cpu - dual or quad?

[pike8]

my configuration:
GA-P35-S3G
E8500 @ 3,95gHz
GTX460 1GB OC
WD Blue 640GB
...
Win7 Ultimate 32-bit

i use my computer for gaming, video editing/capturing/converting, and photo editing.
if i change my CPU and get an q8300, would i see any improvement?

 

[TP-Oreilly]

I would say yes... that is if the software you use uses all of the 4 cores.

 

[lyth0s]

Neither CPU has hyperthreading. Your L2 cache would be going from 6MB to 4MB and your base frequency would be going from 3.14Ghz to 2.5Ghz. Major benefit is that you'd be going from 2 cores to 4 cores, but other than that it is not too impressive of an upgrade. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html has the Q8300 rated higher than the E8500, but not by much. I would ask how much memory you have and if you have under 4GB (which you probably would with a 32 bit OS), I would suggest buying 6GB of memory and moving to a 64 bit OS. However, If I were you I would switch to an I7 computer build soon because your system specs are becoming outdated. IE the I7 outperforms the E8500 by a full 10 fold and then you could get DDR3 that is triple channel etc etc.

Bottom line: yes you should see a minor increase in performance with the CPU upgrade to 4 cores, however I would recommend saving up and building a new computer soon.

 

[Aastii]

It depends what you use it for. From your list, games and video editing will benefit, as will, to a point, video capture, beacuse more load will be on another core, freeing up clock speed of the others. For the other applications, if you are using several of them you will again see performance increase, but it will be mainly down to the clock speed that you have it at, rather than the number of cores for your single threaded programs

 

[JCB1]

I would say yes you will see an improvement. if ur CPU runs at close to 100% when u r gaming or running video converts you will defantly see an improvement