Which CPU for my PC?

[Afran]

Not sure which to get out of these two;

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (£143)

or

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.33GHz (1333FSB) (£110)

Rest of specs if you're interested

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
BFG GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Sound Card - OEM (PCI)
OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit

 

[Imgormiel]

Not sure which to get out of these two;

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (£143)

or

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.33GHz (1333FSB) (£110)

Rest of specs if you're interested

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
BFG GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Sound Card - OEM (PCI)
OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit

sounds coo.....i aint interested in anything less than quad now tho

 

[Helme]

Heard the 6600 could be clocked up to ~3.2GHz with standard cooling

 

[Bahumat]

Heard the 6600 could be clocked up to ~3.2GHz with standard cooling

Isn't that the Quad Core Q6600 tho...

 

[Mauness]

id just add that extra £10 or so and buy the quad core tbh, make sure its the SLACR version though.

 

[- English -]

my 2.4e6600 required a better fan than the standard one they send... it kinda botched my mobo up in the end as temps were way to high for it. Getting a better stockfan resulted in temps being 20oC or more less

 

[Litmus]

i have the 2.33 duo, first thing i did when i got it was whack it upto 3ghz and runs no problem.

 

[Dahakon]

Errata list shows for Core 2 Duo - The INQUIRER

Don't get any Core 2 Duo chips, not if you care about your PC, Intel's stock has crashed because of the bugs in them.

 

[UndyingAngel]

Errata list shows for Core 2 Duo - The INQUIRER

Don't get any Core 2 Duo chips, not if you care about your PC, Intel's stock has crashed because of the bugs in them.

in very early models, it was the same with the P4 and any AMD chips, which is why you should never got for Generation 1 stuff..

personally I would go for the E6750.. its a great chip (£115.72 inc)

 

[Lamp]

Z80 4tw

 

[Cromcruaich]

Between the e6550 and e6600 i'd go for the e6600 every time. The e6600 is the cut off point point where lower chips have a reduced cache size.

As to the quad, well, i suppose you may as well if the price difference is minimal, but my feeling is that they are more bleeding edge, more likely to have motherboard instabilities and the real performance difference for gaming is zero - you are better going for a higher clocked duo as almost all games run on a single thread.

 

[cHodAX]

Neither.

The Q6600 is a no-brainer as Docwolfe, Delket, Slainyou, Wild, Cabbage, myself and quite a few others on these forums will verify. With a good cooler and a nice little overclock you will have a monster of a CPU for very little money.

 

[cHodAX]

As to the quad, well, i suppose you may as well if the price difference is minimal, but my feeling is that they are more bleeding edge, more likely to have motherboard instabilities and the real performance difference for gaming is zero - you are better going for a higher clocked duo as almost all games run on a single thread.

That isn't the case. My Q6600 has now been running over 4000 hours without a hard reboot and zero crashes, this is on the Abit IP35-E motherboard. There are a number of other boards that are just as solid and the CPU itself is thermally superb for the horsepower it delivers. Saying that the quad platform isn't mature is completly untrue. As for saying the performance difference is zero, well play world in conflict, UT3 or Crysis on a quad system and you get a smoother gaming experience with alot less framerate peaks and troughs when the AI or physics are heavy because the game just passes the extra work off onto the helper threads.

Quad is here now and the support is already well underway, it does make a performance difference and whilst it isn't massive it does make for a much more responsive system when the loads are heavy.

 

[Bahumat]

If you get the Q6600 get the energy efficient one

 

[old.windforce]

wait a bit, a new generation of chips is comming in januari (Intel Core 2 Duo E8400)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 reviewed | NordicHardware

 

[Afran]

I went with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 in the end, seemed the better deal PC parts just arrived, now to get it built!

 

[Imgormiel]

I went with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 in the end, seemed the better deal PC parts just arrived, now to get it built!

Have fun building it, to me that's the best bit. After that it's boring :x Enjoy your new pc! xD