Bottom of the range Core 2 Quad, or middle of the range Core 2 Duo

Hardware and technical stuff
1

I haven’t built a PC in a few years and I’m a bit out of it when it comes to hardware.

In the next two months or so I’m planning on building a new PC, but I’m a bit stumped about which direction to go in.

Taking current CPU prices into account and due to budget constraints I’m limited to either buying a INTEL® CORE™2 QUAD Q8200 or a INTEL CORE2™DUO E8400.

I’ll be using the box for gaming and developing in VS2008 and playing around with VM’s.

I need my hardware to last for about two years before the next upgrade and I’m concerned that a bottom of the range Quad Core is going to age a little bit quicker than a mid range Dual Core.

Also, will it make a large difference choosing between 4 gig of DDRII 1066 or 4 gig of DDRII 800 considering that both CPU’s run at 1333 Mhz?

2

Duo.

If you get a bit more money or actually have programs that can use it though, a mid-ranged quad or greater will provide some nice bang for the buck. You are correct in your assumptions on aging of the processor. The extra cores don’t work their magic on everything just yet.

3

Two kore possibly stupid questions about multiple cores maybe you could answer.

Does Windows XP support more than two cores? The license sticker mentions support for 1-2 CPU’s. Does CPU mean cores in this context?

Also, can a Virtual PC running inside MS Virtual PC 2004 use two cores? So Can I effectively run a VM using two of my four cores and develop in VS targeting two cores?

4

Q6600 vs E8500, which both go for $190 now. There are times when extra cores are more useful; other times when raw clock speed is more important.

Not really, though these days the price difference is also negligible, so you might as well go with DDR2-1066 RAM, unless you’re concerned about, say, heat or power consumption: DDR2-1066 RAM typically runs at higher voltages than DDR2-800 RAM.

For licensing, by “CPU” MS means physical processors, not internal cores. So a Core 2 Quad counts as one CPU, not four. I’m not sure what’s the total number of cores XP supports, though.

5

Yes it does. In fact the same update (SP2 or 3, I don’t remember) that provided better dual core support also supports more than that. The CPU limit is a physical limit, not one for the cores within. Note that if you run XP with more than one PHYSICAL cpu, then you need XP Pro, regardless of the number of cores on each.

From what I understand about Virtual PC for either 2004 or 2007, no, each guest VM runs on a single core. You could run more than one guest, but you can’t assign multiple cores to each. You will probably want to look into Microsoft Virtual Server instead if you want to use and assign multiple cores within VM’s. Or use VMWare, which is similar.

6

VMWare workstation 6.0.4 works the same way. Even if you set the vmware VM to 2 processors, it will still use only one real core of your processor.

7

It’s silly to go 2 core right now when quads are so incredibly cheap. Especially if you think the dual core chip is the one that will future-proof you.

8

Ok, I’m looking at CPU stats and the Q8300 is quite a lot cheaper than the Q9300 and has the same specifications except that it has 4mb L2 cache instead of 3mb L2 cache.

I’m confused.

9

The Q9300 has a 6MB (1.5MB x 4) L2 cache; the Q8300 has a 4MB (1MB x 4) L2 cache. That seems to be the only difference.

10

E8400 ($160) is much faster in most games than the equivalently priced quad core (Q6600). The bottom line is that current-gen games are still highly MHz and L2 cache bottlenecked. Get the highest GHz and then highest cached chip, then highest amount of cores you can afford, in that order, IMO.

11

Well, if you never plan on playing a new game ever again, that’s probably fine, but things like GTA4 for the PC are basically unplayable on anything with less than 3 cores. So if you care about an inflated 3D Vantage score, by all means get the highest clocked 2 core system you can. If you want something that won’t be completely obsolete in 12 months, get 4 cores.

12

Hardware prices are fluctuating insanely around here (Crazy third world currencies ftw.) but hopefully I should have saved up enough to buy a Q9450 based system just in time for my birthday at the end of next month. (Thanks to putting in a few hours of overtime.)

This is the plan subject to emergencies/the exchange rate/wife’s current state of mind :

1.) Intel Core2 Quadro Q9450 - quad core 2.66ghz box cpu , with VT+TXT , 45nm , Lga775 , 1333mhz fsb - 4x64k L1+ 2 x shared 6mb L2 cache - with EDB , EiST, EM64T , WDE , ASC , SMA , ADMB, 128bit SSE4

