E8400 or Q9450

[Deptacon]

Ok,

I have been overseas on a free government vacation to Iraq for over a year now and have not stayed up on current tech during that time. I am looking to build a new machine and am looking at either the dual E8400 or the Quad9450. The machine will be a daily use with some good gaming of course. I also like fast windows operations as well.

Is it worth it for the xtra money to with the quad?
Am i going to see a significant difference gaming and/or in general windows performance?
Also, how do the two stand against each other in power usage cause I would like to keep the power bill down.
Different Chipset designs with mobos better with either one of these?

Also one last thing, how have socket designs changed of any? IE are these two both going to be using same mobo's or is there a difference? What socket design are they using?

Thank for the help guys, I am playing catch up on tech and trying to put reviews and posts together to get my answers before I post here. Thanks ahead of time with any responses.

Oh and I have been with AMD for years and years but based of of what I am reading they are falling way behind the power curve. Is there anything still worth getting from AMD that compares to the E8400 or Q9450?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Gaming will not use cores 3-4 for years, probably not before you're ready to upgrade again. Normal windows use gets (guess) ~90% of the extra "snappiness" from adding the second core too, with cores 3-4 being wasted for most normal use.

So, get the E8400. See the General Hardware forum for 1,000 system threads.

I'm just upgrading from an A64 x2 4200+ system myself and picked:

- E8400
- Intel P43 chipset motherboard - good for stock speed (or OC up to 3.6 GHz max) and for a single video card. For crossfire get an X48 chipset motherboard instead
- ATI 8470 video card (the nv GTX 260 will be comparable once the price drops to $300)

 

[whiplash willy]

I have both, the 8400 in my Gaming System, and the 9450 in my Server. For general computer use and gaming, I don't think you will notice much of a difference between the two. I would get the 8400 since it is much cheaper. The 9450s are also priced alot higher then what it should be, because of limited supply. Also, since you are concerned about power, the 8400 will be your best bet since the 9450 is 2 dual cores in 1 unit. It will use roughly twice the power. Also, don't listen to people telling you to go with the quad to "future proof" your PC. There is no such thing. The next gen processors will be out soon which will blow the current ones out of the water, whether they are quad or dual.

What are your plans for the Motherboard, RAM, and OS?

 

[Deptacon]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Gaming will not use cores 3-4 for years, probably not before you're ready to upgrade again. Normal windows use gets (guess) ~90% of the extra "snappiness" from adding the second core too, with cores 3-4 being wasted for most normal use.

So, get the E8400. See the General Hardware forum for 1,000 system threads.

I'm just upgrading from an A64 x2 4200+ system myself and picked:

- E8400
- Intel P43 chipset motherboard - good for stock speed (or OC up to 3.6 GHz max) and for a single video card. For crossfire get an X48 chipset motherboard instead
- ATI 8470 video card (the nv GTX 260 will be comparable once the price drops to $300)

I don't want to break away from the CPU discussion but what do you think of a 9800GTX or new 9800GTX+ (maybe SLI in either or not) vs a GTX260 or an HD 4850?

 

[Deptacon]

Originally posted by: whiplash willy
I have both, the 8400 in my Gaming System, and the 9450 in my Server. For general computer use and gaming, I don't think you will notice much of a difference between the two. I would get the 8400 since it is much cheaper. The 9450s are also priced alot higher then what it should be, because of limited supply. Also, since you are concerned about power, the 8400 will be your best bet since the 9450 is 2 dual cores in 1 unit. It will use roughly twice the power. Also, don't listen to people telling you to go with the quad to "future proof" your PC. There is no such thing. The next gen processors will be out soon which will blow the current ones out of the water, whether they are quad or dual.

What are your plans for the Motherboard, RAM, and OS?

Have not looked in RAM or Mobo yet...wanted to get the CPU decision out of the way... I will be running Vista though. I use to Run XP Pro 64 on my old AMD machine I had before I went overseas... I loved that computer

 

[DaveSimmons]

I don't want to break away from the CPU discussion but what do you think of a 9800GTX or new 9800GTX+ (maybe SLI in either or not) vs a GTX260 or an HD 4850?

A single 4850 is a little better than the 9800 GTX, and you can find them for $175 after rebate. A single 4870 at $310 usually beats the GTX 260 but loses slightly in some games (Oblivion).

The GTX 260 will be a decent alternative if you prefer nvidia, but only at around $300. The video forum has a link to a GTX 260 at $330 after rebate so this is starting to happen.

If you look at the anandtech.com 48xx article the 9800 GX2 does very well for average framerates (for games that nvidia has SLI support for), but they don't list minimum framerates. It's now a $400 card so it's a potential choice too.

There will be a 4870 x2 card, and maybe a GTX 260 x2 card as well.

