I5 Or Stick With The Q6600?

Good afternoon. I'm going to be looking at upgrading the media center in next month or two and I'm having trouble deciding on the hardware. My goal is to run a windows 7 media center which will also be running 1 virtual machine via virtualbox that will host a Linux server. I would like to remove my old linux server from the network for power and simplicity reasons. I have decided on an Intel quad core with 1 core dedicated to the virtual machine and the other 3 for Windows. Windows will get 3GB and the virtual machine 1GB. The media center currently has a core 2 @ 2.7Ghz.

My first option is to basically swap processors with my desktop which is the Q6600 and upgrade to 4GB of RAM. The current media center motherboard and my desktop board are identical. This requires the least money but the "old" Q6600 runs pretty warm and isn't as efficient as the I5 from my understanding.

My second option is to buy a new board, I5, and RAM. This will get me a faster more efficient system but at much more cost. I am not sure but there may also be better virtualization support in the I5? If anyone has input on this I would love to hear it. I guess what it really comes down to is will I see much improvement with the I5 vs. the "old" Q6600?

If high clocks are required for what you do AND you are going to overclock it, then yes the i5 is worth the investment. But for what you seem to be using your computer for, you might actually be better off getting the i7 860 or i7 920.

I've had the E5200, Q6600, i5 750 and the i7 860. For my uses, the i7 860 is really overkill, but I have such a good processor, I will stick with it. The i5 750 is very robust, and vs the Q6600 is a pretty close race up until you overclock it. If you could overclock the Q6600 to 4.0Ghz, then I would say get the Q6600, unfortunately thats usually NOT the case. The i5 750 can almost always be clocked to 4.0 with decent cooling.

If you sold off your old stuff, you coudl offset the cost to at least cover the chip or the board. i5 would run cooler than a Q6600, but a i7 860 with HT enabled would probably run just as warm (but again, that is overclocked).

In reality its just not financially worth it dumping into a 775 unless money is the biggest issue.You can get a i7 for 200 dollars if you live near a microcenter, and you can find a cheap board that will give you a decent overclock for $100. And start with a cheap $80 2X2 Ram.

Either way a Q6600 or a i5 750 will be a remarkable improvement in the ability to multi-task over a 2.7Ghz processor.

An i7 or an i5 even would really be overkill for a system that's only being used as a mediacenter and to run Linux. (These are not the two most demanding tasks of all time.)

I'd say go the cheap route: Throw the Q6600 in there and be done. Experiment with small form factor water cooling if you're concerned with heat output.

I was recently looking at the exact same choice. I just traded my (rather amazing) E8400 for a Q9550 and was done with it. Turned the computer off, took the old chip out, put the new one in, turned the computer back on.

Upgrade complete.

That's exactly where you're at right now. And it's a GREAT place to be.

Yup, rainless makes a valid point. Cost and ease... definitely the Q6600.

Sounds good! I was leaning that way but wanted some outside opinions. I swapped the quad and core 2 last night to verify hardware assist virtualization works on the media center's mobo, which it does. Now I just need confirmation that it will work with 2TB drives and I'm set.