E6850 or Q6600 for the same price?

[dsidious]

Hi,

I found a couple of interesting articles about Intel's Q3 offerings.

I've got a question for the experts: what kind of performance do you expect from the E6850? I would probably prefer a Q6600 for the same $266, but I may be wrong...

http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/news.php?tid=755282&starttime=0&endtime=0
http://www.nordichardware.com/news,5873.html

Thanks!

 

[miahallen]

The E6850 will offer great stock performace, but it's overclocking headroom is going to be pretty limited. At 500MHz FSB (a speed MBs are having a tough time cracking) the chip will "only" be running at 4GHz. That may seem like a lot, but many E6600s can get there today, for about the same price...so what's the point in waiting? :?

The Q6600 on the other hand has much more OCing potential! At 400MHz FSB, it's running at 3.6GHz, this speed is easy for most all motherboards to reach today. 8O

You seen where I'm going whith this?

 

[ches111]

DSid,

I would take the quad over the Dual any day... There are many reasons behind it... Granted not everyone will agree. But those that understand the direction we are taking (multithreaded applications) in the industry will probably agree with me.

Read the linked to threads HERE! and draw your own conclusions.

also

Have a read HERE!!

Both are threads that I started trying to settle on an answer for this very question..

 

[Heyyou27]

Q6600.

 

[dsidious]

I liked the "can't add cores" argument
OK, quad is the way to go. Thanks!

 

[smudgee]

Im desperate for a quad , my dual core drives me mad when waiting for 3d renderings its so slow , yeah some people really need quad....or more.

smudgee
P820
2 GIG RAM
6800GT
830 GIG HD

 

[Lionhardt]

lol, thats because u have what we like to call a "pentium"

they are teh suck.

still though, u have a point.

if i were an encoding kinda guy, or a 3d artist id mos def get a c2d quad

 

[chyort]

well... it realy depends on what/if anything, AMD releases...

but between a dual core and a quad core.. i would have to say go for the quad not everything can use the extra cores, but it just makes me feel happy in the pants knowing that soon enough they will then your dual core will be obsolete!

 

[jeff_2087]

not everything can use the extra cores, but it just makes me feel happy in the pants knowing that soon enough they will

8O

Was that really necessary...

 

[warezme]

The E6850 will offer great stock performace, but it's overclocking headroom is going to be pretty limited. At 500MHz FSB (a speed MBs are having a tough time cracking) the chip will "only" be running at 4GHz. That may seem like a lot, but many E6600s can get there today, for about the same price...so what's the point in waiting? :?
?

uh, the E6600 is a dual the E6850 is a quad there is a big difference.

When you overclock Quads, theres a lot more circuitry that has to tolerate the added Mhz so the odds of it not OC'ing to the level of an E6600 is not equal. They may no OC as high but the two extra cores give you more performance in the long run as long as software developers take advantage.

Also thats why you invest in a high end board that can deal with uber high FSB. That $250 680i is looking a lot cheaper now.

I totaly plan to ditch my duals for some cheap quads cause its a no brainer. I am just glad I didn't buy them when they were $1,000

 

[dsidious]

uh, the E6600 is a dual the E6850 is a quad there is a big difference.

When you overclock Quads, theres a lot more circuitry that has to tolerate the added Mhz so the odds of it not OC'ing to the level of an E6600 is not equal. They may no OC as high but the two extra cores give you more performance in the long run as long as software developers take advantage.

Also thats why you invest in a high end board that can deal with uber high FSB. That $250 680i is looking a lot cheaper now.

I totaly plan to ditch my duals for some cheap quads cause its a no brainer. I am just glad I didn't buy them when they were $1,000

OK, there's a bit of confusion here. E6850 is a dual core. Q6600 is a quad. E6600 is a beautiful thing from the past and let's not talk about it here.

I know there's a thread debating the merits of X6800 and QX6700, and most people voted for QX6700. By the way, that's a great thread.

Now between E6850 (slightly better than X6800 at stock) and Q6600 (a bit weaker than QX6700, again at stock) the race is closer IMO. Especially if O/C is not desired and we compare them at stock...

X6800 < E6850 < Q6600 < QX6700 < QX6800, is that how performance goes?

Edit: so I take it, E6850 is a rather pointless product because smart people would get a Q6600 instead?

 

[ches111]

warezme,

I hope you noticed the little tidbit about the 680i chipsets IO performance..

