Core 2 Duo E8500 vs Core 2 Quad 9550

[sepota]

Hi,

I have the following rig:

RAM = 2 x 2 gigs corsair xms
5-5-5-18
800 Mhz
2048Mb
XMS2-6400
Power Supply = Corsair 750W - 60A
GPU ATI 4890
MB ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Windows 7

For gaming purpose, should I go with a Core 2 duo E8500 or a Core 2 Quad 9550? There is a 30$ price difference...

Thanks

 

[werxen]

if there is only a $30 price difference go with the 9550. thats pretty much the only quad i would recommend from the c2d series. though - the E8500 will still outperform it in most games.

 

[sepota]

So, why go with the 9550?

 

[neonmonkey]

because games are more and more starting to take advantage of quad cores. plus he can overclock the quad to 3.2 GHZ withouth breaking a sweat

 

[werxen]

because games are more and more starting to take advantage of quad cores. plus he can overclock the quad to 3.2 GHZ withouth breaking a sweat

no.

the 775 socket is dead, that's why. by the way intel is marketing their computers - dual core are no longer. this will cause a shift in how programs are made in the future. honestly if i were you i would go core i5 or core i7 not anything in the 775 socket anymore.

stick with quads -> the new quads.

 

[sepota]

With the i5 in mind, would this MB be any good?

GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard

 

[smithereen]

Hi,

I have the following rig:

RAM = 2 x 2 gigs corsair xms
5-5-5-18
800 Mhz
2048Mb
XMS2-6400
Power Supply = Corsair 750W - 60A
GPU ATI 4890
MB ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Windows 7

For gaming purpose, should I go with a Core 2 duo E8500 or a Core 2 Quad 9550? There is a 30$ price difference...

Thanks

None of the above. Wait for the i5 release to shakedown, then buy either an i5 or Phenom II rig once the dust has settled.

 

[Isme]

The first thing to check if you are minimizing power supply watts or costs is the 12V2 power rating. The CPU has exclusive "ownership" of the 12V2 supply and Intel recommends 13A continuous and 16.3A 10ms surge for a normally clocked 95W CPU. I would recommend simply going for 16A continuous to reduce power supply stress and conflicts in combined wattage voltages. Of course overclocking would significantly increase this CPU demand.

In any case, the way power supplies split total watts is not standardized and may not deliver this CPU power in correct proportion to the rest of of your system needs. That is once you meet CPU minimums, you may end up with LOTS more watts than the rest of your system needs.

For most home home systems will only the basic array of additional devices: integrated I/O motherboard, single or dual hard drive, DVD burner, 2-4 DIMMs, keyboard and mouse...there is more than enough power for the remaining system for any mainstream power supply.

For gaming systems the other key adjustment is for video card demands far outside the normal system power budget for. We are talking video cards which draw 10-20A @ 12V instead of the modest maximum of 4-8A @ 12V for normal non-gaming extreme machines. Occasionally other voltage supplies may come into play, but the 3.3V one is likely the only one that would be easily overtaxed in a simple system.

The more difficult decisions come when you add lots of additional devices like full blown RAID arrays, video capture cards etc. At that point you run out of assurance that you have more than enough watts on the general system supplies and you will need to add minimum and maximum power demands and guess at "normal levels" that must sustained for more than a handful of milliseconds. The key problem being a lack of information on which peak demands occur at the same and how long those peaks demands last (insignificant <10 ms or Much greater length).

 

[Isme]

But yeah dump the quad core for a dual core with a faster base clock.

No significant games are written to use multiple cores totally effectively. Most games only benefit from dual core because the OS can be shunted to processor 0 and allow the game exclusive use of processor 1. Only a few games are actually designed to use two cores with a consistent plan.

A very few games are potentially written to run code modules on whichever CPU is available...but they tend to be defeated in actual use by poor understanding of Windows multi-threading APIs and very limited scheduling sophistication within Windows itself. Such technology tends not to develop very extensively until actual use becomes popular enough that OS and software tool vendors invest big money over time.

Maybe one day more than 2 cores will make sense for mainstream Windows gaming. But that is likely so far in the future (3+ years minimum) that your current CPU will be in the junkyard or donated to some church.