well im about to pull the trigger on a CPU but I can not decide between intel q9450 2.66GHZ QUAD CORE or the intel e8500 3.16 GHZ DUAL CORE

the q9450 runs with a 12 mb l2 cache (64 bit) and the e8500 runs with a 6 mb l2 cache (64 bit)


they are almost the same price from where I am getting them....which should I get??

sorry for the double post.....but just note that i will be going SLI with watercooling

It's an easy decision in simple terms. 4x 2.66 is obviously much better than 2x 3.16.

Think about it like this; would you rather have 2 guys rowing your boat or 4? It's an easy answer.

It gets a bit more complicated; some rivers may be too narrow to get all 4 oars in the water; as in some applications have yet to learn to utilize all 4 processor cores.

Luckily, the rivers are getting wider industry-wide. I'd say by next year Quad Core will be the gold standard. Go with the Q6600. The 3.16 GHZ is tempting, but in all honesty you'll find that you really don't need cpu clock speeds that high.