Which Intel CPU?

[DarrellS]

Intel says the E8500 Wolfdale does everything faster than the Q6700 except 3D, including encoding but shows no comparison for the E8400 and Q6600. I've seen the Q6600 encode speeds in the Benchmark thread which are pretty impressive but no E8400 results. The E8400's core speed is 3.0Ghz compared to the Q6600's 2.4Ghz while the E8400 has a 6MB cache compared to the Q6600's 2x4MB cache.

Newegg has the Q6600 for $225 and the E8400 for $205. Can the prices go any lower or is now the time to buy and which processor would you recommend?

[louv68]

Look at Tom's Hardware CPU Charts for benchmark results.

This one for example is for XviD 1.1.2 encoding http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/processors/xvid-1-1-2,403.html#

You may have to click on View All Products at the bottom to see the processors you're inquiring about.

[Soopafresh]

If you're going to be doing a lot of encoding and transcoding, the Q6600 is preferred over the E8400 (as long as your app is multicore aware). If you're going to be working inside of an application, the 3Ghz E8400 is a bit faster. I have the E8400 - it's certainly peppy, but I don't do that much video conversion, so it suits me fine. The HD x264 benchmark at 1280x720 turned out to be around 23fps for pass 1 and 9fps for pass 2.

[poisondeathray]

Time to buy is now because price drop just occurred yesterday (unless you want to wait 8-10 months until the new Nehalem based processors come out)

Are you planning on running @ stock speeds? Most Q6600 (especially G0 stepping) can run 3.0Ghz without even raising the stock voltage.

[budz]

I bought the E8400 last week and installed it on my Gigabyte p35-ds3l mobo. I haven't done much video stuff other than using TMPGE Dvd Author. It did seem faster when editing out commercials & authoring using that program. I currently have it overclocked to 3.4ghz by with the cpu temp at the amazing low of 24c. Highest temp I've seen is 27c with windows fully loaded.

I've read the voltage for the E8400 should be below 1.40. Some have it overclocked to 4.0ghz but voltages are over 1.40 which supposedly would shorten the life span of the cpu. Overclocked between 3.4 ghz - 3.6 ghz is recommended.

[DarrellS]

Looking at Tom's Hardware, the E8400 is a lot faster at XviD encodes but the Q6600 is a lot faster at H264 encodes. They're practically identical for DivX encodes. The E8400 is a little better at Photoshop.

I'll be doing video captures straight to DivX when football season rolls around but I'm sure that H264 will play a big role in my video production once I have a processor fast enough to encode with it.

As for overclocking, I'm not sure I can do that since my motherboard is an Intel. From what I've read around here, the Intel boards aren't overclockable. Eventually, I'll get a different board and give my brother the Intel and the Pentium D.

I figured now is probably the time to buy. When I bought my first processor, it was a 3.2Ghz P4 that I paid $139 for. A year later, my brother purchased a 3.0Ghz P4 for $199 and the 3.2Ghz had risen to $239. I bought my 3.2Ghz Pentium D around the first of the year for $123 when a week earlier I could've gotten the 3.6 Ghz Pentium D for $10 more. They stopped selling the 3.4 and 3.6 the week I bought the 3.2Ghz.

[budz]

I figured now is probably the time to buy.

Now is the time to buy a cpu since Intel dropped the prices on some of their models. Newegg right now lists the E8400 at $199.99 where as last week I paid $10.00 more & the Quad 6600 is now priced at $224.99. If you wanna overclock buy a Gigabyte mobo like the P35-DS3L which was last years model or any of the newer models. But if you do decide to buy the E8400 cpu you'll have to flash that P35-DS3L mobo bios to the latest version. I was able to flash my P35-DS3L to the latest mobo bios and it recognized the E8400 cpu w/no problems.

[DarrellS]

Newegg right now lists the E8400 at $199.99

Wow, it was $204.99 yesterday and two weeks ago the E8400 and Q6600 were the same price at $259.99.

[budz]

Newegg right now lists the E8400 at $199.99

Wow, it was $204.99 yesterday and two weeks ago the E8400 and Q6600 were the same price at $259.99.

