E8400 or Q9550

[KrazyTrumpeter05]

hold on, lets say i can get a quad-core cpu or a dual-core cpu they both run at the same clock speed/fsb speed, and have the same amount of l2 cache, or perhaps the quad-core has a bit MORE l2 cache... your telling me the quad core will preform WORSE then the dual-core? im sorry but, that does not make much sense.. it HAS to be ATLEAST on par with the dual-core if not slightly better.

I would get the quad-core, honestly. That 9550 will run extremely well, and you probably won't have to do much overclocking, if at all. Plus, who knows? Maybe sometime in the hopefully sort of nearish future the devs will add support for more cores, but don't count on that too heavily.

Quad cores FTW, regardless!

[The Warrior]

RESULT: Both Are The Best.

[seinfeldx]

I would go with Q9400s 2.66Ghz 65w, less power, 6mb cache, higher Thermal Specification, with bus of 400 you get 3.2Ghz.

[Marlec]

My Advise to you:

Q9550: is the best for everything but Not Really good For PCSX2. this Q9500 can get Good speed at almost many games.
Reason: It has Quad-Core and PCSX2 have a Special Speed Boost for
Dual-Core i.e Dual-Core Mode(DC)

E8400: Can get The Full Speed I have seen many Videos Our BOSS "Bositman" also have this one, you must get this one, anyone having E8400 never had Speed Issues and if have Speed Issues After getting Good Ram and Video Card the problem gets solved this means that E8400 is the Best For PCSX2.

Well i plan on using the CPU for PCSX2, Dolphin & NullDC plus of course i play regular games on PC Fallout 3, Grid & COD etc so its for all gaming on PC. I take it Bositman has his E8400 OC`ed highly ??. My prime need on PCSX2 is for FFX, atm i got a E6600 OC`ed @3Ghz & i get good performnce but i still get dips under the 60fps often, i love my games to be silky smooth from start to finish 60fps no more, no less

I would go with Q9400s 2.66Ghz 65w, less power, 6mb cache, higher Thermal Specification, with bus of 400 you get 3.2Ghz.

I did consider that CPU but its just as expensive as Q9550 but has less L2 cache, wat i really need to know is 6mb enuff or can i expect alot more performnce from an extra 6mb cache ??

[Sythedragon]

Cache's pretty pointless..

If it bothers you so much, get an E8600, and overclock it to 4.3GHZ.
Sorted.

[dark king]

Q9550 give you better performs in pc games and application

[Air]

I would go with Q9400s 2.66Ghz 65w, less power, 6mb cache, higher Thermal Specification, with bus of 400 you get 3.2Ghz.

I did consider that CPU but its just as expensive as Q9550 but has less L2 cache, wat i really need to know is 6mb enuff or can i expect alot more performnce from an extra 6mb cache ??

Cache is irrelevant. Caches matter around the 1-2mb mark. Differences between 2-4mb affect only very few applications (and never games or Pcsx2), and caches above 6mb are completely unused except perhaps for some very select few specific computer tasks [like maybe an extra 3% boost in one particular photoshop plugin on a specific image size].

I have a Q9400 and it's very nice. I was able to overclock it to 3.2ghz right out of the box, on stock cooling (tho I wouldn't make a habit of that if cpu longevity is a concern of yours), and to 3.4ghz easily with aftermarket cooling [link below]. After the initial burn in (a few weeks after buying it), I'm now able to bump it up to 3.5ghz without feeling like I'm working it too hard. A slightly more hardcore OC'er would likely run at 3.6.

Because it's a quad core, it *rarely* ever generates any concentrated heat. Most of the time processes run across all cores, balancing the heat distribution nicely eiev with a 70-80% avg load, so that no one core goes above 34c. Only the cpu burn in tests push the cpu's temp up, maxing out around 50c/55c [3.4ghz / 3.5ghz].

The cooler I use is this baby: http://www.sunbeamtech.com/PRODUCTS/cooler/cctf92.html -- It's pretty much the best you can get for air cooling.

[Gabest]

Well, gsdx in sw mode could use a few more megs to fit in all the frame/depth/texture buffers, using a texture 512x512 and above it begins to slow down a lot. I just wish larrabee was already in every cpu, those gather/scatter functions would improve locality a lot, the ps2 vram is already swizzled.

[PrinceGaz]

Whilst large L2/L3 cache sizes can help in many applications, I suspect PCSX2 is more sensitive to memory speed and latency, at least from the testing I did. Overclocking my CPU provided the expected increases in performance, but the necessary cranking down of the memory for a totally stable system had a surprisingly hard hit- almost to the point of cancelling out the increase I managed by upping the CPU.

When you think about it, PCSX2 is emulating several chips at the same time (presumably splitting time between them otherwise it would be capable of dividing itself between more than two threads). But those chips have access to 32MB of very fast memory which is too much to fit in even the largest L3 cache available today.

If there was ever a good reason to buy premium high-speed / low-latency modules, it is PCSX2. Admittedly you could buy a new PS2 console for less than the memory modules in question, but when has that ever stopped the PC upgrade madness

[Sythedragon]

So, what timings would you suggest?

My brother seems to enjoy good FPS on his, Intel E5200 : 3.45GHZ, using SSSE3. His RAM is at 900MHZ, 4-4-4-12 timings @ 2.1V.