Quad core - dual core good time to buy or not?

[CrashnBurn]

I am looking to replace my P4 3.4Ghz this thing is running on its last breath i think
so i was looking into quad and dual cores.
I want something which is going to serve me for a bit again.
I am not the type of person that buys a new CPU every x months.

So i was wondering if there are any big changes coming to these 2 cpu types.
which are worth waiting for.


Hope some of you might shed some light into this for me.
Thanks

[WyZe]

If you're thinking about quad core, wait until it's REAL quad core and not two dual cores stuck on one package,

[joshalabama]

For the money I would go dual core...

[Rudboy]

I would wait until April 22nd if possible, Intel is going to cut prices on all of the Core 2 Duo's and make a few changes to the E6300 and E6400. The price cuts are pretty huge and the E6300 and E6400 will become the E6320 and E6420 with bigger L2 caches.

You can read the post in more detail here.

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...=intel+slashes

[jmilch]

Originally Posted by CrashnBurn

I am looking to replace my P4 3.4Ghz this thing is running on its last breath i think
so i was looking into quad and dual cores.
I want something which is going to serve me for a bit again.
I am not the type of person that buys a new CPU every x months.

So i was wondering if there are any big changes coming to these 2 cpu types.
which are worth waiting for.


Hope some of you might shed some light into this for me.
Thanks

As wyze pointed out, if you are going quad core, wait for true independant quad core CPU's, essentially the current available Intel chips are (2) dual cores, working in pairs, not all 4 cores working independently...

The Core2Duo 6600 or better have awesome performance for the $$ and if you are more into budget mind overclocking, check out the 6300 or 4300 and a nice stable overclockable board.

[CrashnBurn]

ok thanks for the information guys.
i think i will go for the dual core, besides its not as if we already need quad cores.
i assume the extreme dual cores are somewhat better then the regular.

edit: oh yeah what about sockets ? i noticed newegg has some listed which use socket M and some with LGA 775

[dshankar]

I believe Socket M is the Core 2 Duo mobile (Merom) processors. Socket 775 is what you want. I love the e4300, but if you have the money, go for a e6600. Quad core is a waste unless you run multiple, intense programs. I don't believe there are any games that are optimized to run on "4" cores (Its actually two 2-cores stuck onto a die).