New CPU help

linthat22

Regular
Well it's that time again and the wife wants me to build two identical systems so we can play games together.

It seemed that the Q6600 quad core is a nice middle of the road CPU.

My question is, would I be better off with that chip or just getting a really fast dual core with a mobo that will accept a quad?

We're not hardcore gamers, but I need something that will handle most games smoothly and also help the misses when she's photo manipulating.
 
Define "hardcore". ;) What games will you two be playing? Games that will definitely tax graphics cards? What's the target resolution? At a certain point, having a faster CPU won't matter all that much compared to the graphics card.

You won't go wrong with the Q6600, and it'll future-proof you folks for a while as games become more efficient at utilizing more than two cores (see Unreal Tournament III and Crysis). At 2.4GHz, it's also not that far off from higher end dual cores at 3GHz, and it is still pretty darn fast IMO. Overclocking might be an option for you in the future, but I'd think that the graphics card will be a lot more important for framerates (again, depending on the sort of games you play).

If you're not into frequent upgrades (<2 years in my opinion), I'd say go with the Q6600. With Christmas around the corner, maybe you can get in on some hot deal. :cool:
 
Define "hardcore". ;) What games will you two be playing? Games that will definitely tax graphics cards? What's the target resolution? At a certain point, having a faster CPU won't matter all that much compared to the graphics card.

You won't go wrong with the Q6600, and it'll future-proof you folks for a while as games become more efficient at utilizing more than two cores (see Unreal Tournament III and Crysis). At 2.4GHz, it's also not that far off from higher end dual cores at 3GHz, and it is still pretty darn fast IMO. Overclocking might be an option for you in the future, but I'd think that the graphics card will be a lot more important for framerates (again, depending on the sort of games you play).

If you're not into frequent upgrades (<2 years in my opinion), I'd say go with the Q6600. With Christmas around the corner, maybe you can get in on some hot deal. :cool:

Cool, yea as far as games go the new one for us will be Tabula Rasa. For her it's Neverwinter Nights 2 and for me it'll be Oblivion.

I figured as much from your comments about the video card. For the both of us, we've been pretty happy at 1280x720, so hopefully we shouldn't need anything to "awesome" at that resolution (I hope).

Thank you by the way :)
 
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Cool, yea as far as games go the new one for us will be Tabula Rasa. For her it's Neverwinter Nights 2 and for me it'll be Oblivion.

I figured as much from your comments about the video card. For the both of us, we've been pretty happy at 1280x720, so hopefully we shouldn't need anything to "awesome" at that resolution (I hope).

Thank you by the way :)

Given this info I'd say that essentially whatever CPU you buy will do the job. Quad core is definitely overkill, but if it's in the budget you may as well do it. If you're going to game at 720p a 3850/3870 or 8800 GT/GTS will handle the task quite nicely, and should have plenty of life left for newer games. If you decide to game at higher resolutions though (higher than 1680x1050 that is) you'll want to think about adding a second card.
 
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