Wednesday 29 April 2009

To Core i7 or Not? Just Go for a Core2 Quad Q9550

Today, I started to notice some weird fan noises coming from my Home PC that we use for general all around work and also for playing PC based games. So it made me realize that my want to move to better hardware may just have to be done sooner rather than later. Now as much as I would prefer to move to something like a MacBook Pro, I don' t have the budget to undertake that kind of move.

Thus I started to investigate the possibilities of upgrading the Hardware to move to either a Core2 Quad platform or even a Core i7 platform. To be honest, the upgrade which ever way I go would require a motherboard and RAM upgrade on top of the CPU. Also I more interested in going the Quad way to be able to better multitask :- i want to be able to watch or even edit multimedai all the while playing World of Warcraft.

Visting my favorit parts supplier in France, I noticed that the price of the Core2 Quad vs. Core i7 was not that much different (around €50 to 75) but the killer price impact is the motherboard and the need to use DDR3 RAM. The comparison that was done involved trying to get the same basic hardware infrastructre with only the CPU changing. That means that whichever direction was taken, the number of ports, memory (going for 8Gb), I/O support, audio, etc would be an almost 1:1 comparison. References to the different parts are attached in the links section of this article.

Truth be told, I would much rather go with the Core i7 option as it would have a longer life span. Unfortunately it's still an expensive option to go for and for the same price or less even, I could essentially walk away with not only the CPU/motherboard upgrade but also a brand new ATI 4890 graphics card. There is a whopping €225 to €275 difference which is not negligible an can' t be ignored.

You got to hate having to make these kinds of decisions! Seriously, I wish that I had cash to spare...

Let me know you thoughts and/or comments through this article or via my Seesmic Profile

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