2.) 2* 2Gb/2048mb ddr2-1066 ( pc2-8500 ) - 240pin - 5 years warranty

3.) ASUS P5QL-CM all-in-one lga775 mb ; intel Quad-core / Core2 / Core2-Extreme / Celeron-L (800fsb) / p4 / Pentium D ; intel G43 + iCH10 chipset , 1333/1066/800 fsb , 2 x dual channel ddr2 1066(oc) , 6 x s-ata2 ( 6 x internal + 1 eSATA ) , 1 x parallel ata133 , on-board directX10 GMA X4500 hardware (MPEG2+ upto 352mb shared memory ) 3D VGA with tripple -output ( displayport + D-SUB + DVi / 1080p HDCP compliant ) , with HDMi AV output ( HD DVD , Blu-ray 1080p HDCP compliant ) + VT1708B 7.1 audio + gigabit lan ; 1x pci , 1 x pci-e (1x) , 1 x pci-e 2.0 (16x) , 1 x PS2 only for kb - micro-atx

4.) Western Digital CAViAR GP WD5000ACS 500gb, S-ata2 , with intellipower ( 5400-7200rpm for powersaveing ) , 16mb cache, 8.9ms - 3 years warranty

5.) Coolermaster RC-334 , Elite 334 , Windowed side panel , No psu , black : tools free ; 2 x front usb + audio in/out - 4x 5.25", 1x 3.5", 5x 3.5" hidden - 1 x 120mm fan support upto 2 - atx

6.) Coolermaster RS-500-AMBA Silent power pro 500w , EPS12V V2.91 + SSi + ATX 12V V2.3 , Modular cable manafgement , copper+aluminum heatsink , anti-vibration silicon pads , active PFC , 2x8(6+2) pin PCI-E power connectors, 24pin ( 4 pin detchable ) + 4 or 8pin 12v AUX , 1x 135mm fan with intelligent fan speed control ; with OVP , OTP , OCP , OLP , SCP - 5 years warranty

I’ll be using my 9600GT for a while along with existing HDD’s /DVD/RW, etc.

Just in time for the i7 to make it completely obsolete.

13

I was going to get one of these Quad Core Dell bread boxes and slap a Radeon HD4670 ($99) in: http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=ca&CS=cabsdt1&l=en&OC=DT_V420_F1_E&dgc=AF&cid=3881&lid=77903&acd=CAqD7bLWUPI-RlyrMxdi15J5N7wCDDidKQ

$549
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic, Service Pack 1
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 8M, L2Cache, 1066FSB)
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz - 2DIMMs
1 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 1 Year NBD Onsite Service
160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio
256MB ATI Radeon HD 3450 -supports DVI,HDMI,VGA Connections
Single Drive: 16X (DVD+/-RW) Burner Drive
No Monitor

14

For a little bit more you can get an HD 4850, which is much faster than the 4670.

15

naw i have a hd4870 now. the plan was to stick one of these in a bread box and be done with it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161266

16

Probably because it’s a port from the 360 where they have to have 3 cores to do what they need to do. The raw processor speed isn’t as impressive on the 360, from what I remember. You’d probably be better off playing GTA4 on a console anyway, PC ports of that series have historically had shitty controls unless you use a gamepad and Games for Windows Live on PC is awful. (Yes, I totally need 2 overlay apps in a Steam copy game)

I would probably be more interested in how many cores you need to play games like Dragon Age, the Star Wars Old Republic MMO, etc. which are designed specifically for the PC.

17

The Dell you linked to has a 350W power supply, and that video card requires a 400W. I’ve read here that Dell’s power supplies can handle more than they’re listed at, so it will be interesting to see if that works.

18

Btw, if you’re building an HTPC and aren’t planning on game perf, go with the max ghz over more cores. Raw processing power works a lot better for video processing and multithreaded/multicore video applications aren’t very effective yet. A high end core 2 duo for example will easily outperform a quad with 1080p AVC/BD video (without DXVA, which I don’t use because then I can’t run the raw video stream through ffdshow for post processing).

19

not for encoding it won’t.

20

Yeah, and pretty much any modern nVidia or AMD GPU, even the low end ones, have enough playback assist that 1080p H.264 isn’t a problem. Since you don’t need your movies to play back faster than real time, but you might like your encodes to finish in half the time, quad core is again the way to go.

Probably because it’s a port from the 360 where they have to have 3 cores to do what they need to do. The raw processor speed isn’t as impressive on the 360, from what I remember. You’d probably be better off playing GTA4 on a console anyway, PC ports of that series have historically had shitty controls unless you use a gamepad and Games for Windows Live on PC is awful. (Yes, I totally need 2 overlay apps in a Steam copy game)

I would probably be more interested in how many cores you need to play games like Dragon Age, the Star Wars Old Republic MMO, etc. which are designed specifically for the PC.

Look at it this way. There is no game you can find for which a 2.6 Ghz Quad core is too slow. But there are already games for which 3 Ghz dual cores aren’t cutting it. And the number of games that want more than two cores are guaranteed to go up.

And when you look at the actual performance advantage of dual cores right now you’re talking about getting 90 FPS instead of 80 on the quad. That’s 10 frames you’ll never miss. But in games where the quad leads you’re talking about 30 FPS versus 45. I’m sure you’ll fell that. Any way you break the numbers down going quad is the smart choice.