Win XP with a Q6600

Getting a new PC, i choose the Q6600 over the E6850 cause they are the same price. BUT, i don't want to switch to vista yet, i want to stick to XP as long as possible, even if i know XP doesn't support the Quad 6600. I'll probably switch to vista in 1 year or so.

So, is it useless to runa Q6600 with XP ? does XP will run the Q6600 as if it was a dual core ? Like it will use two of the core @ 2.40 GHZ, and the two otherrs will remain unused ?

xp pro will use the quad core, but the e6850 will do better with games on xp, the quad will do better with multitasking

vista will use the quadcore better but vista isnt worth it imo, also crysis is like the only game right now that uses quad cores.

in short, your quad core will smoke with xp, and so wouldnt the e6850, they are both good buys, the quad was proly a better investment though

i personally just bought a e6750 running xp pro, lovin it

I have Q6600.

I have XP home and Vista home premium.

3Dmark06 CPU scoretest was 3400 with Vista and 3800 with XP home. XP home is a less CPU intensive OS obviously.

And yes it does support 4 cores efficiently, it says so in my task manager under perfomance tab.

I did have the impression multi-tasking was maybe a bit better in Vista, but my games perform better in XP.

I've got the Q6600, and I dual-boot XP Pro, and Vista Ultimate. Vista for DirectX 10 games, and XP for games created for DirectX9 only. I find that they look better in XP than in Vista.

You'll be fine, though I would recommend upgrading to Vista soon. That doesn't mean you have to delete your XP partition, just install Vista to a new parition to dual boot.

Great, thx, i feel at ease now ! The guy who's building my PC (i never learned how to do it myself...and i should ) told me it was useless to run a Q6600 with XP, cause XP doesn't use all the cores. I was trusting him, he got his own little PC company ( i know him through my father ) and he always made me good PCs,for low prices, and i never got any probs.

Anyway, i got XP pro ( and i never paid for it ), but apparently, Vista is impossible to pirate. Im glad to hear Xp pro use all the 4 cores on a Q6600. I want to play Crysis, so the Q6600 will run it better than a E6850. . ...

lol, yea, im SO afraid Microsoft/the police will get my e-mail/ip adress and punish me !!!!

i wasnt actually talking about you...rickykemp

who WERE you talking about? O.o

lol, yea, im SO afraid Microsoft/the police will get my e-mail/ip adress and punish me !!!!

Aneurysm