Sooner or later, I'll probably pick up an E8400 and a P5Q-E (Better cooling, and didn't see it had an e-sata port, so I may use that later). But, as they just slashed the E8500 prices, should I purchase one of those instead?
Have a few questions, so here's a list
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Would the 9.5 multiplier of the E8500 be beneficial? (whoops 9.5 not 10.5
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Are you able to change the multiplier on Intel's Wolfdale or Yorkfield?
Do the higher clocked processors by Intel usually OC better? Such as an E8400 vs an E8500.
Last Question: This is on a Q9450 vs an E8400. Would a Q9450 be much better than a E8400? I could get a Q6600 for a similar price to the E8400, but they aren't 45nm, so they consume much more power, and that may be testing the limits of my PSU. (Or I can just spend the extra money I save on not getting the Q9450 and use it to buy the Q6600 and a better PSU
) When it comes to quads, do many applications actually use 4 cores? Or are they mainly just used for video/image editing/benching. I do multitask, as watching tv (which uses the processor to decode it) and do other things as well, so my CPU is always around 50-70% overall usage. Sometimes it spikes to 100%, so that just lags everything. :shadedshu But, is it worth the extra money for the added performance? Even if I find a used one, it will probably be $100 more, which is a good bit. Dual Cores can clock higher on average, so that may give a boost to applications which mainly use the first or both cores, so a quad would not be beneficial.
Thanks.