New CPU

[Xpleet]

I thought i might get some professional opinion from cajomi and others in here :)

Im looking for a new CPU,

theres 2 choices for me, either DualCore E8400 or Q6600.

My logic tells me Q6600 is the way for rendering and hardcore processing... I hardly play at all.

Does anyone have experiences with quad vs dual?

Will GeoControl2 have Quad support?

[alexcoppo]

The E8400 is faster (3GHz vs. 2.4) and has a larger cache per core (3MB vs. 2MB). The Q6600 has 4 cores... so the question reduces to: my main computing needs will benefit from a large number of cores? if yes, Q6600 is the way to go, otherwise E8400.

Bye!!!

[monks]

Yes, as Alex said really. I run a quad. Comparing one of the cores with a single core, it does run faster hertz for hertz- but if you want pure speed on non multi threaded apps, then the Duo is the one to go for. With a good mobo you can overclock either of them too. Personally, I would opt for the quad for future proofing- if you're like me, you may not upgrade for a few years.

monks

[Xpleet]

I think i must disprove you.

I have just came across a pretty rare Benchmark which clearly indicated that rendering runs A LOT faster ( about 20% ) on a Q6600 than a E8400.
That rendering was done in 3DSMAX i believe. This confirms what I read before.

Also 3DMARK06 which is optimized to the cores, Q6600 almost fake scores a lot better than E8400.

So it seems Q66 is alot faster in Winrar and other programs that are highly core optimized. So i guess that'd be the case for Vue etc. too :-)

It amazes me really how these two choices balance out : E8400 is a bit cheaper but both models are for different purposes, killing each other in different categories, that's quite nice to observe!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9300_11.html#sect0

Look at this and see for yourself.

It is quite evidential, I didn't think I would find such a good benchmark but that's it.

Actually it is a comparison between E8500 Q6600 and a newer Quadcore. But the E8500 equals an E8400 -6%.

In general the Dualcores 8000er series are better because most programs don't use dual or more cores correctly.

But for renderers, we could definatly get a 10-20% faster rendertime by choosing a Quadcore of the same prize segment.

I sort of answered the question myself sorry, I just very recently came across this article..

[Jules Verne]

Go for the quad. Most if not all rendering packages can utilize all the cores and providing multithreading these days, even if they aren't 64bit, and the difference in render times is very impressive. And for the times you don't need to use all of them to render. The entire system just generally feels more responsive because of software split over them all.

Just make sure you get a shed load of RAM to go with it. 4GB I would say should be the minimum if you're doing things like this. So that means a 64bit OS (don't bother trying to get 4GB out of a 32bit OS, it's just headache after headache).

The Q6600 is slower speed than most out there. But I think it's all in the area of diminished returns now. It's clocked slower than my old AMD setup. That was on win2k, this is on Vista and this setup runs far faster, even after taking into account Mr Bloated Operating System. That's down to the four cores for sure. You can only get so fast a cpu where you begin to not even notice the difference. A single cpu can still only do X amount of things at once. While more than one core can do many more concurrent operations at once. I think the future will be x16 x48 core CPU's rather than trying to get ever faster beyond a certain point. Look at the human brain for example. The way that works is closer to a multicore 'processor' than a single one.

Also it's just cool seeing 4 cores running *grins*. But I think for the next couple of years, it really wont make a big difference if you go with a Quad or Dual. After that, software will begin to be written with quad+ in mind more and more. So as Alex says, really it's down to personal preference. I only went with a quad because I'd like to think in a few years my setup will still be a viable solution without having to buy another so soon (assuming it lives that long)