CPU advice being sort.

BomberAF said:

So as the Q6600 is one of the lower end quad core CPU's unless I spend a lot of money then it aint worth it and as housry23 stated the E6600 will give my PC the kick of life it needs.

Thanks guys.

One thing I haven't seen in the thread: what's your application?

If it's gaming, the fastest CPU clock may be what you need. I've seen tests of existing games that show essentially no advantage to having more than 2 cores. If it's appplications that can use multiple threads (Photoshop, video editing, CAD), get a quad core.

You might get a small performance gain if you could use a Core2 CPU rather than a dual core Pentium. The Core2 has a larger cache. (Caching is used to overcome the limited speed of the system RAM.)

I had a Q6600. I didn't find it to be a slug, but overclocking helped. However, it's an old chip, and it may not even be available at retail in the USA any more. If memory serves, the Q6600 may have used two dies; the newer quads use one, and may give better performance as a result.

I get pleasure from complicating other people's decisions, if it's not obvious.

whs said:

BomberAF said:

So as the Q6600 is one of the lower end quad core CPU's unless I spend a lot of money then it aint worth it and as housry23 stated the E6600 will give my PC the kick of life it needs.

Thanks guys.

I think you got it right. BugOutMachine also summarized it well in his post.

Thanks! :)

I also agree that this forum has the most knowledgeable group of people when it comes to Windows related questions and you can gain quite a wealth of information here. When I was preparing to switch from Vista to 7 I started reading the Tutorials on the site. When I actually installed 7 and had questions I created a user account. I now visit the site every day and almost always learn something new or am able to pass along my knowledge to another member of the community. It's very satisfying to be a participant on a forum with such a great collective group of individuals from all walks of life and all of whom have knowledge in one area or another, whether it be software, hardware or nitty gritty technical info.

You can never go wrong when you post a question and are given an answer on SevenForums!

BomberAF said:

whs said:

The E4400 is a 2GHz processor. That is no barnstormer. For Internet and office applications it is probably OK.

So I should stick with the E6600.

Unquestionably.

Pentium E6600:

Intel® Pentium® Processor E6600 (2M Cache, 3.06 GHz, 1066 FSB) with SPEC Code(s) SLGUG

(3.06GHz, 2MB cache, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm, 65W, no hyperthreading, introduced 2010)

Core2 Duo E4400:

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E4400 (2M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) with SPEC Code(s) SLA3F, SLA98

(2.0GHz, 2MB cache, 800MHz FSB, 45nm, 65W, no hyperthreading, introduced 2007)