Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 16, 2007 3:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Despite theoretical showings on paper, the 1333MHz FSB appears to do very little for performance even when feeding four of Intel's fastest cores. The Core 2 Extreme QX6850's performance is nothing to scoff at, but given its price tag we'd strongly recommend one of the cheaper quad-core offerings. With the Q6600 coming in at $266, it's tough to resist.
Our Q6600 recommendation really highlights the major focus of this story, and that is the escalating price war between AMD and Intel. Once Intel's price cuts take effect next week, it's going to be difficult to recommend any AMD CPUs above $150. We're still working on our low end CPU comparison, and we suspect that AMD is more competitive at the lower end of the price spectrum, but what we've seen here today doesn't look good at all for the mainstream segment. In order to remain competitive, AMD would either have to knock about $50 off its X2 6000+ price or count on Phenom making up the performance gap at the same price point.
It's tough to resist upgrading or building a new system today because of the tremendous value this last round of price cuts has given us, especially when you take into account that both Penryn and Phenom's respective launches remain largely unknown. Clock speeds, pricing and dates are still up in the air, and for once our recommendation isn't simply to wait and see what happens.
If you need a new system or CPU upgrade today, the chips are ripe for the picking.
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gigahertz20 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Ahhh man I loved the article but I was hoping for some overclocking benchmarks, very disappointing. I wanted to see an overclocked Q6600 vs. overclocked e6850, there were reports the E6850 can OC up to around 4GHz. I was hoping this article would show us some OC results. Is this planned for later or something?cpeter38 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Another Ditto!!!!Sunrise089 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
and another!All the early Conroe reviews had OC numbers. And yes, by now we realize that as far as dual-cores go, any of the new parts should overclock about the same. It's really important to a lot of users however to know how the overclocking of these new parts matches up to the quad-core part.
Frumious1 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
You've got numbers http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3020&am...">like this that have quad core hitting 3.60 GHz with appropriate cooling. Q6600 should easily hit 3.0-3.3 GHz with a reasonable HSF, and if you want something high-end like the Ultra-120 Extreme, maybe even 3.60 GHz (9x400). One more reason to go quad - just mind the energy bills!Sunrise089 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
yes, but what about if the dual-core part is overclocked to 4.0ghz?Frumious1 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Given that overall performance goes to 2.4 GHz quad core over 3.0 GHz dual core (a 600 MHz difference), I can guarantee that a 3.6 GHz quad core would be better than 4.0 GHz dual core (a 400 MHz difference). That said, for gaming it really wouldn't matter much right now - no games even try to utilize more than two cores that I'm aware of. And don't even think about a 3.6 GHz overclocked quad core chip unless you have a beefy PSU!BikeDude - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - link
Flight Simulator X SP1 adds multicore support and should benefit from additional (beyond dual) cores."As I stated previously, our multi-core support will take advantage of both 2 and 4 cores today, and more cores in the future when they become available."
(http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/14/f...">http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/14/f...
I am a bit disappointed that Anandtech doesn't bench FSX. I also miss the compiler benchmarks they used to do. AMD used to do quite well in those... (I say this as someone who uses compilers, not as a former AMD fanboy which I probably am)
RamarC - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
anyone know what oc results i can expect with a p35-based mobo and a q6600? is 3.0ghz as easy to reach as it is with an e6600?ZDNetReader1 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Ditto!! What he said!!MrKaz - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Price-wise, the only AMD/Intel competition we have here is between the FX-74 and the Q6700. Do keep in mind that as the FX-74 is a dual-socket configuration, the motherboard is a bit more expensive than what you can use with any of the single-socket quad-core Intel solutions.This is obviously true, but it’s also true that Intel motherboards for single socket VS AMD motherboards for single socket are also more expensive.
In my country equivalent ASUS AMD motherboard VS ASUS INTEL motherboard is around 30% to 50% cheaper.
Do keep that in mind too.