[Tyrian]

I'm looking at building a new computer (for myself, this time) and I'm in a sort of toss-up as to what CPU to put in it.  (It's for gaming.)  I can't decide between the Q9550 or the E8600.  I've done some looking around the Internet but have found mixed responses as to which is better for this purpose.

If I went quad-core, I'd have some degree of future-proofing, but there is currently no single program that uses all four cores simultaneously.  It only really seems beneficial if I multitask or do video encoding (the latter I don't do). 

If I go dual-core, then I get maximum usage out of the cores, but seem to lose some future-proofing.  The E8600 has Wolfdale cores, which to my understanding, are the best out there.

Also, Intel's i7 architecture is due out soon, from what I've read it's going to blow away current chip technologies, but if it's hugely expensive, then I don't really want to shell out for it, as I want to keep this machine under $2000.

So, given these options, what is my best choice?

I've already got specs drawn up; if you'd like to see, I can post them.

[Turambar]

my Q6600 overclocks to 3.6 ghz on stock cooling with no problems.
having 4 cores is nice because I can render things with 2 of them and yet still be surfing the web and listening to music without having my renders go any slower.

Multitasking really is nice to have the ability to do.

[DragonClaw]

I'd do research on a slightly older chip that overclocks very well, and get your money's worth that way. If you get such a product you get far more bang for buck since the processor usually doesn't burn out before you need to upgrade for new games/etc.

I bought my E4500 a little more than a year ago, and overclocked it to 3.2ghz on regular voltage and it's perfectly stable. I'm not even thinking of upgrading for quite awhile, so I think I got my $120 worth(when I bought it). I can still run any game currently out on it wonderfully so honestly I don't know why you'd pay full price on a newer processor, since GPUs are the bottleneck these days(resolution++ while game state complexity == same). If you're doing encoding, rendering, etc then I can see that but top of the line in the processor department really isn't necessary anymore imo.

[Bob-san]

E5200--and upgrade to Core i7 (much) later. Overclocking is pretty good--and you can cheap on RAM. Other than that, if you're building now, look to buy a LGA775 & LGA1366 heatsink--there are a few floating around. I've been talking a bit to a guy who has a Nehalem setup, and he has been able to get 3.7GHz out it on air. i7 965, the Smackover X58 board, and 3GB DDR3 1600. He says its claimed credit crunching is about 80% that of his Harpertowns at similar clock--which means that it's high on the raw power scale. With SMT enabled, that is. And by the way--SMT on those quad-cores gave him about a 10% boost overall on heavy workloads.

Anyways--the E5200 has effectively replaced the E2000 series and the E4000 series, and the only advantage of an E7200 over an E5200 is 1MB more L2 cache. I bought my E2140 over a year ago, with the intent of running it until I could get a quad-core, be it Kentsfield, Yorkfield, or Nehalem.

[Spicious]

I wouldn't get a Nehalem until DDR3 prices reach a reasonable level. The architecture is pretty impressive though. It continually amazes me that Intel manage to get increased performance out of the x86.

That said, I'm quite happy with my Q9450, despite it just being two dual cores stuck together.

[Bob-san]

I wouldn't get a Nehalem until DDR3 prices reach a reasonable level. The architecture is pretty impressive though. It continually amazes me that Intel manage to get increased performance out of the x86.

That said, I'm quite happy with my Q9450, despite it just being two dual cores stuck together.

DDR3 prices much are lower than DDR2 prices two years ago. I remember shopping for a computer back then--$80 for 1GB DDR2 533 or 667. Looking at lower-end DDR3 1333, Kingston and Crucial have 2GB sticks for $60-70. About twice that of current DDR2, though.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I love having the quad core.  Come back to this machine (it's older but still a 3.06 and shows 2 processors even thought it's not a Pentium D) and hate the slow downs trying to run FRED and TBP in debug mode at the same time while doing some browsing and opening up a few other small apps (notepad, infanview, etc).    Core 2's are better and I don't notice a slow down running FRED and FS2 but having those extra cores for the occasional big process is very nice.  Of course having the extra computers to do all that is even better.   

