E2180 vs Q6600 vs E8400 (gaming)

Which outta these would be the best bang for the buck for gaming? Obviously would overclock all of them.

Prices are if memory serves me correctly
2180-$70
8400-$199
6600-$214
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In article , Beverly.28d8b76
@hardwarebanter.com says...

Which outta these would be the best bang for the buck for gaming?
Obviously would overclock all of them.

Prices are if memory serves me correctly
2180-$70
8400-$199
6600-$214

Beverly


Depends on your motherboard.

Bill

"Beverly" wrote in message
...

Which outta these would be the best bang for the buck for gaming?
Obviously would overclock all of them.

Prices are if memory serves me correctly
2180-$70
8400-$199
6600-$214

I would have to say the E8400 is the best of those three. I have mine rock
solid on air at 3.8 Gghz with zero memory or volt mods except the FSB
increased to 422Mhz. It's running 4 gig OCZ PC6400 on a Gigabyte EP35-D3R3
board. It's performance in gaming is stunning. The 6Mb L2 cache is a real
performance booster. A Q6600 doesn't come close.

I must disagree with my learned friend...

Based on TomsHardware figures (Deep Fritz), in raw computing power a stock
Q6600 is 50% more powerful than a stock E8400 even though it has a lower
clockspeed... overclock the E8400 to 3.8Ghz and the Q6600 to 3.5GHz and the
Q6600 is almost twice the power of the E8400!

I have a Q6600 overclocked to 3.5GHz with no problems with an Arctic Cooler
Freezer Pro ($30) and I don't get anywhere near 60C on full load!

Right now the E8400 is the better chip, it overclocks better and is a little
better for games because almost no games use more than two cores... BUT
within the next year the majority of new games will take advantage of all
four cores of the Q6600. Crysis already does and ArmA 2 will too.

Both chips will run any current game you throw at them (with the possible
exception of Crysis)... but I would argue that the Q6600 offers better value
for money in the long run.

Rarius
PS I am a software engineer with a background in the games industry!

"Augustus" wrote in message
news:dTU1k.887$7B3.201@edtnps91...

"Beverly" wrote in message
...

Which outta these would be the best bang for the buck for gaming?
Obviously would overclock all of them.

Prices are if memory serves me correctly
2180-$70
8400-$199
6600-$214

I would have to say the E8400 is the best of those three. I have mine rock
solid on air at 3.8 Gghz with zero memory or volt mods except the FSB
increased to 422Mhz. It's running 4 gig OCZ PC6400 on a Gigabyte
EP35-D3R3 board. It's performance in gaming is stunning. The 6Mb L2 cache
is a real performance booster. A Q6600 doesn't come close.



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Beverly wrote:

Which outta these would be the best bang for the buck for gaming?
Obviously would overclock all of them.

Prices are if memory serves me correctly
2180-$70
8400-$199
6600-$214

If the difference in price means choosing an inadequate video card,
I would choose an adequate video card over a faster cpu for gaming.
Gaming performance depends largely upon which games and at what
resolution you wish to play. At a given price, with a defined objective,
there is a balanced combination of parts which will give the best
performance. It's like asking what is the best intake manifold for racing.
It depends...

Somewhere on teh intarweb "Augustus" typed:
"Beverly" wrote in message
...

Which outta these would be the best bang for the buck for gaming?
Obviously would overclock all of them.

Prices are if memory serves me correctly
2180-$70
8400-$199
6600-$214

I would have to say the E8400 is the best of those three. I have mine
rock solid on air at 3.8 Gghz with zero memory or volt mods except
the FSB increased to 422Mhz. It's running 4 gig OCZ PC6400 on a
Gigabyte EP35-D3R3 board. It's performance in gaming is stunning. The
6Mb L2 cache is a real performance booster. A Q6600 doesn't come
close.

Don't say things like that!!!

I've just (barely) convinced myself that I *don't* need to upgrade my E4500
@ 3.2GHz and get an E8400 as, for the amount of belt-tightening I'd have to
do to buy the CPU, the increase in speed would be negligable.

sigh Being (relatively) poor sucks.
--
Shaun.

DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)

~misfit~ wrote:

I've just (barely) convinced myself that I *don't* need to upgrade my E4500 @ 3.2GHz and get an E8400 as, for the
amount of belt-tightening I'd have to do to buy the CPU, the increase in speed would be negligable.

sigh Being (relatively) poor sucks.

OK, how about an E7200 then?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...duo-e7200.html

'Fishface' wrote:
If the difference in price means choosing an inadequate video card,
I would choose an adequate video card over a faster cpu for gaming.
Gaming performance depends largely upon which games and at what
resolution you wish to play. At a given price, with a defined objective,
there is a balanced combination of parts which will give the best
performance. It's like asking what is the best intake manifold for
racing.
It depends...
_____

Yes indeed. And the 'Nehalem will be out before "...BUT within the next
year the majority of new games will take advantage of all four cores of the
Q6600. Crysis already does and ArmA 2 will too." (as 'Rarius' states above)


Phil Weldon

"Fishface" ? wrote in message
news:qT_1k.2504$v%.1857@trndny04...
Beverly wrote:

Which outta these would be the best bang for the buck for gaming?
Obviously would overclock all of them.

