im looking to build a computer and was first conisdering buying the E7300. i changed my mind and im opting for a q8200 over the q6600. im not going to be overclocking just solely for gaming and id like the extra 2 cores now rather than upgrade from duo to quad later on. there arent many people who seem to have this so it would be helpful if anyone who has it could give me their opinion of this cpu. thanx
I havn't used the Q8200. I just bought my new computer, I went into the store thinking i was going to buy the Q8200, but a deal came up with a Q6600 w/bluray player. So far, I'm very pleased with my Q6600, It's extremely fast, much faster than duo core (obviously). Also, you'll notice that the 6600 has a clock speed of 2.4ghz, while the 8200 has 2.3ghz. Just thought I'd mention that little difference there. You're paying a lot more for the 8200, but the 6600 IS very good. Basically quad core blows everything else out of the water
The only difference between the Q8200 and Q6600 is the architecture and cache which is 45nm vs. 65nm and 4MB vs. 8MB. The Q6600 runs at 2.40 GHz stock (266MHz x 9) with a 1066MHz FSB The Q8200 runs at 2.33 GHz stock (333MHz x 7) with a 1333MHz FSB The higher FSB makes up for the difference in clock speed. The Q6600 has 8MB cache The Q8200 has 45nm architecture so it runs a little cooler and uses about 10 watts less power. The Q8200 will save you about $ 0.0014 per hour you run it. So, assuming an average of 6 hours per day, about $3 per year in energy savings If you ever plan on overclocking, the Q6600 will probably overclock better. The multiplier difference comes into play when overclocking. Max multiplier on the Q8200 is 7 and the Q6600 it is 9.
The Q8200 and Q6600 are practically identical, sometimes the Q8200 falls 5% behind due to its lower clock speed, sometimes it works out 5% faster due to the newer architecture, you don't really lose anything by picking one over the other. The Q8200 is likely to use slightly less power than the Q6600, but I don't think the difference is very great for that either. The Q6600 will however overclock better, you are limited to 3.1Ghz on the Q8200 (P35/X38) or 3.5Ghz (P45/X48), whereas the Q6600 should be able to overclock to at least 3.4Ghz on any board, sometimes up to and beyond 3.6Ghz if you push it.
