Post your opinion: E8600 or Q9550 better for games!

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Spitfire7

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Jan 18, 2007
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I currently have the Q9550 and haven't noticed a bit of difference going from the E6600. So I hear games are more speed hungry now then Core hungry. At least that's how it will be for a year or more. Some are also saying a E8600 at 4Ghz (Reached very easily for a newbie) will blow the Q9550 out of the water at its stable overclocked speeds for the next few years or so. Anyone disagree with that?
 
I do, you'll notice a whopping 5 % gaming difference between a e8600 or e8500 dual core at 4+ ghz and a quad core (q9550 or q9450 if you can still find it) at 3.6 ghz... I went from a 3.2 ghz e6420 to a 2.85 ghz q9550 and I noticed a substantial improvement in games... they just felt smoother as the background tasks were being handled by the extra 2 cores, and then I went to a 3.85 ghz quad core (just oced) on air... and further noticed an improvement in smoothness...

I'm going to have to say a q9550... just overclock it to like 3.4 - 3.6 and you'll be golden
 
I chose a Q9550 because I like to play MS FSX a lot. That game likes quads and memory and 8800GTS 512 best. The new nVida drivers allow you to use a 2nd 8800GTX 512 as a physi. card, freeing the CPU of that task, which really helps game play and FPS!!

My system specs are;

Q9550 C1 stepping @ 3.83 prime stable for 6+ hours. Vc 1.3625
Asus Striker 11 Extreme BIOS 1104
OCZ 2 X 2GB DDR3 PC 2000
2 X 8800GTX 512 BFG OC'd
Home built W/C except CPU water block.

MS FSX always played better on 1 GPU rather than SLI or CFX but I do like to play other games once in awhile and most benifit from a SLI or CFX set-up thus why I bought 2 GPUs.

I had a dual core before this build and played FSX on it but at CONSIDERABLY less eye candy AND FPS. I have no regreates at all with this PC. It plays my favorite game really well now and does everything else a lot better as well.
 



Hey are you playing FSX with everything to the max? Not just their Ultra high settings, but taking it further and setting everything to the max? How are your frames then? I also play FSX a lot and if you notice a big improvement with the Quad then thats good news.

See my frames suck with my 8800GT. Its a major bottleneck. I can barely play FSX on Ultra high with my Q9550 and my 8800GT. I think it should be fine then with a GTX 280 right? Is FSX also a GPU hungry game too?
 


I have the Q9550 at 4Ghz, 4GB Ram, and a 8800Gt and I am sitting on the runway with medium settings and just barely getting 28fps. I thought that too, but I dont know how else to explain it. Thats why I am trying to see if and how people are getting Maxed graphics out of that game. I guess I will have to wait closer to Christmas to tell with my new GTX 280 unless anyone knows of a great deal right now.
 
That's because for most games programming to take advantage of more threads gets expensive exponentially in relation to the amount of threads you are trying to use ^_^. DX11 is suppose to change all that, but we'll see. Heck, Microsoft is going to make it so that Visual Basic programmers can make programs that take advantage of 4 cores (probably without them even knowing about it 😀). Anyway since games seem to mostly use only two cores it makes sense to go with an E8400 and overclock it rather than a quad if you're mostly a gamer.
 
Well Spitfire7 What I can do is give you some links that show my FPS on the run way in St. Louis, Mo. lambert airport and my settings page.

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/runway.jpg

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/FSXsettings.jpg

Thats with 1 8800GTS 512 OC'd and physX enabled. Toms GPU charts show that the 8800GTS 512 G92 plays this game better than ANY OTHER card out there. BUT.....with the new drivers available that might have changed. I do know thou if you OC your GPU to ~ 675 or so core and maybe 1900 memory and raise the fan speed (60% works for me) to help keep it cool you will get better FPS.

I use Riva Tuner to OC and set my fan speed. Also download the new drivers for your GPU from nVida which will help a lot.

