What CPU to buy if I don't intend to overclock?

[Guest]

Q9450 or is Q6600 sufficient w/ 8800GT to play high end games in mid to high settings?

[iguana]

IMHO, E8400 w/8800GT 512MB

I can't imaging any reason to don't overclock Core2.

[Qwerty]

I think the Q6600 will be sufficient for most of the current games.

A CPU with 4 cores is always better than a two-cored one!
Although most games don't support the 4 cores (most of them utilize only two), all the background tasks like antivirus, firewall and Windows in general run on these "spare" cores while the game can use the other two exclusively.

If a dual-core CPU like E8400 is used - the game and the background tasks will struggle for the CPU usage.

I use a Q6600 in my PC. A Q6600 can be easily overclocked from 24000 to 3000 MHz, by setting the FSB from 1066 to 1333 MHz

[Chiefish]

The Q6600 is sufficient for any new game out, its the Gpu that would be the questin for you. And a 8800GT should do anything you want within reason.

[Cobracon]

I beg to differ...........

An e8400 CPU won't be struggling to do ANYTHING, and current versions of BitDefender and Kaspersky use very little processor capacity while running in the background. Also, an e8400 starts life @ 3.0GHz with a 1333FSB.

Current thinking (and there are any number of tests to illustrate this available online) says, and most games currently demonstrate a dual core CPU is as good as or better than a quad core CPU (with equal speed and FSB ratings) when it comes to gaming. Last I checked, the World Record holder for 3DMark06 scores was a dual core Intel CPU.

That's not said to throw a bad light on the q6600, which anyone should be proud to own. Looking to the future, the 'experts' say that more and more new games will utilize the advantages offered by a quad core CPU.

As has already been posted, the GPU would be the real determining factor in game play activity.

The Tom's Hardware website has a section where you can pit 2 different processors against each other and compare their performance based on various popular games and standard benchmarks. These are not opinions, but real life statistics.

[karry2008]

'm gonna build my first ever computer myself and really don't know much. I would like it to be able to run Crysis at High settings, 0xAA, 8xAF @ 1280x1024. I don't know if it's possible to do this with the current hardware and achieve a playable framerate though(let say 25+FPS). Right now i'm on XP DirectX9 but i'd really like to move to Vista(32 or 64 bits???) and DirectX10 soon. All i need is a motherboard, CPU, GPU, memory and PSU. I have the rest
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karry

[Qwerty]

[Cobracon]

[quote="karry2008"]'m gonna build my first ever computer myself and really don't know much. I would like it to be able to run Crysis at High settings, 0xAA, 8xAF @ 1280x1024. I don't know if it's possible to do this with the current hardware and achieve a playable framerate though(let say 25+FPS). Right now i'm on XP DirectX9 but i'd really like to move to Vista(32 or 64 bits???) and DirectX10 soon. All i need is a motherboard, CPU, GPU, memory and PSU. I have the rest
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karry

You'll do a lot better with your request if you start a new thread instead of inserting your question onto the tailend of an an existing one.

[D.8080]

http://www.tomshardware.com/us/

register and use their resources, thay have a good forum + lots of articles and howtos...

Hardware stuff isn't that difficult to understand. It's difficult to shape to your own desires.

[Cobracon]

[D.8080]

I believe that a simple question is just the occasion to advertise shopping...

[Wizzard1]

Who are all these people, and why do they continue to post advert links?

[Cobracon]

[admin]

[martin]

A CPU with 4 cores is always better than a two-cored one!
Although most games don't support the 4 cores (most of them utilize only two), all the background tasks like antivirus, firewall and Windows in general run on these "spare" cores while the game can use the other two exclusively.

If a dual-core CPU like E8400 is used - the game and the background tasks will struggle for the CPU usage.