Custom build pc

[Luke21]

Just need some advice on a computer im looking at buying is it worth going with a quad core ? when i can get a Intel E6850 Core 2 Duo for £2 extra which would be best ?

Also is having 2 graphics cards worth the extra money ?

Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad Skt 775 SLI Gaming Base Unit
Case - Thermaltake Soprano Black Window
Case PSU - 850w Antec Truepower Quattro
Motherboard Asus Striker Extreme SLI
Memory - 4gb DDR2 800 Memory (2x2gb)
Hard Drive 1 - 500gb SATA2 Hard Drive
Hard Drive 2 - None
Optical Drive 1 - 16x LG Dual Layer DVDRW Drive
Floppy - 1.44mb Floppy Drive - Standard
Graphics - Dual 512mb Nvidia GeForce 8800GT (SLI)
PCI Slot 1 - CREATIVE X-FI XTREME AUDIO 7.1
PCI Slot 2 - 54mbps Wireless LAN PCI Card
Keyboard & Mouse - Genius Cordless Keyboard/Mouse
Operating System - Windows XP PRO SP2
Monitor - 22" Silver Widescreen TFT
Warranty - 12 Months RTB Warranty

all that for £1,395.58

But i can also get a Intel E6850 Core 2 Duo (Liquid Cooled + Overclocked to 3.6ghz) for around the same price but it has a 768mb nVidia 8800GTX Graphics card but ive read that the 8800 gt is cheaper and better

 

[Keydogg]

That's expensive! But I guess its the full lot and you're not building it. I personally would go for the Q6600 for a few reasons:

Firstly, don't listen to the people who say "the dual core is quicker and you don't need 4 cores", the fact of the matter is, everything is shifting and slowly shifting to the quad core scene, thats games and apps. At the moment there isnt a great advantage to have 4 cores, but within the next 12 months the advantage will become more and more visible.

Secondly, the Q6600 is good for 3.2ghz with a decent heatsink and well ventilated case, without having to go down the liquid route. Especially with that PSU.

Thirdly, the price difference - there isn't one! The quad core is easily the best value CPU out there at the moment and will be for quite a long time! Do it!

Regarding the SLI GT's thats entirely upto you. The GT is a beast of a card anyway and will handle any of the top games at the moment no problem, but the SLi will be even better, it just depends how far you want to go! 1 GT is enough but 2 GT's would be just class!

Really the only thing that I think could be letting that computer down is that the RAM is only 800mhz, it really wants to be 1066mhz to be inline with the processor and not create a bottleneck!

The 8800GT isn't better than the GTX, but its only 5-10% worse in all games, and for £150 less its amazing.

 

[KDF]

What ever you do, dont listen to the people who say 'the quad core is better than the dual core and it will the quad core will be getting better within the next 12 months'.

The dual core is quicker and you wont use the 4 cores. I have a dual core and rarely touch the 2nd core. Hey if you want a processor that you *might* be able to use a year down the line.. that will then be out of date and slow.. sure.. its your money to waste

 

[24Seven]

Like KDF said you wont use 4 cores for a long time and so far there is nothing that I have thrown at my E6850 that even comes close to utilising both cores fully. I orginally planned on 2 8800GT's but opted for 1 8800GTX instead, cant be happier really.

 

[Luke21]

Thing is i wont be wasting money going with the quad core because it worked out £2 cheaper :S

Think i'll get the quad system with the dual GT

The computer ive got now ive had for about 3 years so i need a upgrade

Thanks for the advice

Really the only thing that I think could be letting that computer down is that the RAM is only 800mhz, it really wants to be 1066mhz to be inline with the processor and not create a bottleneck!

Thanks i'll upgrade that now is it worth having more than 2gb with xp ive read that xp will only used 2.5gb or something like that

£205 extra for 4gb 1066

 

[Keydogg]

The dual core is quicker and you wont use the 4 cores. I have a dual core and rarely touch the 2nd core. Hey if you want a processor that you *might* be able to use a year down the line.. that will then be out of date and slow.. sure.. its your money to waste

I have a dual core laptop and everything i go on uses both cores so thats just untrue. If you do anything like copying DVDs, photoshop, illustrator, lightroom, or other cpu intensive application its a simple fact the quad core will out perform the dual everytime. And games ARE going toward quad core, iirc there will be an update out soon for CSS which will make it utilise four cores and with hl2/steam being very CPU intensive it will easily out perform the dual.

And like he said he won't be wasting money because its £2 cheaper. For me with the present and future advantages of the quad its a no brainer.

 

[KDF]

I have loadsa quad core servers in my work. They need it.. a desktop doesnt.. people just see bigger numbers and think that must be better.

There is a reason the quad core is £2 cheaper btw.