Prices are if memory serves me correctly
2180-$70
8400-$199
6600-$214

If the difference in price means choosing an inadequate video card,
I would choose an adequate video card over a faster cpu for gaming.
Gaming performance depends largely upon which games and at what
resolution you wish to play. At a given price, with a defined objective,
there is a balanced combination of parts which will give the best
performance. It's like asking what is the best intake manifold for
racing.
It depends...

Somewhere on teh intarweb "Fishface" typed:
~misfit~ wrote:

I've just (barely) convinced myself that I *don't* need to upgrade
my E4500 @ 3.2GHz and get an E8400 as, for the amount of
belt-tightening I'd have to do to buy the CPU, the increase in speed
would be negligable. sigh Being (relatively) poor sucks.

OK, how about an E7200 then?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...duo-e7200.html

Yeah, I've thought about that (seen the article too, thanks).

However, my biggest reason for thinking about getting an E8400 was the L2.
Ok, the increased overclockability would be good too but I'm not really
stressing my current set-up....

Also, the E8400 is only 1.25 x of the price of the E7200 here (in New
Zealand). I mean, if I'm going to blow the budget and upgrade then it's not
enough of a difference to warrant going for the lower-specced, slightly
cheaper E7200. If it was half the price of the E8400 then, yeah, I'd look at
it.

I have 2 MB of L2, the E7200 would give me 3 MB, the E8400 has 6 MB. I know
that, according to X-bit there's, at most, a 15% hit for half the L2 (and
probably 10% in my general use, I game a bit). However, they're using
Corsair Dominator RAM with far tighter timing than my bargain-basement 2 x 1
GB vanilla Transcend modules. Logic tells me that, with slower RAM, I'd
probably take a bigger hit with less L2 than X-bit's test system. (Correct
me if I'm wrong.)

Sooo... extrapolating with very little data into the realms of the unknown,
I figure that, with my RAM, a CPU with half the L2 (and only 50% more than I
currently have) would take something more like a 20% hit over the CPU with
more L2. Very close to the price difference in the E7200 and the E8400.
Those Heath-Robinson musing mean that, for me at least, an upgrade to an
E7200 wouldn't be worthwhile.

Thanks for thinking of me though. :-)
--
Shaun.

DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)

Somewhere on teh intarweb "~misfit~" typed:
Somewhere on teh intarweb "Fishface" typed:
~misfit~ wrote:

I've just (barely) convinced myself that I *don't* need to upgrade
my E4500 @ 3.2GHz and get an E8400 as, for the amount of
belt-tightening I'd have to do to buy the CPU, the increase in speed
would be negligable. sigh Being (relatively) poor sucks.

OK, how about an E7200 then?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...duo-e7200.html

Yeah, I've thought about that (seen the article too, thanks).

However, my biggest reason for thinking about getting an E8400 was
the L2. Ok, the increased overclockability would be good too but I'm
not really stressing my current set-up....

Also, the E8400 is only 1.25 x of the price of the E7200 here (in New
Zealand). I mean, if I'm going to blow the budget and upgrade then
it's not enough of a difference to warrant going for the
lower-specced, slightly cheaper E7200. If it was half the price of
the E8400 then, yeah, I'd look at it.

I have 2 MB of L2, the E7200 would give me 3 MB, the E8400 has 6 MB.
I know that, according to X-bit there's, at most, a 15% hit for half
the L2 (and probably 10% in my general use, I game a bit). However,
they're using Corsair Dominator RAM with far tighter timing than my
bargain-basement 2 x 1 GB vanilla Transcend modules. Logic tells me
that, with slower RAM, I'd probably take a bigger hit with less L2
than X-bit's test system. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Sooo... extrapolating with very little data into the realms of the
unknown, I figure that, with my RAM, a CPU with half the L2 (and only
50% more than I currently have) would take something more like a 20%
hit over the CPU with more L2. Very close to the price difference in
the E7200 and the E8400. Those Heath-Robinson musing mean that, for
me at least, an upgrade to an E7200 wouldn't be worthwhile.

Thanks for thinking of me though. :-)

Ehh, that line above should read "an upgrade to an E7200 instead of an E8400
wouldn't be worthwhile."

As it is I can't see either being on the cards in the near future, barring
some luck. However, the E8400 is still on the wish-list. This board is
nicely overclockable and this system will most likely have to last me well
into the Nehalem era, maybe beyond. It might pay me to grab a better CPU
while the grabbing's good. It'll be no good regretting not getting an E8400
in several years when they'll probably be more expensive on ebay than they
are new at the moment. Maybe they'll drop in price a bit in a few months.
--
Shaun.

DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)