which computer ? upgrade advise

[cyflyer]

Will be buying a new computer next couple of weeks, and have a choice of two CPU set-ups for the same computer, at the same special offer price.
1- The E6850 3.0 Ghz/1333mhz/4mb Core 2 Duo...or,
2- The Q6600 2.4 Ghz/1066/mhz/8mb Intel Quad

Which is best one to go for ?

[edDV]

For what application? What are you going to do with it?
For my stuff, I'd go Quad.

[Webster]

Will be buying a new computer next couple of weeks, and have a choice of two CPU set-ups for the same computer, at the same special offer price.
1- The E6850 3.0 Ghz/1333mhz/4mb Core 2 Duo...or,
2- The Q6600 2.4 Ghz/1066/mhz/8mb Intel Quad

Which is best one to go for ?

I'll go with the Quad also. But it is depended whether you're going to use it for video encoding.
Is that the amount of memory you're going to get? if yes, then it is not much RAM if you ask me...

[bmo]

Will be buying a new computer next couple of weeks, and have a choice of two CPU set-ups for the same computer, at the same special offer price.
1- The E6850 3.0 Ghz/1333mhz/4mb Core 2 Duo...or,
2- The Q6600 2.4 Ghz/1066/mhz/8mb Intel Quad

Which is best one to go for ?

I'll go with the Quad also. But it is depended whether you're going to use it for video encoding.
Is that the amount of memory you're going to get? if yes, then it is not much RAM if you ask me...

The 4mb and 8mb that cyflyer listed refer to the processor L2 cache, not the RAM . I too would go for the quad core, especially if you're going to be encoding.

[redwudz]

That's the amount of L2 cache internal to the CPU, The Q6600 2.4 Ghz/1066/mhz/8mb Intel Quad, L2 Cache 2 x 4MB or 8MB. But you probably knew that.

For RAM, I would use 1GB for XP. For Vista, 2GB. More is OK, but 32bit OS's can only use a bit less than 4GB.

I'd also go with the quad. It might be a bit slower, but encoding with 4 cores will make up the difference.

[cyflyer]

Uses are mainly net surfing, occasional rip/burn, photo working in Photoshop. The ram will be 2Gb. I was tending to lean towards the 3.0 Duo, but still confused.

I'm probably wrong but my impression was that the quad was best if I'm doing more than a couple of functions on the computer at the same time, but for a single function the 3.0 Duo maybe faster than the 2.4 quad ? (unless of course its the 3.0 quad !)

[redwudz]

For what your needs are, a fast Core Duo would probably work fine. I always think of future uses, and the quad core CPU's may be better for that, especially video encoding. But if you need to save a few $, go for Core Duo. Fast is always a good choice.

With Photoshop, lots of RAM will help as PS stores images in RAM. That's one of the times that lots more RAM can be very worthwhile, even up to the 4GB 'limit' for 32bit OS's. And 2GB is always also a good choice, with most any OS.

[TBoneit]

Same price? Go Quad. I did a Q6600 recently for a customer. Nice. XP Pro was used. 4Gb ram showed as 3+ Gb. What he wanted. Used a Asus Pk5 Mobo that takes DDR2 rather than DDR3 to keep costs down. Very fast. Makes me want to go Quad for encodes to replace my Dual Core.

The CPU was still cool running especially compared to the older P4 Dual core heaters.

[cyflyer]

Thanks redwudz, the price is practically identical for the two options I mentioned, thats why I'm tossing between the two. Of course I hear there is a 3.0 Quad, but the price on that is astronomical in comparison.

[redwudz]

If the price is very similar, I would go for the quad, myself. Mostly for future uses. JMO.

[Webster]

Uses are mainly net surfing, occasional rip/burn, photo working in Photoshop. The ram will be 2Gb. I was tending to lean towards the 3.0 Duo, but still confused.

I'm probably wrong but my impression was that the quad was best if I'm doing more than a couple of functions on the computer at the same time, but for a single function the 3.0 Duo maybe faster than the 2.4 quad ? (unless of course its the 3.0 quad !)

