I am buying one of two new desktop PCs from a store tomorrow.
One has a Core 2 Duo E4700 processor with a 2MB cache, speed of 2.6GHz, and a bus of 800MHz.
One has a Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor with a 8MB cache, speed of 2.4GHz and a bus of 1066MHz.
I have a tiny knowledge of how computers work, but I am primarily buying to play modern PC games eg CoD4/BiA:HH.
I am confident with the RAM, HDD and graphics cards of my prospective computers. The E4700 PC has 2GB of RAM, 320GB HDD and a GeForce 8400 256MB. The Q6600 PC has 3GB of RAM, 640GB HDD and a GeForce 9300 256MB.
Seeing as I will do no such complicated things like ‘over-clocking’ or ‘programming’ etc, my question is, will either of these two processors of the two computers perform vastly better or vastly worse than the other?
Is lots of extra money justified to get double the processors (Duo -> Quad) and four times the cache (2MB -> 8MB)?
To my unknowledgable mind, will this extra 6MB of cache make a great difference to my computing experience? I don’t fully understand what this ‘cache’ or ‘bus ‘ business is….
Many many thanks for any help.
Well, either one should be able to run all of the current games just fine.
But, I would go with the one with the Quad and GeForce 9300 since more is better, basically.
You probably won’t be able to tell _too_ much difference if you went with the other one though.
Processor cache to put it simply is memory on the chip itself, things the processor needs to access often can be stored here for quicker access, as opposed to going to the systems main memory. Lower latency.
Think of the bus speed as a pipe, moving water between the Processor and the northbridge chip. The fatter the pipe the more water it will be able to move. In this case its information.
As far as the 2 computers you listed I would definately go with the Q6600 even though most programs of today cant utilize 4 cores, tomorrow they will.
My only concern is the video cards that come with these systems. Since your primary use will be gaming you do not want a system with a low end video card. This is very important to running games smoothly and if this piece of Hardware in any system is inadequate the resulting gameplay is less than ideal.
That, imho is one of the leading drawbacks of buying a PC form a major manufacturer, they always seem to skimp on the Video Card, while the other components usually are very good.
This leaves the PC gamer hanging, having just bought a new system that cant run the latest and greatest games. It would probably run the games, but decreased settings would be needed to run it smoothly.
Remember a computer is the sum of its parts, your new system is only going to play games as fast as its slowest part will let it run. That being the Video card. Bottleneck.
Consider looking for a comprable system with a mid or higher end Video card.
Good luck