q6600 vs e8400

am getting sick of my machine giving me blue screen and am unable to figure out why even after every diags, virus, spyware, malware, h.d. diag, etc has been run and all is okay. starting to believe my board is having intermittent problems. only thing left it could be. so am now considering a new machine and this time going to buy and not build. this machine giving me problems is just over 4 years xp pro, 3.2ghz cpu with an ecs pm800-m2 board. has worked good but lately giving me headaches.

my question is on a dell system the q6600 is 110.00 less than the e8400 chip. when i look at toms hardware and do a comparison i find the chip for the q is more than the e and i also find the speed of the q is faster than the e.

which machine is a better chip to buy the q6600 or the e8400 ??? i do some multi tasking but have a number of window web pages up, do some chatting online with clients and relatives, email open all the time, along with things like spybot, spywareblaster, spysweeper, spyguard, antivirus, printer. normal things. so which one should i buy and if you have a reason that would help also....thanks greg

 

Q6660 Quad vs E8400 Dual

This is a tough call .. and comes down to what primary use is.
E8400/8500/8600 are the fastest dual cores on the market. They love to to be overclocked, being stable pushed to over 4 Ghz running on air. They are a very cool running chip and are lower power consumers. Q6660 will perform better if you run Photoshop, Pinnacle Studio Plus, QuickTime or 3D Studio Max. These are the few programs on the market that can take advantage of 4 core processors. Everything else being equal, these two chips share / split by hairs at a performance level.
For initial cost, (your Dell configuration) the Q6600 at $110 less then the E8400 makes for a very good value deal on "day of purchase cost ". BUT the E8400 runs cooler (should last longer) and lower power consumption could/will bring lower "life of product cost" for every day/month/year you run the chip.
So which one ... If you need to control cost today, Q6600. Becomes a excellent deal if you use one of the above programs.
If OC'ing is your game, E8400 is a tough customer. Can also perform out of the box default with most quads and do it at "Environmental Green" level ... something that none of us can / should ignore.
So which one should you pick ... You will be very happy with either one. For my personnel favorite, see my signature below or click on the down arrow next to "My System" far left side of screen.

 

dennis L - very good description and i thank you. this machine for myself is primary used as my main business machine. so oc'ing for gaming use is not what it will be used for. not a gamer at all. on occasion i do use programs like photoshop. mostly though machine is used for business applications. nothing to intense. the fact that the e series is a cooler running chip makes a little more sense for what i use the machine for. machine is on and used probably 16 hours per day.

thanks...greg

 

Your most welcome.

I'm a little surprise/confused why Dell has a $110 premium for the e8400 chip. Q6600 cpu's actually pulls a $20/$40 premium when purchasing/viewing at Newegg. My guess Dell is steering choices based on in-house cost / supply of chips on hand. Both chips fall into the gamer performance class and gamer choices. Not knowing what else Dell is offering in configuration options per system cost and overall component balance ... the Q6600 Day of Purchase value is very good.