[Tyrian]

I'm pretty computer literate, but I'm not really looking to overclock this system.  If I build it, I'm going to do it over my university break, and because of time constraints, I need it to work with a minimum of troubleshooting.  So, I'm willing to spend a little more to get more stock power.

If I were to overclock, then I probably would buy a much cheaper system, so that if I blow up something, it's doesn't involve a huge amount of pain to replace.

[Dark RevenantX]

Wait a few years until magnetic currents are used for CPU's.  Have fun with 100ghz without even using a cpu fan.

[Rick James]

While we're on the subject, I also find myself conflicted in terms of potential CPUs for my machine. As mentioned here, I'm building a new machine but now I find myself divided on two different CPUs.

The first is this one, a 3.2 GHz Intel Pentium D 940 Dual Core Processor with 4 MB cache memory and and an 800 Mhz FSB. True, it is a somewhat older processor, but very fast for the price and that's what makes it appeal to me.

The second is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ dual core processor, which clocks in at 2.80 GHz but has a 1000 Mhz FSB and 1 MB of cache.

Help...?

[Bob-san]

While we're on the subject, I also find myself conflicted in terms of potential CPUs for my machine. As mentioned here, I'm building a new machine but now I find myself divided on two different CPUs.

The first is this one, a 3.2 GHz Intel Pentium D 940 Dual Core Processor with 4 MB cache memory and and an 800 Mhz FSB. True, it is a somewhat older processor, but very fast for the price and that's what makes it appeal to me.

The second is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ dual core processor, which clocks in at 2.80 GHz but has a 1000 Mhz FSB and 1 MB of cache.

Help...?

No and no. You don't understand the differences in architectures. The Pentium D is a Netburst uArch chip--basically the high clockspeed is a lie--it's not particularly fast (About as fast as current Pentium Dual-Core E2140 or Celeron E1400), runs rather hot, and is a few generations old. Don't get it--it's a bad chip compared to modern chips.

The Athlon X2 is incompatible, of course, with LGA775 which is the predominant desktop socket for Intel processors. It's a generation behind so far as AMDs go as well--though the Phenom uArch has only seen 1-2 dual-core variations, there should be cheaper for a quad-core.

Anyways--better source for your parts is Newegg. Taking a second look at what you had in the other thread, I spotted that you picked out DDR3 800 memory (which I've never seen on-market. Slowest I've seen is DDR3 1066) and a DDR2 board--so you need DDR2 memory.

Gigabyte EP43-DS3L
Intel E5200
Two 2GB DDR2 800 sticks
ATI Radeon HD4830 512MB or HD4670 512MB
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, Xigmatek S1824EE, or ZeroTherm Nirvana
Seagate 7200.11 500GB
Antec 300 or something decent
Corsair 650TX (expensive) or Seasonic SS-500ES (less expensive)
22x DVD+/-R Burner SATA
Arctic Cooling MX-2, Arctic Silver ArctiClean, and Molex-to-SATA power adapter

[Dark RevenantX]

Get a Q6600 quad core and overclock it after getting good cooling.  If you have the extra money laying around, use DDR3.  Also, I'd suggest getting a 4850 or 4870 if you want to run newer games at the highest settings (but if you REALLY have the money laying around, the nVidia GTX 280 is better than all other single-chip cards).  I agree with getting the Antec 300; I have it, it was cheap, it is very well built and designed, and it looks nice (but fairly plain).

[Bob-san]

Get a Q6600 quad core and overclock it after getting good cooling.  If you have the extra money laying around, use DDR3.  Also, I'd suggest getting a 4850 or 4870 if you want to run newer games at the highest settings (but if you REALLY have the money laying around, the nVidia GTX 280 is better than all other single-chip cards).  I agree with getting the Antec 300; I have it, it was cheap, it is very well built and designed, and it looks nice (but fairly plain).