 

[imported_Woody]

First of all, thank you for your service to your country. You didn't say which country it is but it's all good. ;-)

I have to agree that future proofing your system is generally not a good idea because it never works. Build the system you want for what you want to do with it today, not next winter. The money you save will be better invested next year when you may actually need it. That being said I would go for the E8400 and a P35 motherboard paired with 4GB PC6400 (DDR2-800) memory with a an AMD 4850 or 4870 graphics card. I think a P35 will give you the best value and performance and spending twice the money on a newer chipset and DDR3 that won't accept next years hot new processors anyway would be a waste. Take the money saved on the motherboard and RAM and put it toward a faster graphics card or an extra hard drive for RAID0 where you will get a more significant increase in performance for the dollar spent. The reason I recommend the P35 is because I recommend the AMD graphics cards. There's not really a compelling reason to go with a NVidia chipset motherboard unless you plan to run two NVidia graphics cards in SLI.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I'm recommending the P43 instead (though mine won't arrive until tomorrow) because it's also cheap ($100), offers a reasonable overclock (E8400 to 3.6 GHz), and has a PCI-E 2.0 slot instead of PCI-E 1.1.

On the other hand, the older P35 motherboards are more of a known quantity.

 

[Martimus]

Here is a tool to help with your computer build. There really isn't a reason to get a GTX 260, considering it is generally slower than a HD 4870 but costs $100 more. The HD 4850 is a good graphics card, but runs pretty hot. I think I would prefer it over the 9800GTX though, because it is usually faster, especially with AA.

 

[Sunrise089]

I imagine the OP made a typo and meant 4870...no reason to consider the 4850 and GTX 260 and not the 4870 IMHO.

I think for moderate builds by rational people (IE those who don't expect their machines to be state of the art in 4 years time) the E8500 and the 4870 is the only combo worth considering. I will add this thought as further proof - Nahalem will likely be quicker than the current quad offerings when it is released. The only advantage a Peryn-based CPU may have is clockspeed, since the current chips OC so well and since Nahalem is a mystery. Since the dual-core parts tend to OC better however they will likely be MORE future proof vs. Nahalem than the current quads, since at least you may be able to fall back on 4.0ghz+ clock speeds that Nahalem is unlikely to match.

 

[GundamF91]

You should definitely consider what you'll do with the PC. I chose Q9450 over E8400. It didn't cost that much more comparatively, and the extra 2 core and cache would be worth it.

I'm one of those people who like to "future proof" the PC. It's never truly future proof, but you could possibly extend your upgrade cycle, ie. upgrade in 3yrs instead of 2yrs.

Actually, based on the processing power, we've basically hit a plateau in terms of how fast you can do word processing, web browsing. You really don't need 3Ghz to do all that. Only specific things such video, gaming, etc. would require more CPU power. For that, quad core will prove to important in the near future.

 

[Deptacon]

Thanks for the input guys.....

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
I'm recommending the P43 instead (though mine won't arrive until tomorrow) because it's also cheap ($100), offers a reasonable overclock (E8400 to 3.6 GHz), and has a PCI-E 2.0 slot instead of PCI-E 1.1.

On the other hand, the older P35 motherboards are more of a known quantity.

Considering the older P35 mobos overclock BETTER than the P43 mobos... I'd stick with P35. There's nothing really that P43 brings to the table over the P35 that I can see.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
I'm recommending the P43 instead (though mine won't arrive until tomorrow) because it's also cheap ($100), offers a reasonable overclock (E8400 to 3.6 GHz), and has a PCI-E 2.0 slot instead of PCI-E 1.1.

On the other hand, the older P35 motherboards are more of a known quantity.

Considering the older P35 mobos overclock BETTER than the P43 mobos... I'd stick with P35. There's nothing really that P43 brings to the table over the P35 that I can see.

A P45 board would natively supports both of those chips, while most P35 require a BIOS flash. Unless this guy has access to a CPU that is supported by P35, he would be SOL if he bought one. Plus, most new crossfire tests show that the PCI-E 1.1 bus is being saturated with the 4850 and 4870 in crossfire, so PCI-E 2.0 is an important feature to have.

 

[nanaki333]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
I'm recommending the P43 instead (though mine won't arrive until tomorrow) because it's also cheap ($100), offers a reasonable overclock (E8400 to 3.6 GHz), and has a PCI-E 2.0 slot instead of PCI-E 1.1.

On the other hand, the older P35 motherboards are more of a known quantity.

Considering the older P35 mobos overclock BETTER than the P43 mobos... I'd stick with P35. There's nothing really that P43 brings to the table over the P35 that I can see.

A P45 board would natively supports both of those chips, while most P35 require a BIOS flash. Unless this guy has access to a CPU that is supported by P35, he would be SOL if he bought one. Plus, most new crossfire tests show that the PCI-E 1.1 bus is being saturated with the 4850 and 4870 in crossfire, so PCI-E 2.0 is an important feature to have.

do you have a link?

 

[imported_Woody]

Originally posted by: MartimusA P45 board would natively supports both of those chips, while most P35 require a BIOS flash. Unless this guy has access to a CPU that is supported by P35, he would be SOL if he bought one. Plus, most new crossfire tests show that the PCI-E 1.1 bus is being saturated with the 4850 and 4870 in crossfire, so PCI-E 2.0 is an important feature to have.

