Duo or Quad?

[rye]

As ever, the hardware side of computers leaves me clueless - which is the better option to go for...

A high speed Intel Core 2 Duo (3.00GHz) or an Intel Core 2 Quad (2.4GHz)?

How does their performace compare? The quad processor is a lower speed but it has four cores - would that level the playing field against the two faster cores of the duo processor?

[PeterStoba]

What will you be using it for?

[Micky007]

go with Quad because you can overclock it anyway.

[rye]

Hopefully for an all-rounder machine. A bit of gaming, a bit of design (Adobe Photoshop), a bit of web development (Microsoft Visual Studio). Some of the applications can be quite beefy.

Would really like to get back into gaming - love the look of Bioshock and Crysis.

[Micky007]

get the Quad and overclock it to 3.2GHz

[rye]

Thank you! Thats one more item ticked off on the list... now Im off to look at motherboards.

[PeterStoba]

ASUS P5 range, they're good and also support the new Penryn chips

[Micky007]

Asus P5W DH DELUX - thats what i have and its a great motherboard!

[coiler]

quad everytime

[jman]

not to put too much of a dampener on things - but there are very few apps out there written to take advantage of even dual core - yet alone quad core CPU's. Yeah it'll be fast but it's only going to be very specific software which can utilise processor affinity to get certain parts of apps running on different cores.

Yes it'll still go like something flung from a greased shovel but you might not notice any difference between dual and quad core - other than the size of the whole burnt in your pocket.

[Micky007]

yes your right but think about it, in the future there will be and you wont have to update your CPU as it will be fine, where as if you get the Core 2 DUO and then in a few months programs and games now work with Quad then you will be killing yourself you didnt get the quad.

[Aaron]

Yeah, when I build my new rig, I'm building it to last, as well as to be quick now.

And cpus at a similar price - you have the choice of:

Q6600 @ £153 - 4x2.4Ghz or
E6850 @ £160 - 2x3.0Ghz.

And I would think that they can both be overclocked equally well to around 3.4-3.6Ghz. So for my money, I'd get the quad anyway!

[00mike000]

actually i think you will find a low end core 2 duo such as a e6300 can be overclocked to beat even a q6600 and for a cheaper price:O

[Mul.]

actually i think you will find a low end core 2 duo such as a e6300 can be overclocked to beat even a q6600 and for a cheaper price:O

Not in multithreaded apps though. Also this thread is over 3 months old. Welcome to the forums though :)

[00mike000]

thanks :)