Good luck and good flying!!
 
Impressive Spitfire 4.0 on that Quad...Nice!!!

I read about what Megaman00 wrote above and hes right. DX11 and Microsoft are making multithreading easier and better.
As for E8600...if u want better frames for about 2 more months or less then OC the dual. But for my friend who Desperately needs a new computer...hes getting a quad cause he wont be able to upgrade later, so hes getting a quad now for the future...

Stick with quads
Anyways time to EAT!!!!
 



Hey Arthurh,

Can you do me a huge favor? If you really want to test your FSX to the limits, try Los Angeles. Take off from LAX with everything maxed (Manually maxed, not just Ultra High), including traffic, building shadows, and of course BLOOM. Let me know how your frames are then. I am trying to improve my system to play this game to the max in the most heavily graphic intensive areas and LA seems to slow me down almost to a halt sometimes. If you are getting good frames with that scenario, then that is very good news and I am going shopping. Thanks.
 
Well I have a couple links for you.

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/LAX.jpg

This was the lowest FPS.

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/LAX1.jpg

This is about what I averaged, sometimes over 20 FPS and sometimes a little lower. This is what I would consider barely playable.

If I had a QX9770 OC'd to ~ 4.5GHZ it might be good enough to play at those settings. However it played okay at my original settings I posted earlier. Traffic will really eat up the frames. I leave all tarffic at about medium and my FPS start in the 20s and go up as I fly higher.


 



Ah shoot, thats what I was afraid of. That game is a graphic nightmare. I wonder what the developers have to run that smooth on max settings. What you had is about what I am getting with my 8800GT. Have you heard or seen anything about if I could run the highest settings including traffic at playable frames if I had a GTX 280? Or is that not going to cut it either? I also wonder how a E8600 at 4Ghz would handle it.
 
I'm assuming you meant 4GHZ. I'm saying 4.5GHZ stable. I'm running at 3.83 STABLE! I mention that because its possible to run high frequencies with these CPUs and bench them. But that does not mean they are stable.

The performance of these CPUs are absolutely amazing IF THEY ARE STABLE. If 1 core is just a little out of syhnc with the others it is magnified when you OC. They will crash on you. Thus a limited OC with that particular CPU.

I agree they are way tooo expensive thats why I went the 9550 route myself. Right now I only have 4G of ram but intend to increase that to 8G if I see a sale on what I have. That will help game play as well with FSX.

Mainly FSX likes high GHZ, lots of cores, lots of ram and so far 2 8800GTS 512 not in SLI with PhysX enabled. Helps to OC those GPUs as well.

Oh and the resolution will play a part in this as well as I'm sure you know. I run 1280 X 1024 on a 20" CRT monitor.

I really enjoy this game and set traffic and weather to lower settings depending on where and what I fly. If heavy weather is going to be part of your mission then lower traffic because you wouldn't be able to see it any way. Especailly when your landing!

I guess what I'm really saying is set the game to play and enjoy. Putting it in a window and then expanding the window to fit your screen will help to increase FPS as well instead of playing in full screen mode.

I showed you FPS with a Piper Cub because they are slow, but if you fly a jet your slow FPS will pass quickly, even at 1500 Ft altitude giving you a smoother frame rate.

I'll leave everything at max and show you, remember that I have my frame rate set to unlimited.

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/ReadyfortakeoffMAXSETTINGS.jpg

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/Liftoff.jpg

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/anotherviewofsametakeoff.jpg

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/lookingback.jpg

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/intheair.jpg



Now I am going to set all traffic to 50% and medium. Everthing else is still maxed out.

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/sameview.jpg

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/newtakeoff.jpg



I thought I'd go ahead and show you my '06 score with 1 GPU OC'd. Not the newest drivers.

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/arthurh/SinleGPU38.jpg



Hope this helps you to enjoy the game better.
 
