.html#sect0

 

[spathotan]

Well, the charts I looked at on Toms say otherwise. But then again they are still using the same old benching software

 

[Tempered81]

http://www.tomshardware.com/ch...3%2C1310%2C1311%2C1309


stock cpu speeds in that chart ^^^

overclocked speeds in the xbit chart

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: spathotan
Well, the charts I looked at on Toms say otherwise. But then again they are still using the same old benching software

I think you just haven't been looking at enough charts.

 

[spathotan]

So, if all the eStroking is done yet, one would say the E8400 is better for gaming than the Q6600.

I also didnt notice/check the Quake bench that was linked above.

 

[Tempered81]

when you stress the cpu in a game not optimized to run on 3 or more threads, a stock E8400 outperforms a stock Q6600 like in the benches above. Also in this same test, a 4.2ghz e8400 beats a 3.6ghz q6600 (avg max oc's).

If you look at games coded to make use of multi-threading, then it is a different story. UT3 engine games & supreme commander perform better on 4 cores. this would make the two cpus comparatively equal in performance when both are overclocked and running these few particular video games...

99.9% of all other current games are faster on a higher clocked 45nm dual core (or higher clocked 45nm quad core - but this is harder to accomplish due to FSB restrictions & low multipliers of non-QX yorkfield quads).

also intresting to note: when you reach high resolutions w/ or w/o AA and the graphics card is taxed more, then the difference between a 3.6ghz q6600 and 4.2ghz e8400 in these 99.9% of games becomes minimal if any at all.

notice in these QuakeIV tests, they run at low resolutions like < 1280. This is to show the biggest difference in raw computational power of the cpu without making the gpu a bottleneck in the benchmark. IF they ran it at 1920 x 1280 - max Quality, you would see much less of a difference in overall FPS.

 

[spathotan]

Hmm, I see. Thanks for the detailed explination. I run an 8800GT and will be upgrading to an ATI 4870 later this month (or whenever they are released), and I run 1680 x 1050 on a 22". In AoC for example, I have AA at 4x and AF at 13. So judging by what you just told me, the difference in a game such as AoC that does use multiple cores will be close to none if I understand this right.

 

[Tempered81]

pretty much. You might gain 3-6% in AOC at that res going from your current cpu to a 4ghz+ E8400.

like going from 80fps to 83fps

 

[spathotan]

Definetly not worth it. Thanks again for the help.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: spathotan
So, if all the eStroking is done yet, one would say the E8400 is better for gaming than the Q6600.

I also didnt notice/check the Quake bench that was linked above.

To be honest it extends beyond a game vs non-game comparison. Photoshop CS3 doesn't support 4 threads (I could be wrong) so in that case E8400 would again be a faster choice.

Photoshop on Tom's Hardware

The bigger question is looking at your usage model of your computer. If you only play games then many processors fall into the "good enough" pile (like my uber AMDX2 5800+). 40fps vs 44fps doesn't make the experience any better.

If you however find yourself where you spend 10 hours waiting for compiling some data and shaving off the additional hour (10%) then becomes significant. This is why you should study benchmarks that reflect what you will be doing and not just gloss over a bunch. With the whole 2-core/4-core mix up it's now a game of trade-offs.

One thing to note is that the E8400 does support SSE4 so I'm not sure what the comparison is against a 4-core non-SSE4 processor is but it's something to also consider.