For what it worth, I just put a Q6600 system together last month for my "Early Christmas" present. It is working out well for me. I'd really like it. The only con I can see when you compare the Q6600 to the E6850 is that the E6850 is running at 1333 MHz FSB as opposes to 1066 MHz for the Q6600. If you only run single tread programs, then the E6850 is definitely a faster system. If you are doing Photoshop, I would definitely consider using a 64bit OS (I know, there maybe drivers issues with WinXP 64bit) that way you can get away from the 3GB barrier. And with Photoshop, you can never have enough memory. Personally, I currently have 4GB of RAM on my machine, and is consider of adding 4GB more since RAM is dirt cheap these day.

The 4mb and 8mb that cyflyer listed refer to the processor L2 cache, not the RAM .

I guess I should have wrote my little joke better than the smiling icon next time eh? Beside, I don't think anyone is making MoBo that would support 4/8mb chips anymore....

[guns1inger]

I upgraded to a Quad recently with 2GB ram running XP. previous board was a 3GH P4 with HT. FAVC conversion using HCEnc and predictive quantisation went from around 5 - 6 hours for a 2 hour film down to around 20 - 25 minutes all up. For applications that can use multiple CPUs efficiently, the difference amazing.


Of course, after a week, when the novelty wears off, it is going to feel slow again anyway.

[cyflyer]

Thanks for the advice guys. So am I correct in summizing this :
If I'm doing a video encode/rip, an anti-virus scan, a download, and working in photoshop at X speed, all at the same time, the 2.4 Ghz 1066 Quad is good,
but,
if Im doing a download and just working in photoshop with the 3.0 Ghz 1333 Duo, it will faster, and I'll be working at X PLUS speed ?

Am I correct in the two analogies ?

[edDV]

Thanks for the advice guys. So am I correct in summizing this :
If I'm doing a video encode/rip, an anti-virus scan, a download, and working in photoshop at X speed, all at the same time, the 2.4 Ghz 1066 Quad is good,
but,
if Im doing a download and just working in photoshop with the 3.0 Ghz 1333 Duo, it will faster, and I'll be working at X PLUS speed ?

Am I correct in the two analogies ?

Photoshop is multiprocessor aware so is capable of using all four cores for say a filter at magazine resolution. It would go faster with quad. Say you were playing a game in a window that wasn't multicore capable. That may run faster on the duo.

[TBoneit]

The other thing to keep in mind is that a Antivrus scan will tend to slow down any computer as far as disk I/O operations.

IMHO Go Quad for the same money.

On this page: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

The Q6600 is benchmarked at 2809
and the E6850 at 3402

So raw power to the duo core, OTOH if you are doing things that can hand of filters to seperate cores the Quad could be faster

By Comparison my AMD 64 X2 4200+ benches at 885....Hmmmm.....

A P4 1.5Ghz is benched at 198

Hope this helps?
Cheers

[cyflyer]

This E6850 vs Q6600 argument appears to be a much more discussed subject than I anticipated ! I have been reading about it on the net till its made my head spin ! Just put "E6850" and "Q6600" in the search and you'll see what I mean. There are arguments to and fro about the two. Here's a typical one :
http://www.bangingtunes.com/forum/topic/t82966/

The conclusion is this, appart from the fanatics that talk of overclocking and watercooling and extreme issues like that, on a stock basis, it appears the E6850 (3.0 Ghz duo) appears to be the faster cpu for most applications at present because of its higher clock speed and 1333ghz FSB. The Q6600 (2.4 Ghz quad) is a tad slower, but seems to be the preferred cpu for 'gamers' bearing in mind that 'future' games will be multithreaded etc, and also there seem to be heat issues with the quads.

I think I'll go with the E6850 3.0ghz judging overall by what I've read.

[Chopmeister]

I had the same choice to make, and could pick either option for the same price. It made my head swim as well.

Consulted the guys that build my boxes for me (small independent firm, that I have been buying boxes from since 1992, with staff I have known since highschool days, so they do treat me as a good customer and not scam me for an extra $100 in sales or palm bad hardware off on me). They produced benchmarks they had generated for identical boxes using the two different processors.

Bottom line: for future stuff that may take advantage of 4 cores the quad core may be faster, but for most stuff on the market now and the stuff I want to do the 6850 has a marked speed advantage. Went with the 6850 processor and 3Gb of RAM - have had the box for 4 weeks now and very happy with its performance.

