E6850 vs Q6600 - The Debate

Alex_6n2 · 25 Jun 2007 at 12:01

Well the 1333fsb conroes are nearly here and from what I can see these two will be priced almost the same. There's been the same debate on a lot of the forums found over the pond but it just seems to be full of people jumping in saying "Quad core is *** 1337" but I'm not convinced.

Benchmarks Comparison

Obviously the advantages of four cores can be seen in some of the bench tests, but for games and a lot of the other tests the E6850 seems to come out on top, by quite away, from the Q6600.

What's everyone think? Q6600 or E6850? Quad core future proof or high speed fsb bandwidth? The new conroes seems to be a good route for high clock speeds on low volts which makes them even more tempting.

tyranus · 25 Jun 2007 at 12:12

I'll be going with an E6850 myself, i don't overclock so a stock 3Gig core 2 if it's around £180-200 ish pounds sounds good to me

I don't think I'd actually use 4 cores at the moment

EDC · 25 Jun 2007 at 12:13

I still can't say, whichever one you choose will be superseeded by 45nm Wolfdales & Yorkfields come January 2008 and that's a whole new ballgame.

Paul11 · 25 Jun 2007 at 12:16

EDC said:
I still can't say, whichever one you choose will be superseeded by 45nm Wolfdales & Yorkfields come January 2008 and that's a whole new ballgame.

yes, but not everyone will be upgrading that quickly, so they need to choose something now that will last them til their next upgrade.

There is always something new coming out..

EDC · 25 Jun 2007 at 12:21

I agree, but but many people already own an Asus or Gigabyte or other P35 motherboard that supports 45nm technology, so for them it's a question of buy a Q6600 or E6850 now or wait until January for the Wolfdales & Yorkfields. Admittedly we still don't know what they will cost but I suspect you may need deep pockets for either of them ...

PinkFloyd · 25 Jun 2007 at 12:39

Completely depends on what you are going to be doing. If your a gamer at the moment get the 6850.
Meanwhile I'm going to be doing a lot of 3d work when I head back to Uni and will be taking a high end quad core with me

oweneades · 25 Jun 2007 at 13:09

Personally I would go for the quad core chip.

Future games I would imagine would benefit from more cores rather than higher clock speed.

Plus you can always overclock the quad core anyway to negate the clock speed difference.

However it really does depend what you want to do on it. In terms of real world gaming I doubt you would notice the difference between either cpu in current games (coupled with a high end GPU like a 8800GTX) as more of the load is on the GPU at the settings this sort of setup would be playing, however future games as I have said above could be a different story.

willhub · 25 Jun 2007 at 13:54

The only reason the E6850 is beating the Q6600 is due to the games not taking advantage of quad core right? so the Q6600 would actually be the best to go for, when the price drops and Q6600 are around E6600 price I will be upgrading my E6600 to a Q6600.

shokz · 25 Jun 2007 at 14:16

I'm undecided at the moment but I'm leaning towards the Q6600.

Either way, I know I'll be very happy with what I'm getting, and with a P35 motherboard there will be room for upgrading the CPU, perhaps this time again next year should the Penryn's take the odd price cut or two.

pastymuncher · 25 Jun 2007 at 19:43

I'll be getting a E6850 for my rig. Sole use is gaming so a quad will be wasted on me. £182.16 is a good price for a 3ghz C2D.

psychas · 25 Jun 2007 at 20:23

possible oc to 4 ghz?

Sparky · 25 Jun 2007 at 20:25

pastymuncher said:
I'll be getting a E6850 for my rig. Sole use is gaming so a quad will be wasted on me. £182.16 is a good price for a 3ghz C2D.

£50 for a clocked e2140 is even better value

tyranus · 25 Jun 2007 at 20:51

true but if you don't overclock its not so good

UltraDad · 25 Jun 2007 at 21:02

I will be getting a quadcore later in the year

, i do a lot of encoding and a lot of the programs i use can make use of the 4 cores, so i will have more time to kill things

as the work gonna get done quicker

pastymuncher · 26 Jun 2007 at 09:55

CS||nuTs said:
£50 for a clocked e2140 is even better value

Not when Oblivion crashes all the time because of the overclock. My 4300 at 3.4ghz is 24 hours Orthos stable and has no problems with any other game. Oblivion however, is a different story. Constant crashes to desktop at 3.4ghz but clocked back to 2.6ghz it works. It was the same on my old 939 rig. 4000+ at stock and it worked but clcock it at 2.7ghz and the same problem.

My thinking being that the 6850 is 3ghz at stock which will give me the extra performance i need for Oblivion if i need to run it at stock. Hopefully though i will be able to clock it to some serious level.

willhub · 26 Jun 2007 at 10:27

pastymuncher said:
Not when Oblivion crashes all the time because of the overclock. My 4300 at 3.4ghz is 24 hours Orthos stable and has no problems with any other game. Oblivion however, is a different story. Constant crashes to desktop at 3.4ghz but clocked back to 2.6ghz it works. It was the same on my old 939 rig. 4000+ at stock and it worked but clcock it at 2.7ghz and the same problem.

My thinking being that the 6850 is 3ghz at stock which will give me the extra performance i need for Oblivion if i need to run it at stock. Hopefully though i will be able to clock it to some serious level.

Those 6850's clock to 3.7ghz from what I seen? I got my E6600 at 3.2ghz and works in oblivion great but at 3.4ghz I need to feed the CPU 1.55v for it to work in Oblivion

BenJ · 26 Jun 2007 at 10:30

What should you be able to get the 6850 to on an air overclock?

DanF · 26 Jun 2007 at 10:51

You can tell that the Quads will really take over soon though when engines are designed to take full use of them, just look at the Chess render and the Encoding, about 80% faster clock for clock.

ots3go · 26 Jun 2007 at 10:53

pastymuncher said:
Not when Oblivion crashes all the time because of the overclock. My 4300 at 3.4ghz is 24 hours Orthos stable and has no problems with any other game. Oblivion however, is a different story. Constant crashes to desktop at 3.4ghz but clocked back to 2.6ghz it works. It was the same on my old 939 rig. 4000+ at stock and it worked but clcock it at 2.7ghz and the same problem.

My thinking being that the 6850 is 3ghz at stock which will give me the extra performance i need for Oblivion if i need to run it at stock. Hopefully though i will be able to clock it to some serious level.

So your overclock isn't 100% stable is it... :rolleyes:

richardbirks · 26 Jun 2007 at 10:54

One of the popular tech daily news sites lists the per 1000 (I'm assuming) pricing for the E6850 as $266. Taking into account VAT and other factors, I'd certainly expect them to launch at sub-£200.

Could be a very nice time for me to take the plunge and return to the dark-side after a 3 year affair with AMD chips

--
Richard
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