Originally posted by: tjpark1111
Thank you so much for all the replies! anyway, i was actually looking into quads as i do a lot of one and two dimensional CFD, photoshop, and video encoding, but the step up in price (unless getting a Q8200) was a bit hard to swallow (ex. Q9550). Im actually a high school senior and using the college excuse with a little scholarship money for a new computer. Since ill definitely be using this for the next 4 years(a gpu upgrade down the road at most), i guess a quad would make sense? Would a q8200 work? im trying to stay within $1k, but $2k is possible (with a little bit of asian parents pwning me for it) thanks again!
P.S i switched the e8400 and e8500 on newegg lol, sorry
I'm looking at your dilemma, and the part shared by many. I feel sorry for college students these days -- especially, "these days." When I started at a UC campus, there wasn't technically any tuition -- only about $95 per semester in "student-fees." When Robert MacNamara went to Berkeley, he paid $25 per semester. If I wanted to go back to school as a retired "oldster" today at my alma-mater UC campus, I couldn't afford it.
Since software is evolving to take better advantage of multiple cores, and since you want to build this system to last four years, I'm leaning toward recommending a quad-core to you.
That being said, I just think you'll be shorting yourself with the Q8x00 processors. They only have 4MB of L2 cache. The Q9x50 model-line has 12MB of L2. And the upper-end of that line is less than $200 more than the low-end of the Q8x00 quads.
Otherwise, you might be tempted to engage in more short-run upgrades, just as you would if you bought an E8x00 dual-core. So -- if you can swing it, go for a Q9650. If you can't spring for the price of the Q9650, look at the Q9550 and Q9450.