Help choose between E8200 and Q9300 cpu...

potsy · Post by **potsy** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 4:55 pm

Hi all,
I have recently upgraded my mobo. Parts and install are provided by my neighbour (ailean online) who has been super helpful. He has been happy for me to try out both the Q9300 and E8200 cpu and keep whichever I like. The price for the parts will be the same either way (a neighbourly deal).

I thought the E8200 would be the better cpu (from a silence perspective) because the TDP is 65W: E8200 specs. The TDP of the Q9300 is 95W: Q9300 specs As I understand it this means the E8200 should be easier to cool by a long way - TDP as a rule of thumb tells you how much power/heat needs to be dissapated, so the E8200 dissapates roughly 2/3 of the heat of the Q9300.

However, in use I thought that the stock fan fires up earlier and faster for the E8200 which surprised me. Are my ears playing tricks on me? Or could that be explained by a power management feature for the quad core or something like that, making it quieter at idle?

I think in other respects they are pretty much the same for my purposes. Although the cpu speeds, cache speed & bus core ratios are different, I don't think someone like me would notice it. As I understand it, the quad core gives you advantages if you multitask, but that's not me. They are otherwise about as fast as each other give or take (2.5GHz & 2.66GHz).

So the question for me is - should I go with the numbers because they say the E8200 is easier to cool, or should I go with my ears which told me the fan was slower most of the time on the Q9300 (and because 'quad' sounds fancy hmmm...)?

Maybe I should just stop obsessing and go with the E8200 because that's what is currently in there and therefore less work! The cpu will ultimately be cooled by a ninja mini and maybe with a larger heatsink the difference is negligible.

Thanks heaps,
Potsy

System specs are here, except that I now have a GA-G33M-DS2R Mobo: potsy's puter

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:34 pm

You can get an idea of how they compare against eachother in this review (though they test the 8500 instead of the 8200).
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14573/15

At idle the difference is very small and even at load it shouldn`t be much more than 15 watts. Theese chips consume way less than their tdp suggests so the ninja should handle boht with ease.

So since the prive is the same you can safely choose based on your needs: the 8200 will be a little faster when running 2 threads or less with it`s slightly larger cache and faster clock while the 9300 is a little more future proof (the number of 4 threaded programs is increasing).

Lawrence Lee · Post by **Lawrence Lee** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:17 pm

In many cases, the E8200 will actually be faster. There aren't that many applications that can make use of more than 2 cores atm.

The stock fan for the E8xxx series is half the height of the regular Intel stock coolers, because they're so much easier to cool. Unfortunately that also means the fan has to spin faster because the heatsink is less capable.

fri2219 · Post by **fri2219** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:03 am

If I read your other post correctly, this machine is going to be for sound editing and music, so get the E8xxx.

It's a gross over generalization, but the E8xxx is better for human interactive applications, like games and word processing while the Q9300 is better used for virtual machine servers, application servers, and development.

Despite the fact that this style of programming been taught since the early 90's, very few analysts and programmers out there can seem to wrap their heads around multi-threaded I/O, so the extra cores are going to sit idle most of the time.

potsy · Post by **potsy** » Mon Apr 28, 2008 4:59 am

Thank you all for your help, it really makes things easier. Yep, music is the thing so the E8200 is the go.

Also, I think the E8200 just had a noisier stock fan which made be worry that it would be louder. In fact it runs cool - I unplugged the fan and with a light load it sat at about 40C for ages. So I loaded the CPU to 100% with stability tester and it still took about 15mins to get to 50C. Unless speedfan is wrong, it's amazing for the little heatsink with no fan. So you're right, the ninja mini will handle it easily.

Thanks again, Potsy

PS, ntavla, thanks for your reply when I was worried about power consumption. It has been running rock solid on the mCubed 200w psu. This low powered stuff is just great isn't it!

ame · Post by **ame** » Mon Apr 28, 2008 6:55 am

If you are using Protools (from your previous pic...) Q9300 will just about double your preformance.

goto http://duc.digidesign.com and check out the LE, best core2 thread.

ST · Post by ST » Mon Apr 28, 2008 4:18 pm

See the review of AT review of E8200 vs Q9300 (and AMDs offerings as well as older 65nm CPUs) :

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3272

It will give you a general idea of what to expect from performance and power comsumption standpoint.

potsy · Post by **potsy** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:00 am

Thanks ame, I don't know why I didn't think to look on the protools forums. The dverb test at the start of that thread has results for the E6600 and Q6600. I have the E8200 in now and ran dverb benchmark with similar results to the the E6600 (140 verbs). That indicates that the results in that thread will also apply to E8200vQ9300 - twice the plugin power with the quadcore. I didn't have a clue that could be the case. In fact I thought the 8200 might be faster. Wow.

ame · Post by **ame** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:25 am

yeah potsy,
Just read on the other thread you allready got the 8200, witch is kick ass dual core in it own right.
When a new chip is released I allways use the 3DS-max result at arnandtech as relevant to PT preformance as it also uses all 4 cores.

Still fast FSB and 140-160 dverbs on your 8200 is powerful and you probably not even reach the top.
I get about 230 dverbs on my Q6600 and on the most demanding session I have ever mixed I used maybe 45-50% of that. the 8200 is (using anand as referance) 60-70% of a Q6600. so if I had 8200 it would likly be enough as well.

potsy · Post by **potsy** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:48 am

Yep, I have the E8200, but I can change it to the Q9300 if I want. So, as always I'm in two minds but I'll probably keep the 8200. You're right, it will be easily enough for my needs. And on top of that I think it will run cooler so that probably makes it the better choice. There's no sense in having more than you need just so you can make noise cooling it - that's why were talking about this at SPCR after all!

xafier · Post by **xafier** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 1:36 am

One thing you should bare in mind is that you can really drop the voltage on the E8200, if you keep it stock speed you can probably drop it to about 1.05v, if you want to overclock it a little to say 3.2Ghz (400 x 8 ) you can still undervolt it to about 1.1125v

The new 45nm chips are great for low voltage use.

Esben · Post by **Esben** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:33 pm

I'm also an E8200 user. Since the CPU consumes so little power (~27W DC), it can be cooled very easily. The stock heatsink really stinks, so I replaced it with the Scythe Ninja Mini. Because it sits right next to my PSU fan, I skipped the fan installation, and the temperatures are still great! I can definitely recommend changing the stock cooler.

The quad-core will likely use double the power, ~55W, so that'll make it more difficult to cool. The Ninja Mini will have no problems with it, but I doubt you can run it fanless.

I choose the dual-core CPU over a quad-core, because in the next one-two years, I'll likely not run many applications taking advantage of a quad-core CPU. And then heat/noise is of bigger importance for me.