Intel Core 2 refresh: QX6850, E6850 & E6750

The E6750 is looking mighty appealing to me.. though that Q6600 is kinda drawing attention to itself there as well... I suppose recommendations would be the Q6600?

Can we have (or have you done) a Q6600 centered article, OCing etc, its what most of us will be buying :) Thanks

yeah im getting a q6600 if i can bump the frequency to 3.3 ish id be happy and looking at the G0 i think this is very possible

i would like to get a x38 tho so i can run dual 2900's (dependant on crysis performance) anyone know when this is due out

Originally Posted by LeMaltor
Can we have (or have you done) a Q6600 centered article, OCing etc, its what most of us will be buying :) Thanks

We don't have a Q6600 retail and I wouldn't like to use an ES because it's potentially a "golden" result. It also depends on motherboards etc: for example if you buy an Abit IP35 Pro or DFI ICFX3200T2R/G you get GTLReference voltage adjustments which specifically helps with quad core overclocking.

With an IP35 Pro you should easily get it to 333-400FSB. Abit has got quad cores to 500 in its labs.

First, thank you for this fantastic article - as usual I might add :D
The only 'problem' (if you could call it that) is the pricing - I'm not understanding the Q6600 at £160. Reason is, scan has it priced at £234.95 exc VAT today. Are you saying that comes July 22, I'll find that the price has been slashed by 75 quids? Sounds like a lot.

Originally Posted by adidas
First, thank you for this fantastic article - as usual I might add :D
The only 'problem' (if you could call it that) is the pricing - I'm not understanding the Q6600 at £160. Reason is, scan has it priced at £234.95 exc VAT today. Are you saying that comes July 22, I'll find that the price has been slashed by 75 quids? Sounds like a lot.

It might just mean there isn't a lot of stock in the channels at the moment, so the vendors are pricing it higher because they know it will sell out anyway.

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
We don't have a Q6600 retail and I wouldn't like to use an ES because it's potentially a "golden" result. It also depends on motherboards etc: for example if you buy an Abit IP35 Pro or DFI ICFX3200T2R/G you get GTLReference voltage adjustments which specifically helps with quad core overclocking.

With an IP35 Pro you should easily get it to 333-400FSB. Abit has got quad cores to 500 in its labs.

Any ideas what it'll look like with a 680i chipset?

Originally Posted by LeMaltor
Can we have (or have you done) a Q6600 centered article, OCing etc, its what most of us will be buying :) Thanks

I'll see what I can do ;)

mighty tempting..... lets see the response from AMD's side.

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
We don't have a Q6600 retail and I wouldn't like to use an ES because it's potentially a "golden" result. It also depends on motherboards etc: for example if you buy an Abit IP35 Pro or DFI ICFX3200T2R/G you get GTLReference voltage adjustments which specifically helps with quad core overclocking.

With an IP35 Pro you should easily get it to 333-400FSB. Abit has got quad cores to 500 in its labs.

Originally Posted by Tim S
I'll see what I can do ;)

Thanks :)

Very nice review... I would have liked to see how the slowest 1333mhz bus core 2 duo chip survived. Definitely helped me make up my mind though between AMD and Intel.

Originally Posted by kickarse
Very nice review... I would have liked to see how the slowest 1333mhz bus core 2 duo chip survived. Definitely helped me make up my mind though between AMD and Intel.

Thanks, I'm trying to get one of those too! ;)

Great stuff. Looks like the Q6600 is the best choice for those wanting performance at a budget. I look forward to bit doing an article on that thing :p. Hopefully it overclocks well. Ill be happy if I can get 300mhz OC out of it on air.

Does anyone know the ETA for retail supply? Did I miss that in the article?

Yeah the slowest 1333mhz bus chip (quad or duo) will be the one I upgrade to/overlock with. I want the Core 2 Duo E6540 _without_ TXT.

In addition to the ways of making use of multi-core cpus mentioned in the article (multi-tasking and multithreaded apps) a lot of apps also have the option of running 2 instances. E.g. If you had say 100 audio files to convert to mp3s you could run 2 instances of say dbpoweramp and have each one convert 50 tracks. This reasoning would work for video encoding too and would extend to quad core. Merely wanted to point out that with a bit of planning there are less obvious ways of taking advantage of multi-core cpus ;)

The good: Yes, all is fantastic in the land of compy-coms right now, 2 gig's of ddr2 for 100 bucks, a quad core processor for chip like prices, vid cards, power supplies, motherboards, and hdd's are a bit pricey though. All in all this is fantabulous for us who are still using pentium 3's cause we can't handle our estates (wo).

The bad: people like me think they should be talking about issues in which others could articulate and sum up much "more better".

The ugly: HTPC cases still blow marbles, and mobile gaming is still slackin'.

I'd like to see the 8800m power the Wii :D

Originally Posted by kickarse
Does anyone know the ETA for retail supply? Did I miss that in the article?

Yeah the slowest 1333mhz bus chip (quad or duo) will be the one I upgrade to/overlock with. I want the Core 2 Duo E6540 _without_ TXT.

ETA should be next week on the 22nd (I'm sorry if I didn't state that explicitly) :)

I really want a E6750 or a Q6600 for my next CPU

Add this to the fact that there are a slew of games coming out in the future that will benefit from quad-cores – Crysis is the first, and from what we’ve heard there are plenty more too.

wrong.

supreme commander already does.

Originally Posted by Pie_uk
Add this to the fact that there are a slew of games coming out in the future that will benefit from quad-cores – Crysis is the first, and from what we’ve heard there are plenty more too.

wrong.

supreme commander already does.

Oh, so you didn't bother reading the page that is dedicated to Supreme Commander performance?

Crysis is the first of the games coming out in the future... SupCom is from the past since it's already out!

Originally Posted by Pie_uk
Add this to the fact that there are a slew of games coming out in the future that will benefit from quad-cores – Crysis is the first, and from what we’ve heard there are plenty more too.

wrong.

supreme commander already does.

Do you come in a polite mode, or do you always feel entitled to point out the obvious with such unwarranted attitude? Yeesh. Employ a little courtesy and ask for clarification before deciding a statement is rubbish, would ya? It goes a long way.

As for the SupCom benefits, it's like 5% overall...hardly anything to write home about. But that's neither here nor there.

are there any figures for crysis performance gains over dual core?

Originally Posted by Fod
are there any figures for crysis performance gains over dual core?

I don't have a build of the game yet, but from what I've heard everything points to the engine running on at least three cores (one is dedicated to physics).

HL2: Episode Two was a game that I forgot to mention, and I believe there are "quad-core optimisations" in World in Conflict. While playing the beta, it's certainly felt "smoother" on quad-core but I'm not sure how measurable that is going to be - I'll see what I can do on that front.

Originally Posted by Bladestorm
It might just mean there isn't a lot of stock in the channels at the moment, so the vendors are pricing it higher because they know it will sell out anyway.

Thanks for the clarification. I'll keep an eye on pricing, because short of the pricing actually hitting 160, there's little point comparing it to the E6850.

I was literally about to buy an AMD system but the morning before I ordered all my stuff I saw the news of the price cuts, and decided to wait for the reviews. Now I'm getting an Intel system. I wonder if AMD is going to be able to compete.