See now is the time to buy a Intel processor! :wink:


P.S. Here we go again with the "wink" icon's not showing up!

[SatStorm]

I'm interesting for a Q9450 myself. Lot's of H264 and mpeg 2 encoding with heavy filtering. The problem is that you can't find Q9450, only Q9300 and Q6600 those days.

BTW, why you suggest Q6600? Q9300 costs a bit more but does encoding much better!

[ronnylov]

Q6700 price has dropped to half now (same price as Q6600 before the price drop) and may be a good alternative. I think a Q9300 (at 2.5 GHz) is almost as fast as the Q6700 (at 2.67 GHz) because the new 45 nm generation is faster at an equal clock speed. I got an intel quad core xeon X3350 myself which is the same processor as Q9450 (but marketed as server or workstation CPU) so if you can't find Q9450 then look and see if you can get the X3350.

Regarding xvid speed you should look at the multithreaded version of XviD (version 1.2) because it is faster when using a multicore CPU. Tomshardware tests was made with single threaded version of xvid I think.

Look at this benchmark using XviD 1.2:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9300_10.html#sect0
E8500 runs at 47.51 fps and Q6600 at 44.73 fps.
But Q9300 run the same test at 47.69 fps.
Q9300 and E8500 also get the same speed on divx while Q6600 is a little bit slower. E8400 would also be a little bit slower than E8500 and Q6700 is probably a little bit faster than Q9300.

So I think Q9300 or Q6700 are the best choices here. Both are similar priced but the Q9300 does have new SSE 4.1 instructions that may get some boost in the future and the power consumption of Q9300 is lower. Q6700 is slightly faster at than the Q9300 when SSE 4.1 is not used.

[DarrellS]

BTW, why you suggest Q6600? Q9300 costs a bit more but does encoding much better!

I'm not suggesting anything, I'm asking.

I couldn't afford the Q6600 or E8400 when they were $259.99 and I can't afford the Q9300 or the Q6700 at $289.99 or the E8500 at $299.99. Also, my board doesn't support the 1333Mhz system bus of the Q9300.

to ronnielov

Newegg has the Q9450 for $349.99 without a heatsink and fan if that's what you want.

The Q6600 looks pretty impressive next to those chips costing $65 to $75 more. I don't see the E8400 listed at all.

[SatStorm]

DarrellS, I'm in Hellas (Greece), not U.S.A.
Here we have a huge delay with the new intel CPUs, also the prices are European (higher ones).
I can't buy from USA without Taxes. 350$ gonna end up 350€ if I get a CPU from there. In Hellas when they gonna bring them officially, they gonna cost around 280 - 290 euros. The problem is when they gonna bring them...
(I need a fast CPU because I use a lot Neat Video)

Back on topic, In your case, Q6600 is a good upgrade for video stuff. If you can, get it!

[ronnylov]

Since I already got a quad core Xeon X3350 I am not looking for a Q9450 anymore. The Q6600 is a good buy for video encoding and really price worthy these days.

I paid something like 320€ to get X3350 but the Q6600 is now listed at 183€ including the tax but excluding shipping cost. The performance difference is much smaller than the price difference.

[SatStorm]

@Ronnylov: The buffer and the SSE 4.1 of Q9450 is the point. I expect a great boost compared my C2D 6600. Something close to 1/3 (mpeg 2 + H264 encoding, mostly by using neatvideo, TMPGenc 2.5, Virtualdub, Video Enhancer, etc)

I read about those Xeon CPUs, but here in Greece those CPUs are even more rare the Q9450 ones!
I'll be in Germany next week so I may do there a market search

[Stingray]

Hmm, at least here in Finland the E8400 (boxed) costs around 165€ while the Q9300 costs roughly 241€. Looking at those prices and as of now the speed difference is so small, the E8400 seems to be more value for money...

[DarrellS]

I went ahead and ordered the Q6600 Wednesday night. Probably won't get it til Monday.

Four months ago I thought I'd have to wait at least a year to get a decent processor. It blew me away when I saw the price on both these CPUs this week.

I just looked at Newegg again and the Q6600 dropped another $5 to $219.99.