E8400 or E8500

[M31]

I'll be buying my new CPU on Monday, what would be the better from the above two CPU's for overclock, as near to or slightly above 4GHz on good air cooling?

Price difference is not so important the end gain in overclocking is, will be used for FSX not benchmarking, so reliable CPU speed is important.

No sign of the E8600 here any time soon, need to buy Monday to honor a friend who wants my current E6600.

Thanks.

[Lestat]

just get the 8400 and save your money for something else.
you can EASILY overclock the 8400 to 8500 speeds

[philbrown23]

neither! E7200, same multi as the E8500 and will clock the exact same but is just over $100 cheaper ;)

[WoZZeR999]

But a lot of current stuff takes advantage of the larger cache. Go with the 8400.

[WhiteFireDragon]

price difference isn't worth the gain. get an e8400 with a p45 and you can get a pretty high fsb OC

[golfjam]

I had 2 E8500 Q817 and both had temp problems. It overclocks well, I could do 500x8.5 or 470x9.5 easily, but temps were way too high (75C+ 1.350v load ). Never had this kind of problem w/ E8400, always below 60C (475x9 1.375v). However, newer batchs (Q815+) need more voltage.

[Rickpatbrown]

I could do 500x8.5 or 470x9.5 easily, but temps were way too high (75C+ 1.350v load ).

That sucks. That thing was just begging to go higher. Could it have been the temp sensor?

Both chips are clocking pretty high these days. So much depends on what batch you get my E8400 sucks. I don't think anyone can say if Intel is speed binning the E8500's or not.

The only advantage appears to be the higher multiplier. If you have a decent motherboard, you shouldn't have a problem hitting a high enough FSB to max out either a 9 or a 9.5 multiplier.

Keep in mind that I am biased. My thinking led me to an E8400.

[scooter.jay]

E8400 is ok if you have a motherboard that can do high fsb like P45/P35

[1Tanker]

I would say E8500. I have the E8400, but FSX likes CPU speed...and the 9.5x multi will make it a breeze to hit 4GHz. Definitely get an E8x00 series Wolfdale instead of an E7200. The extra cache will help in FSX, especially if you're running one of the newer graphics cards like the 9800GTX/GTX+ or HD48x0's... which can become CPU-bound... believe it or not. :cool:

[golfjam]

That sucks. That thing was just begging to go higher. Could it have been the temp sensor?

Both chips are clocking pretty high these days. So much depends on what batch you get my E8400 sucks. I don't think anyone can say if Intel is speed binning the E8500's or not.

The only advantage appears to be the higher multiplier. If you have a decent motherboard, you shouldn't have a problem hitting a high enough FSB to max out either a 9 or a 9.5 multiplier.

Keep in mind that I am biased. My thinking led me to an E8400.

It wasn't the temp sensor. I've installed an E8400 and got 57C load @ 4ghz. Just google "E8500 temps" and a bunch of people have the same problem. I remember reading about a "temp glitch" in the early e8400 batches. Maybe it's the same thing. It's a shame because I'm pretty sure I could run 475x9.5 24x7 on air if it ran cooler.

[Lestat]

It wasn't the temp sensor. I've installed an E8400 and got 57C load @ 4ghz. Just google "E8500 temps" and a bunch of people have the same problem. I remember reading about a "temp glitch" in the early e8400 batches. Maybe it's the same thing. It's a shame because I'm pretty sure I could run 475x9.5 24x7 on air if it ran cooler.

it is the temp sonsor. the on die temp sensor build into the chip.
the E8500's are fooked.

[M31]

Thanks for replies.

Motherboard I'll be using will be an Asus Rampage Formula x48 with something like a Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme for cooling and will use an ATI 4850 and another later for crossfire.

Are you guys saying the E8500 reads the temps wrong in that it reports as higher temps than they really are? If so cant you just work round this if you know what a wrong temp should be? quite like the idea of the slightly higher multiplier over the E8400.

For FSX, the E8xxx series clocked as stably high as possible is best bang for buck for sure.

Thanks.

[Leeghoofd]

Both my E8500 didn't have stuck or borked sensors... but 3 of my E8400 collection had, there was also a hot idler and that CPU's IHS was total messed up... I lapped it and never looked back... temps dropped 10-15°C and voltages too...

E8400 gets my vote, most peeps use 450 or 500FSB anyway so to pay the premium for the E8500 is useless as most CPu's are only stable at 4-4.2Ghz region with acceptable volts...

[Stormgiant]

I've picked yesterday a E8500 due to the cutting prices that went thru now and i got it at the price of the Q6600 G0.
I've been running FSX at 1920x1200 on my Q6600@3.200 for half a year now and decided to test the mhz vs core thing in FSX.
I've been upping E8500 clocks steadly and i'm seeing that on lower speeds, the Q6600 is about 2fps quicker then the E850.

Next thing is to check if the E8500@+4.000 equal the performance of the Q6600@3.200.

If youre buying video card power because of the FSX, don't mind. It doesn't use it. I've moved from a 8800GTS 320 to a GX2 and fps didn't increased a notch.