QX6700 or X6800? advice please

Hello all, I have started to second guess myself here, I was going to build a gaming rig using a QX6700, but now am thinking of going with the X6800.

I will be overclocking whatever chip I go with, but am becoming concerned with the thermals of the quad and having less overhead in the oc. I am finally able to build the pc without worrying about cost cutting.

So if you were going to use either of these cpu's would you go for more the higher clock and lower temp X6800 or go for the longevity and future proofing of the Qx6700?

Here are my system specs so far:
Silverstone TJ09 bw
Zalman CNPS9700
Abit IN9 32X-MAX
Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5D

Incoming parts:
XFX 8800 GTX "XXX" for SLI
PC & Power Cooling Silencer 750 Quad psu
Dell 27" LCD moniter

And possibly X-Fi sound card.

I really want to know whether to go longevity over speed, and hotter over cooler. I dont want any Price/value opinions please.

It seems like price isn't much of an issue so...

I'd get the quad with a top-of-the-line cooling solution (high end water or more if you can afford it), personally.

How far can the quad go on good air cooling? what kind of temps to expect?

I'd take QX most likely, you really stop noticing clock speed differences very quickly with Conroe, whereas the extra cores will be noticeable in either some or many situations depending on how you use your system. If you're absolutely not a multitasker, and want higher clocks just for the fun of it, then the X6800 would be a better choice.

Expect 3.2-3.5 GHz on air for the quad, but as satandole (love the nick) said, water really is preferable for a quad core. One could expect 3.7-3.9GHz on air for the X6800, and about the same on water.

My only suggestion for changes would actually push your top dollar spec a couple of notches higher- personally I just don't like the idea of having 1920x1080 pixels on a 27" screen. If it were me, I'd either go for the 24" or go all the way for the 30 incher.

No chip is going to make a diffenrce in 8800GTX SLI, except for cpu bottle necked games.. and DUDE.. .trust me withthe specs you got... thats not a noticeable issue...

Might make a diffence in 3dMark.. .but in game play you will never notice..

The only requirement AFAIK is geting a monitor that can disaply a res high enough to make dual 8800s worthwhile (a la 1080p)

h in case you missed you missed it.. .stick with whatever CPU you are currently running. (unless its single core)

I am sorry I meant the 24, the 30 is cheaper atm than the 27.

Do you think the quad would push 8800 gtx's in sli better than the x6800?

If drivers optimization picks up, then yes. At the moment, nothing noticeable. However, it was the same story about two years ago with dual cores, and now driver support for them is much better, giving them a sizable lead ahead of single core.

DaaG said:

How far can the quad go on good air cooling? what kind of temps to expect?

Click to expand...

I don't have any results...but they are all temp limited (obviously). I'd think the best you could expect would be around 3.5-3.6. Still pretty mean if you don't want water.

If money were absolutely no issue to me, I'd get an amazing mobo (don't know much about yours to be honest), the quad, some great RAM, a beefier PSU, and the dual 8800s. Then water cool the 8800s with phase on the quad. Should be 4ghz+ stable with a good kit along with some kickass OCs on the 8800s. Talk about an amazing system.

Good luck with your build.

Thanks man, I will stick with my initial choice of the quad, I am building form scratch the only thing I'm reusing is keyboard atm, so I do have to kinda control my spending, I need to stay under 5k or wife will kick my rear-end, even tho she thinks I am only going to about 3k on this, my birthday present to me =)

Wow...a lot of post happened while I was typing mine.

As far as the bottleneck issue similarly clocked dual core and quad core chips will perform the same in the current generation of games. Once the drivers are work ed out (as mentioned before) and the games are designed to be multi-threaded you should notice a huge boost. Until then clock speed is still king.

And thanks Gautam

DaaG said:

Thanks man, I will stick with my initial choice of the quad, I am building form scratch the only thing I'm reusing is keyboard atm, so I do have to kinda control my spending, I need to stay under 5k or wife will kick my rear-end, even tho she thinks I am only going to about 3k on this, my birthday present to me =)

Click to expand...

5k?

Mother of god man...that's amazing. Congrats and happy bday.

Quad with phase, no doubt in my mind. And get those 8800s some water.

I will have to forgoe water atm, who knows tho by the time my 2x150 gig raptors come in from best buy that were on sale, both for 289.98

So you do have a budget, but its just a high one. (Been there, done that)

You might want to cut back on the mobo and tune the ram down a notch (perhaps to this) to go water cooling. I'm usually not a huge fan of water, but yours is one case where it would be quite beneficial, for the CPU, and ideally for the GPU's as well.

Just get them both!

You know in case you need to throw some sweet LAN parties.
(Second QX should be coming this week!)