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e2160 Vs e6600 - a Melbourne720 Review

With the information provided, many thanks to the OP, it makes me wonder that as the 2160 is so cheap would it be worth waiting for the next up and coming price cuts from Intel before buying...? Not that I would be bothered about a few pounds off the cost but I'm wondering if there is something else in the bargain basement CPU market that is about to be launched that would be a 'better' choice over the 2160.....?
 
Thanks, as mentioned on the first page the 2180 with a 10x multi will be coming out on 26th August, and there will be a price cut to the e2160 then, but I doubt there will be much of a trickle down price cut on 22 July to this chip. The 2140 will be discontinued when the 2180 comes out.

Surely it won't be dropping much more than about £10 or so with the price cuts?
 
I can't imagine at the price point that it is already that there would be much, if anything at all, to knock of it - I can buy the 2160 for just over £54 at my local supplier, which is a good price.

Thanks for reminding me about the 2180 - I should have noted that in my response. Apart from the 10x multi I assume there will be nothing different about the CPU...?

For me the 2160 seems to be the perfect CPU to complement a Gigabyte P35 board and 2GB of Crucial memory :)
 
Devious said:
Melbourne720, Could you run a comparison test with Cinebech 9.5 please :)
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Hamoodii said:
nice review :cool:

couldnt try flight simulator X for us?
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Would love to, but I sold the CPU before I posted the review. And, as such, I'll only be able to compare all 3 CPUs with the current benches.

Should be able to include these apps/games in the e6600 Vs. Q6600 review though.
 
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Nice thread, have some stars! Particularly useful since comparing different people's results is almost meaningless as it's very rare that two different people will have machines that are identical in every aspect apart from the one you're comparing, and even when they are there's always the issue that one's might be slightly better-tweaked than the other's. Comparing results from the same person's computer identical in every respect but the CPU is the only way forwards.

Maybe someone should point out in case someone gets confused that some of the ridiculously high clocks some people get out of these chips are through watercooling and people shouldn't expect to get the same on air, just as a disclaimer! :) Though from what I've seen in the overclocking threads people have certainly been getting 3GHz on air on these.
 
Thanks manveruppd, much appreciated.

I saw I could get a cheap e2160 and thought why not? I was going to open my PC to lap my CPU (e6600) anyway. Not much more effort to lap the e2160 and do a compare.

I was so surprised by the decent performance of the e2160 I was seriously considering selling the e6600 and keeping the e2160. I had gone to a lot of trouble to get that e6600 (Sim Lim Square, Singapore) so I didn't want to part with it (I think I can push it further in the future anyway).

It seems games are more often than not GPU rather than CPU bound. For the same money as a e6850 and a 8800 GTS 640MB you can get a e2160 and a 8800 GTX - I know what runs games faster, and what I would get if I was buying tomorrow.

OH, and the CPUs were both cooled on air with a Tuniq Tower containing a nexus fan. All clocks were 8 hours orthos stable and all core temps were below 60 degreees.
 
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Reading yet again what you have written in this thread Melbourne720 providing that you can clock the 2160 to 3Ghz (and maybe a little more) what possible advantage could there be in buying a different dual core CPU..?

Apart from one with a larger cache like the E4300, I'm not sure if that would mean it could preform 'better' in any game or encoding situation etc, I'm having some difficulty in considering any other dual core due to what seems to be possible with these 2160's.

Maybe if there would be a difference with a CPU with a larger cache then the E4300 (I assume that it too should overclock ok) could be chosen over the 2160 for not much more cash, but more cache :D
 
Very interesting review.

I’m not into clocking yet so please forgive my ignorance but when you clock two CPU’s with different standard ‘stock’ clock speeds up to the same value do they end up running at broadly similar temps.

Is it perhaps the case that the one you have to clock more, typically runs hotter.
Whilst that may not be a major consideration it may be something to take account of.

Hope that makes sense.
 
Vimes said:
Reading yet again what you have written in this thread Melbourne720 providing that you can clock the 2160 to 3Ghz (and maybe a little more) what possible advantage could there be in buying a different dual core CPU..?
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The e2160 lacks some of the virtualisation techniologies, so if you were running virtual machines you should perhaps use the e6600.

I didn't do any non-gaming productivity type tests, and some encoding apps are optimised for larger caches. And Supreme Commander and CoH use the cache a bit. And it is possible that an e6600 could OC to a higher maximum than a e2160, but other than that there are very few advantages.

Vimes said:
Apart from one with a larger cache like the E4300, I'm not sure if that would mean it could preform 'better' in any game or encoding situation etc, I'm having some difficulty in considering any other dual core due to what seems to be possible with these 2160's.

Maybe if there would be a difference with a CPU with a larger cache then the E4300 (I assume that it too should overclock ok) could be chosen over the 2160 for not much more cash, but more cache :D
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If I was building a sub £1000 system, I'd use a e2160. Over £1000, I'd probably go for a Q6600.

Marse said:
Very interesting review.
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Thanks :)


Marse said:
I’m not into clocking yet so please forgive my ignorance but when you clock two CPU’s with different standard ‘stock’ clock speeds up to the same value do they end up running at broadly similar temps.
Click to expand...

The main things that affect temps are clock speed and volts. The e2160 need 1.4V to stay stable at 3GHz, and the e6600 needed 1.2875V. However the e2160 ran slightly cooler as the cache produces a lot of heat, and the smaller cache generally means less heat.

Marse said:
Is it perhaps the case that the one you have to clock more, typically runs hotter.
Whilst that may not be a major consideration it may be something to take account of.

Hope that makes sense.
Click to expand...

Makes perfect sense, but the chip temp only really reacts to the clock speed and the voltage (and to some extent the cache) rather than the degree of the overclock. The chip 'doesn't know' how far it has been overclocked, only how fast it is running now.
 
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great post, glad someone who actually owns both chips finally did a comprehensive comparison, definitly getting one of these to hold till quad penryns are cheap enough :)
 
Nice thread.
My last build has started to die prematurely I'm certain because of having my cpu overclocked too far, decreasing it's life span. My next build I don't fancy overclocking so I can keep it for as long as possible, 3 years+ maybe, so your concept I should probably keep away from? Or does intel chip's keep a good life expectancy on stable overclocks ?
 
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