Intel unveils Core 2 Quad Q6600

Author: Tim Smalley
Published: 8th January 2007

Core 2 Quad Q6600 launches today and is already rumoured to be getting a significant price cut in Q2 07.

According to Tech Report, Intel unveiled its Core 2 Quad Q6600 this morning - the company's second quad-core processor for desktop PCs.

The Core 2 Quad Q6600 slots in right below Intel's flagship Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor and comes with exactly the same feature set as that chip. However, there is one exception: the multiplier is locked on the Q6600 with it not being an 'Extreme' processor.

It comes clocked at 2.4GHz using a 266MHz (quad-pumped) front side bus and comes with a pair of 4MB L2 caches. This is the same as the QX6700, the Q6600 is a pair of Core 2 Duo processors on a single package, known by most as the Kentsfield 'die'.

One benefit that the Q6600 has is a much more reasonable TDP rating. The QX6700 has a TDP rating of 130W - the Q6600's TDP has been reduced to 105W as a result of the 266MHz reduction in core speed.

On the pricing front, Intel has introduced the chip with a US$851 price tag (in 1000-unit quantities). DailyTech suggests that the chip will be reduced to US$530 in the second quarter of this year.

We don't have performance data for the Q6600 just yet, but we will be bringing you that in the near future. In tasks that don't take advantage of the four cores, you'll see similar performance to what we've already seen using Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600, and in heavily threaded applications, we will see slightly lower performance than Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX6700.