DDR3 does him no good whatsoever in a DDR2 motherboard. Most LGA775 DDR3 boards are overpriced or under-able. Anyways--the nVidia GeForce GTX 280 is flat-out overpriced. Considering a single HD4870 goes most of the distance to GTX 280 and is slimly beat by what should be called the GTX265 (GTX 260 "216"), two HD4850's in CF would wipe the floor with any nVidia setup, and at $300-350.

By the way, do note that more recent Q6600s have been lackluster for overclocking.

[CP5670]

If you don't already have a Core 2, you might as well wait and see what the new stuff is priced at. Since you have $2000 for the whole machine, you should be able to fit an i7 in there easily.

I will get one once they become widely available. I don't really need it right away, but my brother wants to upgrade, so I might as well buy it now rather than later and give him my existing 3.6ghz E6750. I don't care about the extra cores, but the single-threaded performance boosts in Matlab and Mathematica are impressive, and it may also do something for the emulators and VMs that I often use. Hopefully we'll see some good motherboards at $150 or less, instead of the useless $400+ ones that the hardware sites tend to review first.

Also, I like how they're calling the auto overclocking feature "Turbo mode." Anyone remember those buttons on computers in the 80s that made the CPU timer go at double speed?

Also, Intel's i7 architecture is due out soon, from what I've read it's going to blow away current chip technologies

It won't really "blow away" the Core 2 except in some specific types of programs. Games seem to perform mostly the same in the initial reviews, even ones that are known to be CPU intensive. It's still a reasonable improvement overall though and is worth checking out if you don't have a Core 2.

DDR3 prices much are lower than DDR2 prices two years ago. I remember shopping for a computer back then--$80 for 1GB DDR2 533 or 667. Looking at lower-end DDR3 1333, Kingston and Crucial have 2GB sticks for $60-70. About twice that of current DDR2, though.

I got a 2GB DDR2 800 pack two years ago for $80.

But yeah, DDR3 prices are fairly reasonable now, with pretty decent 4GB sets for $130-150. The main contributing factor to the prices is the 4GB size, which is increasingly becoming standard over 2GB.

two HD4850's in CF would wipe the floor with any nVidia setup, and at $300-350.

CF and SLI have a range of caveats though and are not directly comparable to a single GPU.

[Bob-san]

If you don't already have a Core 2, you might as well wait and see what the new stuff is priced at. Since you have $2000 for the whole machine, you should be able to fit an i7 in there easily.

I will get one once they become widely available. I don't really need it right away, but my brother wants to upgrade, so I might as well buy it now rather than later and give him my existing 3.6ghz E6750. I don't care about the extra cores, but the single-threaded performance boosts in Matlab and Mathematica are impressive, and it may also do something for the emulators and VMs that I often use. Hopefully we'll see some good motherboards at $150 or less, instead of the useless $400+ ones that the hardware sites tend to review first.

Also, I like how they're calling the auto overclocking feature "Turbo mode." Anyone remember those buttons on computers in the 80s that made the CPU timer go at double speed?

Also, Intel's i7 architecture is due out soon, from what I've read it's going to blow away current chip technologies

It won't really "blow away" the Core 2 except in some specific types of programs. Games seem to perform mostly the same in the initial reviews, even ones that are known to be CPU intensive. It's still a reasonable improvement overall though and is worth checking out if you don't have a Core 2.

DDR3 prices much are lower than DDR2 prices two years ago. I remember shopping for a computer back then--$80 for 1GB DDR2 533 or 667. Looking at lower-end DDR3 1333, Kingston and Crucial have 2GB sticks for $60-70. About twice that of current DDR2, though.

I got a 2GB DDR2 800 pack two years ago for $80.

But yeah, DDR3 prices are fairly reasonable now, with pretty decent 4GB sets for $130-150. The main contributing factor to the prices is the 4GB size, which is increasingly becoming standard over 2GB.

two HD4850's in CF would wipe the floor with any nVidia setup, and at $300-350.

CF and SLI have a range of caveats though and are not directly comparable to a single GPU.

