Q6600 and the Q9300

Hello! While i need a new cpu the Q6600 and Q9300 have caught my eye.
Ive done some research and

Q9300
Advantages

1:clock speed of 2.5 GHz with a front side bus speed of 1333 MHz
2:45nm aarchitecture
3:Q9300 supports Intel’s new SSE 4.1 instruction set (30%+) increase (Will games ever use SSE 4.1 instruction set???)

Disavantages

1:6 MB of L2 cache (2 x 3 MB cache per dual-core die). Yet , cache latencies have improved with the new 45nm architecture, so performance will not suffer greatly due to this design decision.

Q6600

Advantages

1:8 MB of L2 cache (2 x 4 MB

Disadvantages

1:65nm architecture
2oes not supports Intel’s new SSE 4.1 instruction set
3:Slower then Q9300 - 2.4 GHz @ 1066 MHz FSB

Now i have some questions. the Q6600 can reach 3.6GHz and the Q9300 can reach 3.5GHz http://lly316.blogspot.com/2008/02 [...] hmark.html and then i read this in another forum


"Most motherboards, even the best out there, are limited to a 450-475FSB with quadcores.
This means that with the Q9300's 7x multiplier, it will be limited to ~3.3ghz.
Let's say you do manage to get the highest FSB I have seen with a quad, 500mhz, that is still only 3.5ghz.
The same story goes with the Q9450, it has an 8x multiplier, so it tops out around 3.8ghz.
With good aircooling the Q6600 can on average do 3.6 and sometimes even higher."

Im going to be putting the Q9300(if i get it) into a Asus P5Q Pro Motherboard will i be able to reach 3.5Ghz (as above he said you need 500mhz to get 3.5Ghz )with this board and can this be done with out water cooling jsut a good after market cooler. Can this MOBO reach 3.5Ghz with a Q9300. (Ive never done overclocking but i want to know if i will be able to.)

+1

Don't know where you are, but here in the UK, I've seen the Q6600 for about £150 and the Q9300 for about £190. In my opinion, the Q9300 is not worth the extra £40. If prices where you are follow a similar trend, I wouldn't bother with the Q9300.

Listen to this

"the easy way to caculate that out is (10% x cpu speed of 45nm cpu)+45nm cpu clock speed = 65nm cpu speed. makeing the 65nm cpu needing to be around 3.8ghz. remember this is just a est number but it is fairly close, othre things like the cpu's fsb and ram speed will matter. if we just assume ram speed and cpu fsb are equal then you could apply that.

now lets just assume the max oc'd fsb speed you can do stable is 490mhz. with the Q9300's 7.5x multi that would give you a 3.6ghz clock speed. now depending on how lucky you get with the Q6600 if you go that way you may top out at 3.6-3.8ghz max. that at stock multi would be a fsb range of 400mhz-425mhz. the Q6600 maybe the safer bet since it wont be pushing the fsb sorta speak. Given the 45nm cpu can match the 65nm cpu with less clocks and have a higher fsb in the process. having a higher fsb does help in the overall per clock efficiency of the cpu.

i would personally take the Q9300 since you have a P45 based board."

About the Q9300 vs Q6600. for a P5Q PRO

The Q6600 and the Q9300 is the same price in this country i live in.

I would still go for the Q6600, since you seem to be stressing about it. If you really want to you can pretty easily get the Q6600 to perform better than the Q9300's limit. Either way, just buy which one you are comfortable with getting, forget the performance comparison there really is none.

I am running my Q9300 oc'd at 3.46 air cooled and stable. I believe I am at 485fsb and 7.5 multiplier on a Asus p5e3 deluxe board if I remember right.