[xactly]

what is the best cpu for gaming from what i'v read the q6600 is actually slighly worse than a e6600 upwards a t gaming so what is the best.

[necromancier]

whats your budget lol
i went for the e6750, £116 from dabs.co.uk. similarly priced on other websites.
2.66ghz, 1333fsb, 4mb cache.
i dont think quad cores are optimised at all in games anyway, so go duel core, itl save you £60.

[alex]

Hey up Necromancier. Yeah, would have to agree, the only game I know of that works with all four cores of a quad cpu is Flight Sim X, and only after a patch.

[slipend]

Athlon 64x2 6000+
Dual-core clocking in at 3.0Ghz!

[xactly]

would the e6850 be the best

[alex]

Originally Posted by xactly would the e6850 be the best

It's the fastest (therefore the best) cpu at stock speeds. And considering the core2 architecture has time and again be proven to, mhz for mhz, wipe the floor with AMD's cpu's then i'd also say it's better than any current AMD chip.

But if you take overclocking into it then I'd still have to say X6800 because of it's unlocked multiplier and it only runs slightly slower (mhz) than the E6850 at stock.

Thinking about it a bit more though, I reckon with a decent mobo, with decent voltages you could see 4+Ghz from an E6850.

[xactly]

my budget is £200 max for the chip.

[skinnyman9000]

I was deciding between the E6750 and the Q6600.

It seems that at the moment the duo is the way to go, but obviously as time goes by the quad core processors will come into play. I think for future proofing the quad cores are the way to go. Even if the Quad core runs in the same mode as a duo it will only be slightly slower, to the point where you wont notice.