BF2S Forums Processor Question

weamo8 wrote:

I am buying a new mid-range computer.  Here are the basic specs:

evga 680i mobo
2gb ocz ddr2 900 pc2-7200
evga 8800gts

My question is concerning the processor.  In benchmarks, the E6600 only performs about 10% better than the E6400, yet it costs about 50% more.  Most people seem to suggest that the E6600 is worth it, but I dont understand why.  I know it has more L2cache and a higher speed, but it still only translates to a ~10% increase.

What I dont understand is "bottlenecking" and overall performance.  Even though the E6600 does not look that much better in benchmarks, will it work much better in practice because it will bottleneck less?  Which processor should I get.

Thanks for your time.

Bertster7 wrote:

weamo8 wrote:

Thanks for the advice guys.  I do think it will be a nice system, but it isnt 2 X 8800GTX with a quad core extreme.  Anyways, I probably will go for the E6600, I just wasnt sure if the improvement was worth the cost.

Just to give you an idea on these things, my E6300 is at 3.41GHz (from 1.86) on air cooling (I've got a pretty big fan but that's it). My benchmark scores are higher than stock X6800s. The low end CPUs are a good way of saving money for other fancy components.