Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail £169.99 delivered @ eBuye

Can anyone please advise:- Whether the Q6600 Or The New E6850 Is better, mainly for Flight Sim X and some Graphics Work

So much so for a great deal eh?

was expecting these to come in closer to the £160 mark

They may drop to around that in a few weeks, but I wouldn't hold out for it, the prices retailers are paying for them is closer to the £150-£160 mark and they obviously want their cut, so £170 is about right.

Anyone know if eBuyer are offering G0 stepping with these? I presume they had a pretty large stock of them anyway, so will be clearing out the older stock first.

How is that related to this?

talkshop pointed to the other deal @ eclipsecomputers which is £5 cheaper but for an item of this price I would certainly got for eBuyer over eclipse anyday knowing you are in safe hands. Also read the reviews some HUKD members posted about eclipse.

As far as I know with the latest patches Flight Simulator X makes very good use of all four cores of a quad core CPU so definately the Q6600 is best.

It's also at Scan for a bit more but they say that they have the new 95w version in. Personally now I've done research on XP64 and Vista 64, I'm not sure I can be bothered to upgrade to a 64 bit multi core cpu because there aren't very many programs that use 64 bit or the cores. At the same time you can't use more than 4 gig of ram (useful for graphics and music work) without having a 64 bit version of Windows. Seems to still be waiting time.

Who exactly said they had the G0 steppings in? On their support forum on Hexus there are people asking and the guys from Scan always say they cannot say which stepping they have in because they get them from several different suppliers.

I e-mailed their customer support and they said that the version they stock is the 95W Energy Efficient version.

Thanks, I'll probably ring through an order tommorrow then so I can be certain they send me a G0 stepping one.

Eclipse takes a while - sometimes a long while - to respond to orders and communications. I'm not all that impressed with them from the orders I've made previously as items listed as "in stock" rarely actually are and then you sit waiting. That was OK for my last order (and I knew better by then) as it was some casemods (sound dampening) a new keyboard and a drive bay air filter and those weren't urgent, but I've cancelled orders that I placed early on with them as I needed those items soonest, not someday.

Unfortunately, this is how a lot of the smaller online computer component shops work - list things, then order them when you get an order, while all the time maintaining that you actually have stock. Ebuyer does actually stock its stock, and I've done good business with them.

As for what is the better processor, the Q6600 is a 4 core processor, the E6850 is a faster dual core processor with a faster FSB. A more technical discussion can be had here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/22...50-q6600-price but basically the 4 cores will generally do more work slower while the dual cores will do a smaller ammount of work faster IF you have the motherboard FSB and memory to support it. Considering lots of programs aren't set up for 4 cores right now, you might find it more advantageous to have the E6850 now but the Q6600 will hold out better in the long term and will be able to do more with future software or more at the same time now (4 cores, no waiting you might say).

£170.20 delivered from Magenta (whoever they are?)

http://www.shopmagenta.com/product/M...b-2b00052196b6