C2 Q9550 @ 3.5Ghz or E8600 @ 4.5Ghz for older games?

[HTownDowner]

I'm looking to upgrade my gaming system; I'm pretty casual at this point so I don't want to spend more than 50-100$ on a new CPU (I already found a good deal on a pair of GTX460 cards so that's covered) I'll be playing a lot of Supreme Commander on it and I'm hoping to reduce simulation speed issues- even on my 2.2Ghz quad i7 laptop I get crazy slowdowns with lots of units, despite the actual framerate staying high. relevant benchmarks are super hard to find, since everyone focuses on framerate (which stays high even on an 8800GT with any CPU) and doesn't touch sim speed with thousands of units. Thoughts on fast dual vs. slower quad for this oldie?

[v0dka]

From my own extensive experience with SupCom and from having owned both an E8600 @ 4.5Ghz and a Q6600 at 3.6Ghz, I can say go for the E8600.

It gave me the better simspeed. Because SupCom depends heavily on single threaded performance. Although it does use 4 threads the heavy lifting is done on the first thread and high clockspeed is king. Forgive me for not going further into details as I'm going from memory on a game I haven't played in quite a while. If you're able to close the gap and creep the quad closer to 4Ghz or if you have a lemon E8600 the picture will change at some point, but I'm confident that even a relatively small clockspeed difference will negate the effect of having 2 extra cores in a quad.

Now your only problem is finding others with good enough hardware to run a survival game with 7000 units in positive simspeed.

[HTownDowner]

That was my inclination from what I've read about Supcom's architecture, thanks for confirming! E8600 it is then!

[v0dka]

God I miss that game actually.