The Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400, another Quad Core 2 LGA775 saver Review @ Magicmc.com Reviews

The Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400, another Quad Core 2 LGA775 saver

The Intel Core2 Quad Q8400 has 2MB of L2 cache instead of the 4MB found in the Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q9400. All of the other specs are the same, until you reach the price, which is the cost of a meal or two ($35). While the extra cache in the Q9400 is indeed a performance breaker between the two, a little overclocking on the part of the Q8400 closed the performance gap quite well.

The nearest AMD competitor in its class is the AMD CPU Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz Quad, and though the Q8400 ran slightly less efficient than its direct competitor, it really suffered no noticeable real world performance loss until competing with a much higher clock speed AMD chip.

The single most impressive scores for the Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q8400 was in Cinebench 3D benchmarking. It trounched the AMD Phenom X4 920 which carries a clock speed of 2.8GHz. The results were even more dramatic with 4 cores fully loaded.

If you need a good, but not a great mid level chip, then get this budget chip. The Intel Core2 CPU Q9400 will cost you $35 more 2 MB L2 cache, which you will never miss unless benchmarking. Unless you plan paying more for a AMD that can beat it every time it is a best buy. Just overclock it. If you're not into tinkering, and you think that a few bucks for the enabling of a few more MB of L2 cache will help you sleep better at night, then opt for the Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q9400 instead.

I can see that Intel plans on leaving no real room for a competitor to slip in by having its Quad Core CPUs compete against other Intel CPUs like this. They should do more of this with the i7 models to push the X58 platform to ubiquity, and watch the prices drop.

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