HEY ALL THOSE MIGHTY OVERCLOCKERS AND HARDWARE INTELLIGENTSIA

PLEASE GUIDE

We are well in August 2008, there have been good drop in prices in processors. At this point of time i intend to buy a processor. I want it to be future secure (though practically not possible), I mean no upgradation for year or two.
I am not a hardcore gamer nor a hardcore multitasker.
So i am bound to be confused in these processors please guide me well out of this state of agony.
MY OPTIONS ARE:

E8500 or Q6600 or Q9450

Currently though games do not use 4 cores but they are expected to do so. That is why i am confused i have read numerous views but still confused.

ALSO I DO NOT INTEND TO OVERCLOCK IF NOT COMPELLED TO DO SO.

THANX A TON

Moderator Note: No All Caps Thread Titles!

I think the E8500 will be best gaming solution over the next two years, I don't think we'll see a lot of games taking advantage of more than 2 cores till directx 11. I could be completely wrong, guessing the future can be pretty hard.

I wouldnt base any descisions on direct X 11. ID games, on of the premier game developers and the creators of Doom, Quake, and RTCW, have released their new engine. They opted to use DX9, as many other developers have, due to DX10s notable increase in complexity with the negligable gain in quality. Even with poor old DX9, the new engines visuals are stunning.

Basically, as much of the puchasing public has, many of the game developers said to hell with MS Vista and DX 10. Most others still port their games for both DX 9 and DX 10, in fact, I cant recall a recently released game that will only run on Vista/DX10

I think the reasoning why DX10 has yet to become a standard is because the GPU vendore (ATI/nVidia) are iffy in going to a unified AA system like DX10.1 will have.

I like some of the effects from DX10 but its not always about graphics. If the graphics are great but the game play sucks (ahem, Crysis) then whats the point?

Hey i am not a real hardcore gamer so what do ye say now

^For future security then a quad like a Q6600 or the Q9450 would be the best bet. The Q9450 will have about 10% clock per clock advantage over the Q6600 and will run cooler along with SSE 4.1 instructions for faster media encoding/decoding.

Are you sure ID is going to use directx? Usually they use opengl as their API of choice.

You have said what you dont do much of, but zip about what you do do.
I have a hard time justifying the price premium of the 9450 over the 6600.
For some people, it's hard not to justify the quad, simply because of the bloat ware they drive, or the number of heavy tasks they run concurrently, (esp in the background)
If you play online, and use some form of IM, having the extra core is just smart. If you expect your rig to do any kind of major task, while gaming, the quad is the answer.
Remember, even if the game doesn't use all four cores, allowing it sole access to two cores is generally a good plan.
OTOH if all you do is light gaming, and internet, the 8500 is good enough.

I think that games will still be better of with two cores even next year, as 2 faster cores will still perform, games usually depend on the result of a previos action by the player / enviornmaent and are very hard to thread. Adding more and more cores at this stage is less than effective except in the type of games involving LOTS of individual units, so your pretty safe in getting a FASTER clocked dual vs a lower clocked quad imo.

Q6600 here.

Just tonight I had all 4 cores cranking at 50% sustained rate and was using nearly 7GB of RAM. OK, I was converting a DVD, running Excel and FrontPage, had PaintShop Pro hanging on the taskbar and was playing a media file along side a couple dozen open browswer windows.

These days go with the Quads.

Vista loaded up with useful apps will idle using 2 GB of ram. Q6600 is at a very fair price point, and if you do not plan to overclock you should have no cooling trouble at all with it while performing well for a couple of years easy. Motherboard that can take 4-8 GB of ram, and a quad core is the well rounded solution.

