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My Q6600 is considerably quicker than my Phenom II 955

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,188
Very few Q6600's really hit 3.6-3.8Ghz, its simply too hot, uses a lot of power, and isn't stable for the majority, a few cherry samples hit 4Ghz, the P2's overclock on average a decent amount higher than a Q6600.

But thats irrelevant, the benchmarks the OP is using are completely synthetic with almost no tie in to real world performance. What the C2D can do on something as simple and predictable as superpi, is just a real world situation it can't replicate very often at all.

Its similar to the fact that a 4890 has 800 shaders, even half speed, of Nvidia and its raw horsepower with a much smaller core is massively higher, but it needs to use each 5 instructions in each cluster to use all 800 shaders at once, in reality theres a mix of instructions, sometimes its only doing 1 out of 5 and is significantly lower than Nvidia who can pretty much use most of the 240 shaders every single time. But sometimes AMD can use the whole 5, and most of the time its between 2-4 instructions. It averages out to very very good performance.

Here the C2D is like the ATi card, under best case scenario, it can do all 5 instructions(its actually 3 iirc), but in real world it will do 1 instruction or 2, FAR more frequently than it can use 3 instructions per clock.

The Q6600 was always a great cpu though, great value , great price point and great performance, Nvidia hadn't really replaced it, only with worse cheaper cpu's, and more expensive and not hugely better cpu's.

However, I wouldn't buy one now on a dead socket. An AM3 or AM2+ system will take cpu's being made over the next couple years still, deffo 6 core's if you should need them, maybe even higher in the future, so a lot of expansion capability.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
90,819
Main problem with the Q6600 not hitting the higher overclocks is a lot of motherboards just aren't designed to supply the current for a 65nm quad - get it on a good P45 board or similiar and 3.6+ should be easy.
 
Caporegime
Joined
14 Dec 2005
Posts
28,071
Location
armoy, n. ireland
Main problem with the Q6600 not hitting the higher overclocks is a lot of motherboards just aren't designed to supply the current for a 65nm quad - get it on a good P45 board or similiar and 3.6+ should be easy.
The board used made a great deal of difference with mine, no more than 3.0ghz on an evga 680i a1 (supposed quad riendly revision) switched over to a p45 p5q deluxe, 3.8ghz prime stable with relative ease, though i ran it daily at 3.6ghz, one thing i did notice though was that the last production run q6600's didnt seem to overclock as well as earlier batches.
 
Associate
Joined
6 Nov 2005
Posts
157
I noticed all you did was change the multiplier on the Phenom 2, you do realise you can do more than just raise the multiplier.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2006
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3,422
Location
127.0.0.1
But yes, personally I'm totally unimpressed by the Phenom 2. Which is why I'll be moving to a Q9400 or Q9550 when I get some more funds. Yorkfields can easily get over 4ghz on air cooling while outperforming the Phenom2 clock for clock.

It is something that makes me chuckle really, it's maybe a bit harsh to call P2 a complete failure but apart from brand loyalty :rolleyes: i don't know why anyone goes P2 over a Yorkfield......the Intel is a monster clocker and has a much greater selection of top line motherboards.

i was @ 3.85ghz 24/7 on my q6600 (under water) 2 years ago, well done AMD.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,616
Location
Finland
It is something that makes me chuckle really, it's maybe a bit harsh to call P2 a complete failure but apart from brand loyalty :rolleyes: i don't know why anyone goes P2 over a Yorkfield...
Phenom II is actually good upgrade from original Phenom but still those highest clocked versions only manage to struggle along with Yorkfield and probably for consistently guaranteeing stability default voltage makes them compete with hottest P4s in power consumption.
While still loosing to Phenom in specific areas (because of architectural differences) whole Core 2 architecture is simply very balanced and high performing... actually in most games Nehalem has probably clearly worser performance per watt ratio than Yorkfield.
 
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