[Automiketic]

I know many people here are using the Q6600, but I'm not really sure if I need a quad core. I don't do any gaming on my rig. I primarily use it for video encoding. I use Convert X to do most of my work if that helps, not sure if it takes advantage of the quad core. If not I'd much rather get a dual core. My budget is 200 bucks. tell me what you think.

[trickson]

Q6600 would be a bit of a help for this as I know ripping and copying and encoding and all that are faster with the Q6600 than with the Dual core .

[CGR]

+1 on the Quad for what you do.

[Trap05]

Does your board support a quad or are you looking at upgrading more than just the CPU?

[Albuquerque]

Hehehe, we just finished building an entire thread dedicated to this question:
Should I buy a quad- or dual-core?

The answer is in what you intend to do with it.

[CGR]

Originally Posted by Albuquerque

Hehehe, we just finished building an entire thread dedicated to this question:
Should I buy a quad- or dual-core?

The answer is in what you intend to do with it.

That needs to be stickied ASAP!!!

[Albuquerque]

For $200 and for doing video encoding, I think the Q6600 is gonna be your best bet. But does the Q work on a 945 chipset? I don't remember, but somehow I want to think "no"... Might be worth investigating before you spend the money and find out it won't work!

[KillrBuckeye]

I don't perform video encoding very often, but when I do it's usually quite a lot over the span of a couple of days. I am VERY happy to have the quad core during those times, because most encoding software will make use of all 4 cores. Regarding gaming, the extra few hundred MHz you can squeeze out of a dual compared to a quad really doesn't significantly affect framerates for the majority of people who are primarily video-card limited. To me, this begs the question: What good is the extra overclockability of the dual? If you want MHz just to have MHz, then sure--go with the dual. Otherwise doesn't the quad make more sense, especially if you want to use your rig for the next couple of years? The way I see it, initial cost and operating cost seem to be the only downside for the quads.

[Albuquerque]

Originally Posted by KillrBuckeye

Regarding gaming, the extra few hundred MHz you can squeeze out of a dual compared to a quad really doesn't significantly affect framerates for the majority of people who are primarily video-card limited.

Don't think about peak framerate, think about minimum framerate.

A Q6600 at 3Ghz and an E8400 at 4Ghz may have the same peak framerate, but the 4Ghz model is going to have better minumum framerates. So while you might get a glimpse of 60FPS in Crysis on both rigs, the Q6600 is going to dip down further than the E8400 when the action gets really heavy.

Hopefully that explains the difference in an easy-to-see way

[KillrBuckeye]

Originally Posted by Albuquerque

Don't think about peak framerate, think about minimum framerate.

A Q6600 at 3Ghz and an E8400 at 4Ghz may have the same peak framerate, but the 4Ghz model is going to have better minumum framerates. So while you might get a glimpse of 60FPS in Crysis on both rigs, the Q6600 is going to dip down further than the E8400 when the action gets really heavy.

Hopefully that explains the difference in an easy-to-see way

I understand what you're saying, but I'm just not sure that's the case. I wish there were some data readily available. I was thinking along the lines of a ~3.4 GHz Q6600 vs a 4.0 GHz E8400. I'd be surprised if a difference in game playability would even be detectable between those two setups (all else being the same). Measurements might show a slight difference, but would we be able to perceive it? I doubt it. Of course, I'm just going on the very little data that I have seen comparing such configurations.

[CGR]

The dual at 4ghz will yield more FPS in games, but if you play at a medium res, you wont see any difference. Anything over 60FPS you cant see anyway.

If you played games in insanely high reses then the added fps from the dual may help a lot more.

[trickson]

Q6600 would be a bit of a help for this as I know ripping and copying and encoding and all that are faster with the Q6600 than with the Dual core .

[Automiketic]

i do plan to upgrade motherboard as well im thinking of going with this. is this a good choice?i don't do any gaming on my computer what so ever so it looks like the quad is the way to go.

[trickson]

Very nice !

[Automiketic]

what is the difference between an oem proc and a retail one?

[trickson]

The OEM will not come with a HSF . the Retail one comes in a box with HSF and lots of cool information is all .

[Trap05]

You could go with a lot cheaper board and lose nothing

[reznik]

you woulda thought the fools ...programmers.app developers..engineers amd/intel software techs would have done something buy now so that either dual or quad...cores would be 100% used. When i play crysis only 45% across all cores is utillized which is crap...and uwonder why people are crazily about bumping their clock to the max..when really if each individual core was 100% used...(this is not the arguement of 4 cores not being used in comparison to 2) it would push more fps etc.

I.E dual core when i had one and was playing few games only 1 proc would be used at 100% and the other 50% constantly....

wouldn't it make more sense for games and appz to fully use 100% of a core rather than
jump the gun and create general support for appz/games to make use of 4 cores i.e at liek 50% cause that would mean your losing alot of potential power....

i...duno

[MARCI]

Originally Posted by reznik

you woulda thought the fools ...programmers.app developers..engineers amd/intel software techs would have done something buy now so that either dual or quad...cores would be 100% used. When i play crysis only 45% across all cores is utillized which is crap...and uwonder why people are crazily about bumping their clock to the max..when really if each individual core was 100% used...(this is not the arguement of 4 cores not being used in comparison to 2) it would push more fps etc.

I.E dual core when i had one and was playing few games only 1 proc would be used at 100% and the other 50% constantly....

wouldn't it make more sense for games and appz to fully use 100% of a core rather than
jump the gun and create general support for appz/games to make use of 4 cores i.e at liek 50% cause that would mean your losing alot of potential power....

i...duno

Games are going to be the last applications to effectively utilize multiple core architecture. This is due to the nature of the animal. Each part of the game core is dependant on information from the others. There's not really any good way to break it up. Unfortunate. Games will for the foreseeable future be most benefitted by Higher Clock Speeds. The exceptions to this will be games that are able to move AI decisions onto other cores. Even Games that currently use multi-threading do so with very little efficiency, Typically less than 40%

[Automiketic]

i have seen the cons to using a cheap board (i have one now) and dont wish to experience them again, but im always open to opinion, what do you suggest trap05?