Hey people so you got it real going thanx for ur support
I thought it would be best if i write rest of config:

Processor: Intel Core2 Quad Q 6600 GO 2400 MHz or Q9450 or Core 2 Duo E8500

Motherboard: I want to go for DDR2 only but MSI X48C supports both DDR2 and DDR3 is it a good idea to go for it.
Asus P5K Prem Wi-Fi-AP(P35)
Asus Maximus Formula SE (X38)
Asus P5K3 DLX/WIFI (P35)
Asus Rampage Formula (X48)

RAM: Corsair/Kingston DDR 2 (2 X 1GB DDR2 1066MhZ) or
(2 X 2 GB DDR2 800Mhz)
should i prefer 1066 or 800. I do not have a heavy work load.

Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4850

Hard Disk: Western Digital (Sata 2) 500 GB (16 MB Buffer) or Seagate(Sata 2) 500GB (32 MB) Buffer

Case: Antec 900

Power Supply: Cooler Master 620

DVD Burner: Asus or Samsung (light scribe technology)

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212, Cooler Master Hyper TX2 or Thermalright Ultima 90i with 92 mm fan

Please shower your advices

Well, according to John Carmack, Owner and CTO of Id, it was simply because DX10 didnt offer them anything significant. IRT game play, DX10 really doesnt do anything for it. The following interview with Carmack is from CES 2007, over a year old, but at that time the DX 9 Tech 5 was still early in its developement.


Below the interview, find a link to a youtube video of a tech 5 demo from 2007. It is stunning, and on DX9.

Here is a 2008 update on Tech 5 and screen shot from you tube demo. Mind blowing detail

The actual video of Carmack answering direct questions about DX 10 and Ids intent to not adopt it is located here , at gametrailers.com. This video is pt 3. I dont recall if the comments were in the other parts and its late so Im not going to search -- youll have to do that yourself, but Carmack, while politcally correct, was clearly not impressed.

DX 10 was really little more than a Vistagimick, designed to suck the unwary into purchasing the next gen M$ crapware. MS's claims that you would need Vista for DX10, were much like the Creative/Daniel K scandel. Just as Creatives claims that its older hardware could not run with full functionality on Vista, and that you would have to buy new hardware proved to be false (as proven by the modder Daniel K,) the DX 10 claims were proven false when it was hacked for XP quite sometime ago. Unfortunately, it appears MS got to the individuals who cracked the code and sadly had the hacks pulled from the net. No suprise there.

As far as the death of XP forcing the shift to Vista/DX 10, the saying goes "Reports of my untimely demise have been greatly exaggerated!" While M$ deliberatly attempted to exagerate the numbers of users adopting Vista by including the number of license sales to OEMs, that little trick was caught and exposed for the ruse it was. Now, over a year after its introduction, the reality of Vista sales has long been exposed by the media as not being what M$ claimed. And while MS is offically ending support for XP, the federal govenemt via DoN/NMCI has only recently switched from 2000 to XP. They will not be switching to Vista anytime soon. Here, MS has 2 options; Continue to support XP for the US govenment on the sly, or stop support altogether and force the govenments hand. Should MS choose the latter course, they will most likely find themselve faced with the same regulation as the automotive manufacturing industry IRTs to support: Auto manufacturers must continue making parts for cars for ten years after the model is superceded, meaning if you buy a brandnew 2008 whatever, and the car is completely redesigned for 2009, you, the consumer, are assured parts availability until 2018. I doubt this is a game anyone in the industry wants MS to play, because if they do try it, the entire industry will likely feel the aftershock and they all very well may be federally mandated to support their products for X years after EOL, meaning MS will have to support XP for everyone, not just DoD. And they will have to do so for quite some time, which would put an even bigger damper on Vista and future OS sales.

Whats that got to do with this? Simple DX 9 is not dead, and DX 10 was a development whose time really never came. As for DX 11, I wouldnt worry about that in the least little bit as only a few people know what schemes will revolve around that.

As always, skip anything crap-i-pedia has to say on the subject, or any subject for that fact of the matter.

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John Carmack on DX 10

John Carmack on DX 10

Youtube of John Carmack on the ID tech 5 engine