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Q6600 or Q9550?

Phunky Phish

Phunky Phish

Phunky Phish

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Joined
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869
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St. Neots
Hi

Getting a new chip for a build for a friend.
He wants a quad so its either a Q6600 or Q9550

My question is which is the better clocker?

And are the Q6600 being sold at the moment good clockers?!

I know a lot of the early ones were good but read a lot now about hi VID's (?) slowing the later chips down.

Cheers for your help
 
Well my Q9550 overclocks to 3.6Ghz stable on Air so 800Mhz @ 38C Idle & 55c Load OC is a fair amount. and the 12MB Cache is a huge bonus.

I have heard you can get the Q9550 to 4.2Ghz on water easy enough.

I also hear prices are due to be slashed by intel next month!
 
Last edited:
Phunky Phish said:
Hi

Getting a new chip for a build for a friend.
He wants a quad so its either a Q6600 or Q9550

My question is which is the better clocker?

And are the Q6600 being sold at the moment good clockers?!

I know a lot of the early ones were good but read a lot now about hi VID's (?) slowing the later chips down.

Cheers for your help
Click to expand...
No idea about the q9950 > q6600 comparison, but I got a q6600 as a Xmas prezzy (from the other half! :eek: she does love me!:D). It has a vid of 1.2875 and overclocks well. It is at 3.6 and there is a noticeable difference with my old e4300 @ 3.0. Windows is much more responsive, photoshop of course. But games are much smoother as well. I play at 1680 x 1050 and I can now play Fallout3, Med 2 Total War, Mass Effect at higher settings smoothly.
 
Well here are the differences:

The Q9550 uses the newer 45nm process and has 12mb cache and runs natively at 2.83Ghz.

The Q6600 is the older 65nm process with 8mb cache running at a native 2.4Ghz. The newer ones also have a higher VID than the older ones so do not overclock so well.

My recommendation is the Q9550. It has more cache, uses the cooler running 45nm process, therefore making it run cooler and more efficiently. The smaller process should also mean that it can overclock better. You shouldn't really go Q6600 it's old tech now, but with the Q9550, maybe you should wait for the Q9550S...
 
Clock for clock the Q9550 is 10% faster than the Q6600.

I have had both, Q9550 @ 4.0GHz, and Q6600 @ 3.7GHz (both on air); where I did find the Q9550 to be >10% (in performance), was in video encoding.

So, if money is no problem, go for a Q9550, but if cash is a bit tight, then get the Q6600, which is still the best value for money CPU around.
 
I bought a Q6600 around november, it has a VID of 1.300 Volts, which is high. I'm still experimenting how high it'll go.
 
Got a Q6600 running at 2.8ghz prime 95 stable on air. Could probably push it quite a bit further if I tried. Running vista x64 and it absolutely flies. Obviously the Q9550 is a better processor but if its value for money your looking for i'd definately go for the Q6600 as I can't imagine there being a massive noticable difference between the 2.
 
Got my Q9550 running @ 3.4Ghz on 1.18V using an air cooler, if money isnt a factor I would defo go for the Q9550. I am hoping to get those volts a bit lower soon hopefully.
 
Go for Q9550 if you can.
I'm happy with my Q6600 as OC-ed to 3.4GHz on air today and my vid not the best one out there either, 1.3250
 
My Q6600 has the higher VID of 1.325, yet I still managed to clock it to 3.8Ghz. In my experience the VID has little to no difference on the max overclock.
 
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