Q8400 v E8400

4ghz isn't necessary. A quad is more of a safe bet, because even though your CPU will run a few 100mhz slower than the dual core, having the extra cores would turn out to be better. a CPU at 4ghz won't give much of a boost over 3.6ghz.

funny i should run into this argument here, i was debating this on my clan forums, i was the only one saying go for the q8400 due to a bit more future proofing as things become more multithreaded, it may not be the fastest quad but there is a bit of overclock headroom as well, around a ghz. dunno why people seem to want to cling to dual cores still.

Hmm a good dualcore over a bad quad anyday.

Hmmm I tend to go the AMD route myself, but thats just because I like spending little to get a lot.
But that saying if I had the money it would be a no brainer and id go Intel every time.

I would go for the intel option of either the Q8400 or E8400. Depending on what you want would determine what you need, but the quad would be the better bet just because more games are going to use more than two cores.

PCFormat, a magazine I get over here in the uk put a Q8400 up against a 720 Black Edition. At stock voltage the Q8400 was almost twice as fast as the 720 be in everything.
To be honest the Q8400 could give the quad 955 a run for its money!

If you factor in upping the voltage then its a closer run thing between AMD and Intel, but on stock voltage the Intel cpu's would overclock by a whole 1GHZ compared to the 3-600 MHZ of the AMD's.

Q8400 is what they put in shitty Dell computers to market quad cores in desktop computers.

E8400 is a 3.0Ghz dual core

Q9550 is a 2.83Ghz Quad core that is 45nm

Q9550 is the only choice

I own the q8400 and belive me the performance is amazing.... Gaming will never be the same with 2 cores ... Get Q8400 what ever people say " its crap for gaming " They chat shit.... i get 30fps 9800gx2 1gb SLI MAXXED 1920x1200 With this Q8400...

I have E6600 and only Got 23FPS

Huh, lol.. What game? 30fps with that? That sure aint healthy.

Hey Rice, whoever does NOT clock their E8400's can be sent straight to the deepest hells. And yeah the q9550 really is a ballin' cpu, but yeah a bit stiff price

920Â http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202&cm_sp=DailyDeal-_-19-115-202-_-Product

55 FPS with BFG 9800GTX+ Resident Evil 5 bench  FTW