E8700 vs Q6600

So my question is basically this: Given a motherboard that does not overclock, is it worth having the E8700 dual core at 3ghz over the Q6600 quad core at 2.4 ghz? Or at we at a point where cores actually mater more. Most info I find point toward the e8700 but they are almost all from the time frame in which core utilization was pretty crappy. I tried an E7200 and it was not very good. However the q6600 seems to be at 40% just running firefox with this forum open.

I will be using this for some light gaming. No AAA titles. But mostly work.

currently
CPU- Q6600
RAM- 8gb
GPU- HD6770
OS- windows 7 x64 and Lubuntu 16.04

Q6600
If you want the clock bump get an Extreme Edition or similar quad core

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You might want to see what exactly is using the cpu resources. There might be something that is hogging resources. I have a system with an e7200 and browsing forums doesn't get close to that iirc (though I haven't fired that old thing up in a while now). Either way, how much is the e8700 and why not go with a modern system? Personally, I would not spend any money on the system and save up for a new mobo, ram, and cpu. Even low end modern parts should blow those out of the water.

EE is for overclocking though right? no point in that.

if you can get an E8700 you might be able to sell it as a collectors item for quite a bit seeing as its an unreleased CPU..

If it'll take an e8600 I'm not sure its worth the effort.

Q9650? (or modded X5450)

Extreme Edition just means it's the fastest/best usually.
I.e. there's really no point to upgrade from a q6600 to a QX6850
Unless you can't overclock it. Because the difference between the q6600 and the QX is base speed (3.0 ghz vs 2.6) (and minor other things but those are less noticeable for performance)

Why not look for a motherboard that allows overclocking? Typical OC for a Q6600 on air is in the 3.5GHz region, that's a serious bump in performance compared to 2.4GHz.

Indeed, without OC Single core perf. E8600/Q9650(X5450)/QX6850 is going to about the same right? so modded x5450 would be the best choice if you have to and if it will work on that board but probably not worth the effort/money

Throw more SSD's at the thing and hope for the best

What exactly is your workload like?

My experience, a better solution to these problems is an SSD, but that would depend on what you're doing. Any dual core is decent with and SSD, but a Q6600+SSD would give you far more.

6600.

I'd personally look at a newer system but if you have it as a spare the 6600's are pretty nice tbh.

Related to that 40% use, that should be easily fixed by just turning off wjndows autoservices or not using windows 10 (8.1 has the same speed but is 1000X more reliable).

q6600.

Even phone have quad cores now. the q6600 was always the right choice from day 1 ten years ago. was slightly slower in the short term but had the last laugh in the long term.

Thanks. I'm going to stick with the q6600. Its kind of weird looking at this PC that was around $1200+ when I bought it. All the parts can be had off ebay for about $70.....