A friend of mine has a Core i7 rig--one of the press kits. Pretty good improvements, absolutely wipes the floor with a Q6600. Here's his review thread.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=206572

Anyways--maybe it was 3 years ago--I don't remember THAT well. And to the CF setup: in most newer and demanding games it'll work, perhaps with drivers or a hotfix for a missing profile. Most older games it won't work on, and that's true. There are problems with both CF and SLI, but if you're looking for raw performance or top performance on new and heavy games, they're alright.

[CP5670]

A friend of mine has a Core i7 rig--one of the press kits. Pretty good improvements, absolutely wipes the floor with a Q6600. Here's his review thread.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=206572

It looks like he is just running SuperPI and other benchmark programs. Those are more indicative of what you will see in numerical math packages than games. Xbit tested some real-world programs like that though and I definitely liked what I saw there. 

Anyways--maybe it was 3 years ago--I don't remember THAT well. And to the CF setup: in most newer and demanding games it'll work, perhaps with drivers or a hotfix for a missing profile. Most older games it won't work on, and that's true. There are problems with both CF and SLI, but if you're looking for raw performance or top performance on new and heavy games, they're alright.

Well, that is one issue, but there is more to it than that. I posted some comments on these setups here a while ago.

[MP-Ryan]

You know...

The E8400 Core2Duo has dropped in price so much recently that it's a really great bargain, and with an aftermarket fan people are regularly overclocking it in the range of 4 Ghz.  The thing is a performance star anyway, for that matter.

Worth considering - the price:performance ratio on the new stuff is so poor that you'd almost be better to buy something a little older and get a lot more bang for your buck.  Not to mention, you can then easily afford an upgrade in a few years time.

Quad-core, while the way of the future (presumably), really isn't worth it right now.

[Bob-san]

A friend of mine has a Core i7 rig--one of the press kits. Pretty good improvements, absolutely wipes the floor with a Q6600. Here's his review thread.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=206572

It looks like he is just running SuperPI and other benchmark programs. Those are more indicative of what you will see in numerical math packages than games. Xbit tested some real-world programs like that though and I definitely liked what I saw there. 

Anyways--maybe it was 3 years ago--I don't remember THAT well. And to the CF setup: in most newer and demanding games it'll work, perhaps with drivers or a hotfix for a missing profile. Most older games it won't work on, and that's true. There are problems with both CF and SLI, but if you're looking for raw performance or top performance on new and heavy games, they're alright.

Well, that is one issue, but there is more to it than that. I posted some comments on these setups here a while ago.

WCG & F@H are two real-world applications that I definitely like. Anyways--I spoke to him two days ago. All he has right now is the TRUE LGA1366 for cooling. You already saw a >4.2GHz shot in there, and from what he told me then, water will make things even better. Most Yorkfields (the direct comparison for these) on air will top about 4GHz on air. Anyways--the Nehalem uArch really does seem to be doing well. It's beating the Clovers he ran for 2 years, which is pretty darn good. And yes, I know about microshuttering and the numerous other problems with CF/SLI. It's not a perfect solution, but the new generation of graphics chips seems to be doing very well.

[IceFire]

I'd say wait for the Core i7 if you can.  Unlike in the past its likely to have a full range top to bottom of Core i7 chips soon after release as thats what AMD and Intel have been doing for a few years now.  The top level technology comes out with a range of models priced from high to low.

Best to look at the benchmarks and see if the price performance difference isn't huge in certain areas...usually as soon as something new comes out the best of the old stuff drops enough that you can start comparing it versus a mid range of the new stuff and see which works best for you.

Either way...waiting for the i7 to arrive means either you can get an awesome new CPU or a very well priced slightly older Core 2.

AMD's Phenom CPUs aren't really on my radar right now so there may be some good pricing there too.

[Kosh]

Also, Intel's i7 architecture is due out soon, from what I've read it's going to blow away current chip technologies, but if it's hugely expensive, then I don't really want to shell out for it, as I want to keep this machine under $2000.

Initially it will be hugely expensive, but it will push the price of the Core 2 (still an awesome chip) down significantly, especially on the upper end, so you can get a better Core 2 with the same amount of money.