Need help Upgrading. Core 2 Quad Q6600 VS Q9400

[has22fas]

Hey Forum,
I need help upgrading my processer, as some of the newer games rely more dependantly on Quad. Example GTA IV, runs 25-30fps on medium 1024x768, yet i have a HD4850 and the recommend requirements are 8600GT or HD3870 for the game. So this chip hasnt been to bad it has performed very well:

Pentium Dual Core E6300 2.80GHZ @ 3.60GHZ 1066FSB

3DMARK06 CPU Score: 3200
3dmark06 Overall Score: 13200

So im kinda puzzled on what processer to get,

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

Dont mention any other processers cause where i live these are £50 cheaper or $80 cheaper than retail.

Thanks in advance

 

[Lmeow]

Don't get the Core 2 Quad Q8400, it's the worst of the three. I'd say go for the Q9400, because it has the most cache, is the newest, and overclocks the best.

 

[GhislainG]

Lmeow provided good advice, but is your motherboard compatible with the Q9400?

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Q8400 is a bit faster clock-per-clock and at stock than the Q6600.

But I suspect the problem is with your graphics card as much as it is with your CPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-balanced-platform,2469-11.html


According to Tomshardware's building a balanced pc pt1, a E6300 @ stock 2.8GHz gets around 35fps average at 1280x1024 with max details and 0 AA. Your 3.6GHz overclock should net you the same performance as the E8400 - it should get you around 45fps.

The benchmarks state that the 4850 wasn't able to run it very well since the game is a video-memory black hole. The view distances and other settings suck up a lot of VRAM. Turn it down a bit and see if it helps.

"The amount of available memory for each graphics core determines the detail levels Grand Theft Auto (GTA) IV allows to be used. Rather than bypassing this constraint, we basically cranked settings for the 896MB per GPU available on the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 295. Note that, here, if you were using cards with 1GB per graphics processor, you could further raise Shadows to Very High and set view distance to 30%.

Even at the lowest resolution, the Radeon HD 4850, with only 512MB of memory, needed to be omitted from GTA IV testing."

 

[has22fas]

Q8400 is a bit faster clock-per-clock and at stock than the Q6600.

But I suspect the problem is with your graphics card as much as it is with your CPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-balanced-platform,2469-11.html


According to Tomshardware's building a balanced pc pt1, a E6300 @ stock 2.8GHz gets around 35fps average at 1280x1024 with max details and 0 AA. Your 3.6GHz overclock should net you the same performance as the E8400 - it should get you around 45fps.

The benchmarks state that the 4850 wasn't able to run it very well since the game is a video-memory black hole. The view distances and other settings suck up a lot of VRAM. Turn it down a bit and see if it helps.


http://media.bestofmicro.com/0/2/229394/original/Grand Theft Auto IV 1280x10.png

"The amount of available memory for each graphics core determines the detail levels Grand Theft Auto (GTA) IV allows to be used. Rather than bypassing this constraint, we basically cranked settings for the 896MB per GPU available on the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 295. Note that, here, if you were using cards with 1GB per graphics processor, you could further raise Shadows to Very High and set view distance to 30%.

Even at the lowest resolution, the Radeon HD 4850, with only 512MB of memory, needed to be omitted from GTA IV testing."

Idk if i could trust that benchmark as i play GTA IV 1920X1080 With medium - very high 40 view distance 20 detail distance at 25fps around town and 60-80fps inside airport Average of maybe 40-50fps, but thats same with any other resolution average of 40fps and in town 25-30 and somestimes 35-40 the fps seems so jumpy which makes me think its a CPU Bottleneck.

Anyways thanks for the information can somebody tell me why the Q8400 is worth avoiding for? And i have a Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L. It OC pretty well ive had a Q6600 in the past @ 3.3ghz max with this board.

 

[has22fas]

Guys i bought a Q9300 instead, is this any good?

 

[Raidur]

The only difference is the Q9300 has a 7.5 multiplier compared to the Q9400's 8.

This results in a slightly lower stock clock and overclock capability. The Q9300 is still a good choice.