Since you offered your tidbits I thought I'd offer mine..

For instance why would you choose a 680i chipset that bottlenecks the enthusiast?

Linkage THG RAID ARTICLE

We measured up to 350 MB/s using four 10,000 RPM WD Raptor drives and Intel's ICH7 or ICH8 chipset components. This is an excellent result, as it almost matches the added throughput of four single drives. At the same time, Nvidia's nForce 680 chipset somehow showed a 110 MB/s bottleneck, which we still couldn't overcome. It shows that not every integrated controller is suitable of hosting a high-performance RAID 0, despite technically supporting it.

Also the quads from Intel overclock quite nicely so you would be wrong there too..

Linkage again THG - Quad OC article.. With a mild 25% OC

Kentsfield, which industry sources refer to as "Core 2 Quadro," arrived as a 2.67 GHz version with a 266 MHz/1066 MHz FSB. The test engineers were able to adjust the FSB to 1333 MHz - which is still supported by the 975X chipset - and overclock the CPU by about 25%. The benchmarks were conducted with clock speeds ranging from 2.0 GHz to 3.33 GHz.

Please keep in mind that article was one of the first written and they have since gotten better OCs out of the quad with newer steppings.

 

[ches111]

Warezme,

What Dsid said...

We are NOT discussing the E6600 but rather the Q6600..

Thanks for playing though..

 

[Retardicus]

One of my brothers works as a 3D Graphics Artist...he just got a 2-Socket workstation board with two quad core xeons and is having a blast. His workstation is as fast as 16 of their server farm computers.

 

[epsilon84]

X6800 < E6850 < Q6600 < QX6700 < QX6800, is that how performance goes?

Well it depends on the level of multithreading support in the software of course, it's not so black and white. Some 'multithreading capable' software only spawns 2 threads anyway, though hopefully that will change in future where software can accept 'n cores' to help performance grow as technology advances.

 

[ajfink]

I picked the "AMD" option simply because it's a poor decision to plan a Q3 purchase before seeing K10 benchmarks. Between the two options, Q6600, OCed.

 

[ches111]

Epsilon,

A multithreaded app will often NOT spawn a thread per core available.

In fact many MT apps will spawn multiple threads per core..

Alot of people want to tie one thread per core but that is not really the way it is done.

Yeah an app could spawn 1 or maybe 2 threads..

But guess what? The OS MAY place both threads on the same core. Even if the other core has cycles are available. It is up to the OS (usually)...

 

[enewmen]

Im desperate for a quad , my dual core drives me mad when waiting for 3d renderings its so slow , yeah some people really need quad....or more.

smudgee
P820
2 GIG RAM
6800GT
830 GIG HD

Seems like you are one of the few that can benifit from quad,
Well, even a E6400 will crush your p820

 

[miahallen]

uh, the E6600 is a dual the E6850 is a quad there is a big difference.

When you overclock Quads, theres a lot more circuitry that has to tolerate the added Mhz so the odds of it not OC'ing to the level of an E6600 is not equal. They may no OC as high but the two extra cores give you more performance in the long run as long as software developers take advantage.

Also thats why you invest in a high end board that can deal with uber high FSB. That $250 680i is looking a lot cheaper now.

I totaly plan to ditch my duals for some cheap quads cause its a no brainer. I am just glad I didn't buy them when they were $1,000

OK, there's a bit of confusion here. E6850 is a dual core. Q6600 is a quad. E6600 is a beautiful thing from the past and let's not talk about it here.

I know there's a thread debating the merits of X6800 and QX6700, and most people voted for QX6700. By the way, that's a great thread.

Now between E6850 (slightly better than X6800 at stock) and Q6600 (a bit weaker than QX6700, again at stock) the race is closer IMO. Especially if O/C is not desired and we compare them at stock...

X6800 < E6850 < Q6600 < QX6700 < QX6800, is that how performance goes?

Edit: so I take it, E6850 is a rather pointless product because smart people would get a Q6600 instead?
I think you're missing my point. I think some people would argue in favor or higher clock speeds, over more cores (not me). However, I was trying to point out that even in clock speed the E6850 probably doesn't have much of an advantage when you take into consideration OCing headroom.

My second point was to ask why the E6850 would cause anyone to anticipate it? I was trying to say that if the E6850 looks appealing to you, just buy the E6600 today, it's going for roughly similar price, and have the potential for roughly the same performance (many people are reaching 3.8-4.0GHz with it).