Good call. BIOS support for the new chips is an important consideration when getting a P35 but pretty much all the brand name boards are shipped with updated BIOS that do support the new chips. It's definitely something you should verify prior to purchasing or ordering a P35 board. The only time you might have a problem is when buying a less popular brand, a used or open box special, or an older board from a vendor that may have had it sitting on a shelf for some time.

A good performance P35 board will almost certainly overclock better than a budget P45 or P43 and for less money. If overclocking is not a consideration I might recommend the newer technology here but only if you can get it cheap.

I agree that if you plan to run dual high end graphics cards you may want to consider a newer chipset with PCIe 2.0 but not as an upgrade path since all current motherboards will be made obsolete by Intel's next generation CPUs coming this winter. If you're spending that much money on a new system you're in a different market altogether anyway. If you only intend to run a single graphics card, even a 4870, a P35 board is not going to be a bottleneck.

 

[VooDooAddict]

(My comments are figuring on No or Light Overclocking. As the OP didn't mention anything about it.)

CPU
If you sell off or trade away your old parts ---- Go with the Dual Core. - Higher MHz is still king for gaming.
If you like to turn your old parts into hobby/project Servers ----- Go with the Quad Core. - Server Operations and DVD Encoding get a bigger boost from the additional cores.

Motherboard Chipset
Dual 4850/4870's ----- P45 - Two 8x PCIe 2.0 gets you the similar bandwidth as Two 16x PCIe 1.x Slots.
Single 4850/4870/9800GTX+ ----- P35 (or If not overclocking MicroATX based G35 - Most people don't need a huge ATX case. Save yourself space and power.

RAM
2x2GB 800MHz DDR2 - The Cost/Performance of DDR2 800 is great and makes now a great time to upgrade before the next Intel CPU generation comes out. It will uses DDR3. As memory companies retool for DDR3, DDR2 prices will climb.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: nanaki333

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
I'm recommending the P43 instead (though mine won't arrive until tomorrow) because it's also cheap ($100), offers a reasonable overclock (E8400 to 3.6 GHz), and has a PCI-E 2.0 slot instead of PCI-E 1.1.

On the other hand, the older P35 motherboards are more of a known quantity.

Considering the older P35 mobos overclock BETTER than the P43 mobos... I'd stick with P35. There's nothing really that P43 brings to the table over the P35 that I can see.

A P45 board would natively supports both of those chips, while most P35 require a BIOS flash. Unless this guy has access to a CPU that is supported by P35, he would be SOL if he bought one. Plus, most new crossfire tests show that the PCI-E 1.1 bus is being saturated with the 4850 and 4870 in crossfire, so PCI-E 2.0 is an important feature to have.

do you have a link?

That sounds strange, unless there is an enormous increase in traffic between the 2 cards...

PCI-E is by definition a bus straight to the south bridge. The bandwidth of the other PCI-E slots is not shared.

 

[Tempered81]

I'd take the E8400. Quads may prove to be useful in a few years & outpace the duals by a significant amount. You're safe either way (unless you're an avid overclocker).

 

[Deptacon]

Thanks for all the input guys. I never have overclocked before but I think I will this time around. I am just concerned about system stability.

 

[Deptacon]

Well i went ahead and purchased everything last night. this is what I got:

Corsair 750W TX750W Power Supply
Nine Hundred Case (Not sure I will like due to how loud it will be)
24 inch WS BenQ 2400WD LCD Montior
Intel E8400
Asus P5Q Pro Board
2 GIG x2 Corsair 6400 DDR2 800
SAMSUNG SH-203N SATA DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe (May still have a BenQ 1655 in my old machine I may use)
Sapphire HD 4870 Card
WD 640GB 16M 3.0 SATA 7200 HD
Artic Pro CPU Cooler


MS Win Vista Home Premium 64 bit

Already have Logitech wireless mouse, Z Board, and 5.1 speakers

Total Price came out to be about 1560.00

Tell me what you all think

 

[Martimus]

It all sounds good. I don't see a problem with any of those components. I heard once that there were some issues with the Asus P5Q boards, but I don't remember what they were. You may want to do a forum search for that board, and find out what issues it has and what you can do to work around them.

 

[Magusigne]

Deptacon,

Looks like a very nice rig. Let me make a few suggestions. First, some people say this is useless, but if you have the 64 bit vista, with the prices of RAM these days, Throw in another 2x2 kit while DDR2 is cheap. In vista I noticed an increase in the "Snapiness" of everything.

Also if the 900 isn't to your liking...check out the Antec p182b

 

[Deptacon]

ok...thanks...I thought about grabbing more DDR2...I may in a few weeks when I get it up and running. I will check out that case too. I have a feeling I am not going to like the "train" I just bought.

Best part about this whole Rig is its pretty up to date...and I am probably going to completely pay for it by selling my laptop and parting out my old AMD 64 Rig from a little over a year ago.

 

[imported_Woody]

I have the Antec 900. It's very popular because it's very good. I've built two systems around this case including my own and I highly recommend it. It's only noisy if you turn the fan speed up. The fans come with three speed settings, just leave them on low and you won't even hear this case, it's totally quiet. There's no reason to turn the fans up, look at my overclock and my temps under load barely break 50C.