Q6600 Go vs Q9550 or x3360

Mikey · 5 Jul 2010 at 08:53

Been offered a Q6600 and it overclocks well.

Question is how does it compare against the Q9550 or X3360 as I'm also looking at these.

pastymuncher · 5 Jul 2010 at 09:15

The biggest difference is the price. A Q6600 will be considerably cheaper but will not clock as far as a Q9550 and will need more voltage and run hotter. Clock for clock the 45nm quads are a bit faster too.

Mikey · 5 Jul 2010 at 09:23

I'm on a Q6600 B3 at the moment with a 5870 Ati card and wanted to push it a bit further with a new CPU etc

Case wise I have a Corsair 700D inbound and will be using my Noctua air cooler.

I am aware the price difference

Dark_Angel · 5 Jul 2010 at 10:31

What clocks are you on with your current Q6600? It may not be worth the upgrade and better to save up for a cheap I3 / I5 or something.

Mikey · 5 Jul 2010 at 10:34

Q

Current B3 Q6600 is at 3Ghz

I think I'll be able to get the q6600 to 3.4 hopefully

Dark_Angel · 5 Jul 2010 at 10:46

Hmm... for 400 MHZ it might not really be "super" worth it... I3's can clock to about 4GHZ and are faster clock for clock, and for about 350 - 370 you can likely get an I5 (Some of the intel chips are going down in price in late aug).

Then again, I guess it's just over 10 percent increase, if you can get a Q6600 for cheap enough, it may be the better option, but of course it's pure luck what you'll get in clocks.

You could do some googling (I'm at work right now so can't really do it) for comparsions between the 3 chips, in particular the 9xxx series chips.

Mikey · 5 Jul 2010 at 11:54

I'll do some digging around more at lunch time

MoRT489 · 5 Jul 2010 at 15:00

Unless it costs u £10 or less for the upgrade to a Q6600 G0 stepping it wouldnt be worth the extra 400MHz imo. My vote went for the Q9550 as i wanted a new toy to play with better than my Q6600 but there isnt a noticeable difference at the same speed other than temps but i can push this to 4GHz when my Q6600 only got to 3.5GHz. You could be waiting a fair while to get hold of a Q9550 tho people dont seem to want to sell them!

iTek · 5 Jul 2010 at 15:20

my Q6600 G0 does 3.6Ghz easy on air with fair temperatures its been as far as 3.8Ghz but the temperature increment was not worth the extra speed.

I am new to Intel but I am very happy with the Q6600 G0 and certainly wouldnt bother upgrading the chip to anything other then an i5 or i7.

Sukh · 5 Jul 2010 at 15:25

pastymuncher said:
Clock for clock the 45nm quads are a bit faster too.

Not too much though, I would OC the q6600 more and then wait for an upgrade in the future.

Mikey · 6 Jul 2010 at 10:21

Think I'll stick with the G0 when it heads in my direction

Marine-RX179 · 6 Jul 2010 at 10:35

Well, how about sell your B3 Q6600 and grab a 2nd hand Q9550? The chances are the Q9550 will rise in value by the time you do a full PC upgrade (may be next year?)

Myocardial Inf · 6 Jul 2010 at 11:10

I just upgraded from a X3060 (£40) to a Q9550 E0 (£100). I considered the Q6600 but didn't think the clocks would be that much of an improvement on the 3.6GHz that I ran the duel core at and for the price difference the Q9550 should hit a little higher, maybe even 4GHz.

Didn't want to move to I5 or I7 etc as the cost of replacing mobo, ram, waterblocks was just too high.

I did have a look at an x3360 but their like rocking horse poo and fetch a fair premium I found and as like the X3060, which is just a rebranded E6600 afterall, I doubt the Xeon would perform significantly better than the retail product.

Mikey · 6 Jul 2010 at 11:18

Marine-RX179 said:
Well, how about sell your B3 Q6600 and grab a 2nd hand Q9550? The chances are the Q9550 will rise in value by the time you do a full PC upgrade (may be next year?)

If I can find a 2nd hand Q9550

iTek · 6 Jul 2010 at 12:00

I'm not so sure, the G0 Q6600 is a proven clocker, your going to spend more on a Q9950 and then need to hope it clocks above the Q6600 otherwise your just getting the extra L2 cache.

I think the Q6600 G0 is a free upgrade to you by the sounds of it, if your not happy you can always shift it back on since they sell easily enough on the MM, the only thing to lose is a couple of days/weeks for you to run tests, games, encoding etc to see.

Mikey · 6 Jul 2010 at 12:04

iTek said:
I'm not so sure, the G0 Q6600 is a proven clocker, your going to spend more on a Q9950 and then need to hope it clocks above the Q6600 otherwise your just getting the extra L2 cache.

I think the Q6600 G0 is a free upgrade to you by the sounds of it, if your not happy you can always shift it back on since they sell easily enough on the MM, the only thing to lose is a couple of days/weeks for you to run tests, games, encoding etc to see.

I'll wait for the Q6600 G0 to turn up, see how it goes etc.

Was getting a new case too, but that's been canned due to OCUK unable to supply it

So instead of having a nice 700D I'm still with a pretty full Antec 300

Under intel burn I had my Q6600 B3 up to 75 - 79C in my Antec, so was looking forward to refitting it all in a nice new case and space for the Noctua HSF I have

iTek · 6 Jul 2010 at 12:08

shame

You have not really specified what you do with your rig but like I posted the G0 will allow for a decent overclock, i've been to 3.8Ghz from the default 2.4Ghz, thats great (I think) if you can come close to the 3.6Ghz area your on a winner, since I don't see a Q9950 going much further if at all close.

You'll know soon enough what the best action to take is.

Mikey · 6 Jul 2010 at 12:23

Indeed, but I'll just have to keep my eye out for the 700D / PSU offer if it comes again.

I use the machine for:
Gaming (Crysis, GTA, APB, Grid etc.)
VMWare
General PC stuff
100GB itunes collection etc.

GFX wise I have a 5870 in there.

MoRT489 · 6 Jul 2010 at 13:12

iTek said:
shame

You have not really specified what you do with your rig but like I posted the G0 will allow for a decent overclock, i've been to 3.8Ghz from the default 2.4Ghz, thats great (I think) if you can come close to the 3.6Ghz area your on a winner, since I don't see a Q9950 going much further if at all close.

You'll know soon enough what the best action to take is.

Q9550s clock well and run cool at lower volts. As a generalisation most Q6600s will do 3.4/3.5, lots will do 3.6, some will do 3.8 and very few with do 4.0+. The Q9550 has a bit of a higher starting point with nearly all doing at least 3.6 and lots doing 3.8GHz+ lots again hitting the 4.0 barrier. Of course this is going on OCUK users rather than ur average joe.

iTek · 6 Jul 2010 at 13:35

creed said:
Q9550s clock well and run cool at lower volts. As a generalisation most Q6600s will do 3.4/3.5, lots will do 3.6, some will do 3.8 and very few with do 4.0+. The Q9550 has a bit of a higher starting point with nearly all doing at least 3.6 and lots doing 3.8GHz+ lots again hitting the 4.0 barrier. Of course this is going on OCUK users rather than ur average joe.

So to answer the lads question for him... does he pay twice the price for a Q9950 which will do 3.6Ghz compared to a G0 which is likely to do the same minus 4mb L2 cache.

Pretty straight forward if you ask me. (Q6600 G0)