Purchasing a new CPU any suggestions.

[kayen85]

Again cutting me off...

I decided to go through Dell, just makes my life easier.

I think I narrowed it down to what I want. Take a look see if this is a viable system.

Dell Inspiron 530 Pirce 879$ includes Monitor(-200ish=679$ for comp)
Intel Core2 Duo Processor E8300 (6MB L2 Cache,2.83GHz,1333FSB)
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 4DIMMs
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache
ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO 128MB (only offer ATI...)

I know the video card isn't insane but like I said the most graphical intense thing I do is play eq, should that be sufficient? These are the other 2 options
ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB [add $40 or $1/month1]
Radeon ATI HD 2600 XT 256MB [add $90 or $3/month1]

Question: I have done a little homework on this but still not sure
which is better, faster duo, or slower quad. I am not sure I use
anything that would really make any use of the quad.
Intel Core2 Duo Processor E8300 (6MB L2 Cache,2.83GHz,1333FSB) [Included in Price]

Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB) [add $50 or $1/month1]
Dell Recommends

What do you guys think?

[GeorgeS]

The Intel Core2 Duo Processor E8300 is a better proc IMO. I have quads and a T9300, and for video encoding the quad is better, but for EQ, the faster dual core proc is my choice. I'm running a T9300 and a Gforce 8800 GTS on my laptop and cannot believe the speed.

Regarding the graphics, the better card is always better then a slightly faster CPU, unless the CPU bottlenecks the GPU. In your case, I would go for the ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB .

GeorgeS