Thank you for trying these things out. It looked like on your max graphic settings that you didn't have the dynamic settings all the way up. Were you just on ultra high or did you actually move everything up to the max? When i put everything up to the absolute max manually every building is 3 dimensional and there is no flat land but a standing building everywhere. Yours seem to not have that in your high settings.
 
Yes they are all maxed out. That aprticular frame shot was looking thru the leg of that building and it just didn't catch it. If you look at the other take off view you will see a lot of rending going on.
 



Wow, so just by turning the Traffic lower you really gained frames by a huge margin. Now why are you getting such great frames whereas I am still getting low frames. That proves it, my GPU must be holding back my CPU.
 
First I'd like to know if you are OC'ing your GPU. I don't think your GPU is holding back that Q9550 from its full potiential.

Check this link out.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Microsoft-Flight-Simulator-X-SP2,783.html

You will see that my GPU is ONLY 1.40 FPS faster than yours! I do not know what set up Toms used to post these FPS but I would assume that it was the same for all GPUs and what it really shows is what cards work well with this game. That is why I bought the 8800GTS 512 then OC'd the #$&&%# out of it.

Since we both have the same CPU and 4G of ram the difference must be either an unstble CPU OC, OR you need to OC your GPU, OR a combination of both. Of course, lowering you settings in the right area helps a lot too. BUT you need to OC that GPU Spitefire7!

You have your CPU OC'd to 4GHZ, higher than my 3.83GHZ, yet this game seems unplayable on your PC at certain settings. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to badmouth you. ALL of MS Flight sims have been ahead of the then current hardware available at that time. This was the first time I acutally tried to play this game MAXED OUT! So I was just a little surprised at my results to say the least. Meaning it was better than I expected.

I ran my PC for just under 7 hours with Prime95 "STABLE". A lot of posters here would say 12 hours at minimum to declare a stable OC on your CPU.

I also am using Vista Home Pre. 64 Bit as my OP/SYS. Plays better than XP pro 32 Bit. I'll probably get flamed for that but thats okay, I know what works best for me. I'm just trying to help you to play this game as well as you can. One other thing that would impact your game play(just came to mind)is the sound card your using. I have this sound card; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102005 It really does help especailly if you happen to be using onbd sound.

I talked to a friend of mine who has 2 880GTs and he says they OC to ~725 core and ~2000 menory.

Remember this thou, if you have downloaded the lastest drivers from nVida you will not see a great improvement with just 1 GPU. My 2nd GPU takes over the PhysiX from the CPU with this game and allows the MAIN GPU to just do all the rendering and the CPU free from having to do the PhysiX calculations. That alone may be why my PC is able to play this game as well as it does. (Just thought of that)

Hope this helps.
 
Yeah Arthur, good point and good stuff. I should have told you guys until recently I had my GPU OCed max stable to 700 core and 975 mem. I couldnt' go higher for some reason even with my fan at 100%. Now with my 780i board I cant even do that, so I had to set everything back to default to run stable. Is my GPU going out maybe?

Thats so weird though that the better cards run worse on FSX and the lower end cards are outperforming everything else. I dont get that and that just sounds ridiculous to me even if it is completely true. That ruins everything us computer guys have learned from the beginning and seems to have no logical explanation behind it other then the programmers made the game with those specific cards in mind which messed it up for future cards. I am sure someone knows and I want to hear it. "The better more expensive stuff is worse then the cheaper older technology for FSX."

I am still probably going to get the XFX GTX 260 core 216 Black Edition. I hope I dont see a decrease in performance for FSX even though the chart says it. But it may be worth the increase for all the other games including all the new ones to come.
 
That 260 for sure will be great on all other games so far as I know, but, unfortunately not FSX. But, with the new drivers who knows?

I find it rather unusal that changing your M/BD would keep you from OC' that GPU. What S/W are you using to do your OC'
 



I am using riva tuner for OCing my GPU. You know I might need to give it another try because I was having trouble with my RAM too.
 
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