So christmas has come and gone, and I ended up getting some $$ instead of a new computer towards one. I've been shopping around and have come to a bit of a conundrum. I'm not sure which processor I should get for GAMING. I'll be doing a LOT of gaming, and pretty much nothing but for this machine. I can figure out the vid card stuff and the RAM, but when it comes to dual core vs quad core I'm just confused, and the benchmarks don't pit each one I'm looking at against each other. So..

Which of these two is better for gaming..

Dual Core E8500 (6mb l2 cache, 3.16 GHZ, 1333 FSB)

OR

Quad Core Q8300 (4mb l2, 2.5 GHZ, 1333 FSB)

This stuff really confuses me (the cache, ghz and fsb and what parts they play). I might be able to swing a Q9300 but that depends on how the funds come in in a couple days.

Any help is appreciated and thanks

Get the Q8300 and then OC it to > 3.1Ghz

(most games at the moment don't utilize all four cores in a quad and perform better on a higher-clocked dual-core, but if you OC a quad to the same clock it'll perform the same in games and still provide the benefits that quads do in everything other than gaming)

The dual core will be faster for older things, while the quad core will be faster on the very latest and future games. Honestly, both of those should be plenty fast enough unless you have a ridiculous video card configuration, so I'd go with the more future proof one.

Thats what I was thinking, basically just future proof myself in case. All those available benchmarks can get confusing.

Thanks a lot for the help, Quad core here I come

The iX series is amazing because it will overclock itself if it detects a program is using less then all threads.
I.E- Game uses one or two cores, it get's a 3.22 (On my i5 750, they go higher) Duel.
If it uses all four, then it gets a 2.66 quad.

dual, and turbo mode is cool but can limit OC (and a lot of people who have high OCs turn it off).

Well then turn it off, it's not for overclockers anyway.

Get the e8600 mate. Thats what I purchased with some christmas cash and I couldn't be happier. Found mine on ebay for $160. I've got her overclocked to 4.2 ghz on air just fine. Best processor I have ever owned and by far easiest to overclock. Chews up anything you can throw at it and runs nice and cool.

I've got her mated up to a XFX 4850 that I purchased on newegg for $125. Crysis is mere chump change for me at 1680x1050 all settings maxed.

Just a suggestion. =)

Think of it like this. The first one is like 2 separate 3GHz CPUs, while the second is like 4 separate 2.5GHz ones. It's a bit more complicated than that but for comparison purposes it's close enough. Basically, it means your computer will be able to either perform 2 or 4 separate tasks at once. Don't forget system tasks running in the background at the same time of the game count too. Most games don't take full advantage of multicore yet so I've been able to get away with a 1 core 1.8 GHz for far longer than I've should with a system tweaked for minimal background tasks. But even the one extra core takes a load off the game and gives it more speed.

I'm going to go for 4 cores myself with my new system.

Don't worry about the cache size or FSB speed, they are not the more important figures (well I think the FSB controls overclocking speed as well as which mobos it'll work with...)

You should look up single-core benchmarks on each CPU. They're a different series and I don't know if any architectural changes are significant enough to make a speed difference.

In other words, look at real world figures and not GHz ratings.