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Intel Core 2 refresh: QX6850, E6850 & E6750

Published on 17th July 2007 by Tim Smalley

Supreme Commander

We used the full retail version of Supreme Commander with the version 3223 patch applied. Supreme Commander is developed by Chris Taylor, the creator of the Total Annihilation series, and his development team, Gas Powered Games. Together, Taylor and his team have created what is widely regarded as the spiritual successor to one of the greatest RTS games of all time.

SupCom is a hugely tactical and strategic monster on a massive scale -- hundreds of units can appear on screen at once. It's a massive departure from anything else we've recently seen in the genre. It's one of (if not) the first RTS to allow the player to scroll out to view the scale of battle in its entirety.

Due to the game's massive scale, it is said to show some decent performance improvements with quad-core processors -- we'll be having a look at this closer over the next few weeks. We used the game's in-built performance test during our testing, as this provides over seven minutes of variable gameplay -- both zoomed in and out -- that should represent typical scenarios that a user is likely to encounter whilst playing the game. We set all details to their maximum values and, again, left anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled.

Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (4x3.00GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (4x2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.67GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6850 (2x3.00GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6750 (2x2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (4x2.40GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2x2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6700 (2x2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6600 (2x2.40GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (2x3.0GHz, 2x1MB L2)
Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2x2.8GHz, 2x1MB L2)
Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (2x2.6GHz, 2x1MB L2)

- 56.4
- 11.6
- 54.9
- 10.9
- 52.7
- 10.7
- 52.5
- 11.9
- 52.1
- 10.6
- 51.5
- 10.1
- 51.2
- 10.9
- 50.7
- 10.1
- 49.6
- 10.1
- 38.6
- 7.5
- 35.4
- 7.1
- 32.4
- 6.7

Frames Per Second

Average
Minimum

Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (4x3.00GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (4x2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6850 (2x3.00GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2x2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.67GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6750 (2x2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (4x2.40GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6700 (2x2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Core 2 Duo E6600 (2x2.40GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2)
Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (2x3.0GHz, 2x1MB L2)
Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2x2.8GHz, 2x1MB L2)
Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (2x2.6GHz, 2x1MB L2)

- 41.7
- 11.1
- 40.8
- 9.6
- 40.7
- 11.3
- 39.8
- 9.9
- 39.5
- 8.7
- 39.3
- 9.9
- 38.4
- 8.3
- 37.9
- 9.6
- 35.4
- 6.3
- 31.9
- 8.8
- 29.2
- 6.6
- 27.6
- 6.3

Frames Per Second

Average
Minimum

Supreme Commander is a game that is said to be optimised for multi-core and, while there are benefits to having multiple cores, the benefits aren't that massive at higher resolutions. You'll gain around one frame per second, or around 2.5 percent as a result of going from dual-core to quad-core in this particular title.

Measurable? Yes. Noticeable? Not really.

What is noticeable though is the profound performance difference between the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ and the Core 2 Duo E6750, which come in at very similar price points. You're looking at an almost 25 percent performance advantage in favour of the Core 2 Duo E6750 here. Ouch.