CPU To Last Until Upgrade

Hello, I am currently about to purchase myself a new whitebook, however, unfortunately I do not currently have enough cash ready to buy a quad-core cpu or high end dual core. So, I am here to ask your opinions on which cpu I should get to last for possibly a year?

At the moment, I am mostly looking at either a P8600 or a P9500 for my cpu. If you have an other suggestions, I would be glad to hear them.

As for my uses of it, I will be mostly gaming and possibly doing a bit of programming, maybe even rendering. Also, other basic tasks will be performed as well. (The programming I do does not take immense periods of time to compile so a faster cpu isn't a huge concern at the moment)

Thanks.

 

If you have the cash then I suggest getting the P9500 just because its got 6mb L2 cache compared to 3mb for the P8600 plus its slightly fast in clock speed. The extra power will be useful for the applications you listed.

 

The difference between P8600 and P9500 is essentially by 100Mhz per core (as far as speed is concerned) and the fact that the latter comes with more cache ... games won't see the difference, but programming and rendering might (although it wouldn't really be too great as differences in clock speeds are minor).

Given the fact you mentioned you will be upgrading in about a year ... I'd spend less and go with P8600.
It's cheaper, and as I said earlier, the differences aren't noticeable.

 

P8600 is plenty powerful and will be good for over a year. After a year, the x9100 prices should be affordable by then.

Just make sure you get a good gpu.

 

Thanks for your replies!

@flipfire - Yeah, I planned on grabbing CF 3870s so I should be fine with that