My only reservation is Vista, which runs fast enough on the box but which I don't like using (horrible, horrible, horrible interface and usability). I have a legit copy of XP not being used, and am close to wiping Vista and putting XP back on the box, which may be my Christmas project. Either that, or try for a dual boot config (two hard drives in the new box, so should not be too hard).

[jman98]

Chopmeister - A wise man once said, "NEVER NEVER NEVER install a new version of Windows until the first service pack comes out". My best friend had to have me reinstall Vista on a laptop he just bought (he had a restore DVD to use for the restore) because he bought 1 GB of memory for the laptop and it just flipped out and lost its mind when he put it in. My friend bought the right memory and he put it in correctly, but Vista just refused to boot and refused to fix itself. I had to boot a Linux CD and wipe the disk partitions and then I was able to get the restore DVD to reinstall everything. Now his laptop recognizes the new memory and works fine. That is just insane that correctly upgrading the memory on a laptop caused Vista to stop working. I don't think I will ever under any circumstances install Vista.

cyflyer - Whatever you get, I very strongly encourage you NOT to install Vista on it. If you intend to get into encoding or watching H.264 videos at 1920x1080 resolution, I'd go for the quad system. If you don't anticipate getting heavily into H.264 at 1080 resolutions, the other PC should be fine and may in fact even be OK for H.264 at 1080, but H.264 is such a processor pig that I'd throw as much as I could at it if I was going to deal with it a lot.

[AlecWest]

I had to boot a Linux CD and wipe the disk partitions and then I was able to get the restore DVD to reinstall everything.

This is a totally different situation ... but a friend's kid got an HP laptop with Vista Basic on it and it just keeps seizing up on him. I checked with the HP forum, since I use an HP laptop myself, and found Win2k drivers for his model. For what the kid uses his PC for, he doesn't need Vista. And I told him I'd put Win2k on his laptop if he wanted it. But until I read your simple solution to "wiping out Vista" with a Linux CD, the method hadn't occurred to me. I like simple elegant methods like that. Thanks.

P.S. BTW, the kid got the laptop from a computer-illiterate adult sister ... who bought it for only $498. It's really a cheap laptop and I think it only has 1 gig of memory. So if it is Vista-compatible, it's right on the edge of the precipice (snicker) of being so. Rather than put more memory in it (which the kid and his family probably can't afford), I'll just slap Win2k on it. I'm certain it will do everything he wants to do with the laptop ... and more.

Regards,
J. Alec West

[Chopmeister]

Yep - I thought long and hard about getting Vista. But getting it with a new machine is much cheaper than getting it later, and I had ordered two drives and knew that it was quite simple to install the copy of XP I already had in a dual boot configuration, so I figured I didn't have too much to use. Mostly Vista works, but software compatibility is an issue and the interface is much worse (zippy and responsive with nice eye candy, but counterintuitive in places and tedious to do simple things). Installing XP will be my Christmas project - then I am covered both ways.

[fairytale00]

Get the E6850 3.0 Ghz/1333mhz/4mb Core 2 Duo, it is powerful.

[joytimeday]

Get the The E6850 3.0 Ghz/1333mhz/4mb Core 2 Duo.

[cyflyer]

Get the The E6850 3.0 Ghz/1333mhz/4mb Core 2 Duo

I did get it and I like it !!!! No regrets here.

A few other surprises on the new computer though, no parallel port to plug in my ye olde laser printer (DAMN !), and have just discovered SATA dvd , SATA hdd, instaed of the trusty IDE. I suppose this is a new system and is actually better ?

[redwudz]

Parallel and serial ports are disappearing, along with floppy drives and more than one dual PATA drive interface.

But FireWire and eSATA are becoming more common, along with lots of USB 2.0 ports and more SATA II ports. My latest computer with Vista, I used all SATA drives, optical and hard drives. The cables take up a lot less room. Performance seems about the same as PATA drives, though. But they use a bit less power and generally run cooler, at least the hard drives.

[cyflyer]

Solved the parallel port problem with a simple adapter parallel-to-usb that seems to work fine.

[sohaibrazzaq]

It all depends on what you do, todays applications and games may not support 4 cores but in the long run, QuadCore will be a better choice.
I will suggest you a Quad Core if you are not in gaming, and if you do get a Q6600 then make sure to get one with G0 stepping, it is highly overclockable, i have one hooked in my rig and i am very happy with it