I was not arguing for the E6850, I was pointing out the flaws in it. I would buy the E6600 over the E6850 any day...hands down, no contest!

 

[SSS_DDK]

Im desperate for a quad , my dual core drives me mad when waiting for 3d renderings its so slow , yeah some people really need quad....or more.

smudgee
P820
2 GIG RAM
6800GT
830 GIG HD

Seems like you are one of the few that can benifit from quad,
Well, even a E6400 will crush your p820
Actually any programmer would go for a Quad!....if th eprice is logical of course.

 

[Talon]

On the surface the quad might seem the way to go, its the way I personally would go. Its more futureproof. The 6850 will likely give better performance in todays games and most games for the next year. When multi-threading really makes it into more games then the quad will decimate the dual-core.

As for overclocking, the current quads have not been reaching the same frequencies that the dual-cores can attain so I don't believe its correct to say it might overclock more. Tests have proven a like-clocked dual-core will OC more every time compared to quad.

This however will mean little as thngs become more multi-threaded and the quad will squish a dual-core clocked even higher than itself.

In the end I think unless you upgrade very frequently compared to most people, at least every year roughly then you should go quad for the same price. I know I will.

 

[miahallen]

As for over-clocking, the current quads have not been reaching the same frequencies that the dual-cores can attain so I don't believe its correct to say it might over clock more. Tests have proven a like-clocked dual-core will OC more every time compared to quad.

I guess what I was trying to say is if you take an E6850, or a Q6600 and OC each one to 400MHz FSB (a reasonable expectation with today's mobos), they will both be running at 3.6GHz (because they both have a x9 multiplier). I'm saying the E6850 is more limited for OCing because of it's high 333MHz FSB. I know it's easier to reach extreme OCs (say 500MHz FSB) with dual cores...but I think most people don't try to push their stuff that hard.

 

[Sataure]

I know that some people choose not to take the TH CPU graphs seriously, but by looking at them it is apparent that the Q6600 is only slightly faster (and sometimes slower) than an E6700, and since an E6600 can be overclocked faster than an E6700, would a dual core processor with more OC capability not be faster than a quadcore with unused potential? Then again I suppose that quadcore's are more futureproof.

Would quadcore's really have an advantage in gaming? If its up to the OS to decide which threads fall into which core, wouldn't that mean that the OS's themselves must be patched to effectively utilize the power of the cores?

 

[MU_Engineer]

The E6850 will offer great stock performace, but it's overclocking headroom is going to be pretty limited. At 500MHz FSB (a speed MBs are having a tough time cracking) the chip will "only" be running at 4GHz. That may seem like a lot, but many E6600s can get there today, for about the same price...so what's the point in waiting? :?

The Q6600 on the other hand has much more OCing potential! At 400MHz FSB, it's running at 3.6GHz, this speed is easy for most all motherboards to reach today. 8O

You seen where I'm going whith this?

The Q6600 is *capable* of being a better overclocker due to its higher multiplier, but it won't hit the same speeds as the E6850 because of thermal issues. 3.6 GHz on a C2Q requires a pretty darn good cooler because that's 200+ watts of heat to dissipate. 4.0 GHz on a Core 2 Duo will be much less than that, probably about what the QX6800 throws off at stock.

 

[MU_Engineer]

One of my brothers works as a 3D Graphics Artist...he just got a 2-Socket workstation board with two quad core xeons and is having a blast. His workstation is as fast as 16 of their server farm computers.

Server farms or clusters can be an odd sort- I've run code on them before. They are massively parallel but have not-so-hot interconnects compared to HyperTransport or an FSB and no shared memory pool between nodes. They also generally have lots of people running lots of jobs on them, so RAM is at a premium. If you have something that eats bunches of RAM, keep it off the cluster unless your cluster has astonishingly huge amounts of RAM per node- 4 GB/core or so. Few users helps a bunch, too. The cluster I use for data analysis is generally slower than my home workstation (X2 4200+, 4 GB DDR-400, 500 GB RAID 5) because my data has a 1 GB/thread working set. I'll run the frames two at a time until all 24 are done and generally beat the cluster working on all 24 at once if the cluster will even finish. Swapping really does hurt execution time and putting 4 threads that need 1 GB each on a server with 4 GB RAM leads to a ton of swapping and a bunch of "cannot allocate memory" errors and a SIGKILL as the swap gets used up too.